Four-Legged Glyphs

THE MOON

The four-legged beast was pacing back and forth against the shadowy tree line of the new forest. Its short fur was pitch black, save for a white stripe stretching from its tail to the bridge of the nose. Its eyes were a soft blend of mahogany and canary, and each of the four paws had splashes of white and light brown.

Unfortunately for Luna, the Labrador mix appeared as a muted pallet of light and dark grays, with bright, luminescent eyes.

She was staring at a dog. An extremely cute, and well nourished dog.

It was a sight that would have made sense if the dog she was looking at was Orion.

But it was not. This was a new dog. A strange dog. An alien dog.

How was that possible?

The lab barked once at Luna, then turned and disappeared into the trees.

Being Orion’s handler for years, and having dogs her entire life, Luna knew that the bark was far from malicious. The dog wanted her to follow.

The mysterious lab also seemed to be heading in the same direction of Orion’s illuminated paw prints. She clung to that with everything she had left.

Considering she was alone, possibly dying, and certainly being watched by the teething horde which had ominously fallen silent. She had no choice but to follow the lab.

Staying on the ridge meant dying. That was something Luna could not do.

Before heading out, she pressed two fingers to the receiver on her left wrist, and tested the suit’s comm link.

“Orion. Come in, over.”

Static rang in her ears.

She tried again.

“Orion, bud. Can you hear me? Over?”

More static.

“Orion! Please. If you can hear my voice, bark as loud as you can. Over.”

Luna listened carefully for a response, but continued to only hear a mixture of static, wind, birds, and an occasional moan coming from the dark, south woods behind her.

Fear for the well-being of Orion provided her with the adrenaline she needed in order to enter the northern woodland — which she did, staggering with every step.

She did her best to keep up pace with the lab, but it was too quick, and she was in too much pain. Fortunately, Orion’s illuminated breadcrumb trail allowed her to stay on the correct course, as well as the lab continuously popping back into view from the shadows to check on her progress.

After about fifteen minutes of leading, stopping, and slowly following, Luna came face to face with a once, thickly concealed gaping hole in the side of a sky scraping wall of dense gray stone.

“Not another cave,” she mumbled to herself in despair.

The lab had disappeared, but Orion’s paw prints still shone true, and they led in the one direction she did not want to go. Trying to trick her mind, she looked all around the mouth of the cave for any sign of other dog paw tracks, which could indicate that the lab she was following decided to take an alternative route.

She found none.

Then heard the one sound she prayed not to hear.

A bark. An echoing bark from inside of the cave.

Luna’s first step inside of the dark cave made her spine ignite with a nerve altering pain, similar to the sciatic pain she suffered from a week into astronaut training.

She convinced herself it was mental. But maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was her sciatica returning, and deciding to shoot upwards, instead of down towards her foot. Maybe it wasn’t the sciatica at all, and it was in-fact an infection from the talons of her winged attacker. Maybe it was her old college anxiety, coming to finish what it started.

Possibility after possibility flooded her brain, which also flooded her motor skills. She was frozen within the threshold of the cave. One foot in, and one foot out. Another bark, this time deeper from within the tunnel, pounded off of the stone walls as a powerful echo, reminding her of the mission.

Find Orion.

The further she crept, the darker it got.

After crawling ten feet, Luna activated her helmet’s LED light array. Six polycarbonate light bulbs fastened to the crown of her helmet boomed to life, uncovering the alien properties of this strange, gray cave system.

The damp ceiling rose, fell, in short increments, and curved like a serpent stalking its dinner. In the low points, she could make out shiny streaks, and clusters of discoloration throughout the stone ceiling, indicating the presence of precious alien substances.

The higher peaks of the ceiling shifted and bobbed as the tendrils of her helmet’s lights brushed against them.

She hadn’t been much of a cave explorer in her life, but she was intelligent enough to know what creatures tended to dwell in the remote, high corners of damp caves.

Bats.

Making a safe choice to not disturb the upside-down, hanging, alien, night birds, Luna focused her helmet forward, and towards the ground. She could not afford another injury.

The sixth bend in the tunnel collapsed nearly two feet in width, forcing Luna to walk at an angle. It was uncomfortable, yet it allowed her to get an intimate look at the impossible carvings, and glyphs chiseled into the walls.

Illuminated by her helmet’s LED display, hundreds, if not thousands of four-legged creatures, of different shapes and sizes decorated each side of the corridor’s walls from floor to ceiling. At first she thought they represented some type of hyena mutant, but the closer she examined them, she began to realize something much less alarming.

They weren’t representations of hyenas, or even of a mutated version.

The closer she got to the next bend, the clearer, and more detailed the artwork became — almost as if they were added much later than the ones at the beginning.

These archaic drawings were of dogs.

She saw small headed creatures with elongated bodies, and tiny feet, clearly depicting Dachshunds. Weaved in between, she saw what looked like fat and fluffy Samoyeds, muscular Rottweilers, long-haired retrievers, crisp and clean Labradors, tiny and round-shaped pigs, which she quickly re-identified as bulldogs, due to the squiggly lines in the face. She saw spotted bodies, which had to be Dalmatians. There were even drawings of short-legged bodies with long floppy ears. Luna easily identified these as bloodhounds.

The more she looked, the more breeds she recognized.

What did that mean, and how was that possible?

She was only able to land her rambling mind on one sensible conclusion. Somehow humans from earth lived inside of this cave system and drew these images to express their love for dogs.

It was a conclusion that made no real sense, considering her circumstances, but it’s the truth she told herself to keep her mind and anxiety from disconnecting entirely.