DISCONTINUED

Chapter 46

Despite the advice she'd given to Olivia, Luna couldn't go back to bed herself. There was no way she could sleep now. But just sitting around was only going to make her feel worse and it wouldn't change a thing, so she decided to at least get out of the house and go for a walk.

The fresh air felt good, but she certainly couldn't escape her thoughts. She knew they were some amount of guilty and she was deeply sorry that some innocent person might... probably would die as a result of their silly prank. That poor guy. It would have been a lot easier to take if some government official had been the one to drown trying to "save" their mannequin.

She briefly considered going over to Olivia's but frankly, she - Olivia - was just too much of a mess right now and Luna wasn't any more convinced that she'd bring Olivia up then she was that Olivia would drag her down. Besides, Olivia's parents would likely be home today. She hoped that a bit of time would help her friend settle down. She'd give her a call later and maybe they could get together then.

She tried calling Bo but when her call went to voicemail, she remembered that he'd been planning on going fishing for the day and had vowed to leave his phone at home. He'd made a big thing about wishing he lived back in time when everyone didn't always have their phone with them everywhere they went, making them "omni-accessible" as he'd put it. Luna rolled her eyes to herself. Yea, right. And she wished she lived in a time when, oh, I don't know... when her Mom hadn't been killed, her Dad hadn't been forced to run away and they all weren't condemned to die. Yea, that'd be good for starters.

She walked slowly, almost aimlessly, for probably an hour or more - her head down and her hands shoved deep into her pockets - before finally stopping to sit down on a bench, almost surprised to find herself back at the dog park again.

For a good while she just sat and watched as all sorts of different, wonderful varieties and shapes and sizes and colors of dogs came and went. It proved to be a great distraction.

The one constant through it all, she noticed, was a ridiculously happy little sort of terrier cross that faithfully performed the role of the "greeter". For every new dog that arrived, big or small, the little guy would, without exception, stop whatever he was doing and run over from wherever he happened to be to welcome the newcomer to the park. Whereas most of the dogs seemed to be running at top speed most of the time, this little guy moved in more of a playful loping gait, as if he wanted to savor every single step and feared that if he moved too fast he might miss something. Despite the seemingly unlimited variety of breeds and sizes and no doubt individual personalities of the park's canine patrons, Luna noticed that not once was the little guy's greeting met with anything worse than perhaps indifference, which didn't appear to faze him in the least. In fact, his boundlessly cheerful attitude appeared to be contagious, as even the mildly hesitant dogs soon found themselves running off with the little guy to "join the pack", and he'd often then recruit those very same initially "anti-social" ones to join him as co-greeters to welcome the next park visitor.

It was all cuter than cute really, and Luna couldn't help but smile to herself. Before long though she found herself thinking of her little guy Mack and how he used to love coming to this park. Her smile faded and her gaze slowly and gradually lowered until she was left staring blankly, absently at the ground in front of her. She leaned forward and crossed her arms, suddenly feeling heavy, weighed down by her grief. Why did she find it so easy to mourn and be saddened by the death of her dog and yet not be completely incapacitated by all the other "greater" tragedies happening all around her? Everything was falling apart and yet the only thing she could cry about was her dog? Maybe it was just a defense mechanism. Maybe acknowledging and mourning over the death of her dog was simply the limit of what her mind could handle. To lose a pet was brutally, genuinely sad of course, but it was still sort of a "contained" or "limited" amount of grief and at a different level than losing her Mom or effectively losing her Dad or accidentally probably being responsible for killing some poor guy. Maybe her mind allowed her to cry over her dead dog as sort of a compromise. An allowance. Because it knew that if she was free to fully grasp and acknowledge and mourn the totality of all of her loses, well... well then she'd almost certainly completely lose her shit.