STEVE: It hurts me to love you.
EDNA: Then why do you continue to hurt?
STEVE: Because I cant get enough.
Moscow street-mutt, unloved stray. Eleven pounds of bone, of pelt, of tail. Who can weigh the heart of dog? What dials or instruments may measure loyalty; the desire, hard-wired, to obey? Dogs have no gods, know only to worship the hand that feeds. There is no canine word for pray. Brave little cosmonaut, faithful to a fault; caught and collared, Earth no more than a distant ball with which you cannot play. How the words that sent you on your way crackle through the ragged dishes of your ears, a comet's tail of breaking syllables that even now leave their trail: Edna, in. Edna, lay. Good girl, Edna. Wait. Stay.
Laika by Sarah Doyle.
Act I: Blood Dried Hands.