text: Once upon a time there was a dog. He was born in the time of plenty, in days of sunshine and warmth, and he grew from puppyhood towards full growth in happy barking and playful fellowship with his litter mates under the loving and watchful care of his elders. But as the days passed, he became aware of an emptiness inside him. And gradually the pack saw that while he has space inside him big enough to carry a heart the size of a mountain,his own heart was small. It was no smaller than most dogs carried, but too small for the space allotted him. Although no one knew why this was, it was agreed that he of all the dogs must be intended for great deeds requiring a heart of mountainous proportions. So he must find a way to grow his heart to size. And slowly, time moved from the days of plenty to the time of tides. Rumors of wild winds and high seas never seen before began to circulate. And soon shadows played across the days of sun. And the pack knew that a time was coming when a special guide and leader would be needed . And the elders gathered and determined that the dog with space inside him for a heart the size of a mountain must be the one and he was sent out to live with people in the land of houses in the hope that there his heart would grow. So the dog came to a house in a town by the sea. And the people in the house loved him, their own hearts swelling each time they saw the dog. And they made him a bed beneath the roof, with a glass window above his bed, which he could see through to the sky. And the dog loved the people too. But still his heart could not fill the space inside him. One day, as the dog lay on his bed, he heard a sound above him. The dog looked up. There, above him, through the glass, he saw two feet, yellow, webbed, self satisfied, well planted feet and above them a white, soft rump. He looked away. A gull. No more than a gull , and the dog, as were his humans, was dismissive of gulls. But as he did, he heard the call; soft, like a child’s call, faintly Russian, like the cry of a Siamese cat. Insistent and rising in pitch it clutched and held him tight, and he felt himself rising, lifted through the room and the glass above him and out into the glowing air beyond . He was alarmed at first, bed and bowl were below, and his rugs and comforters, but he was powerless to resist the upward pull and soon he found himself ecstatic; ears pulled back, tail extended, paws no longer paddling but stretching out like wings into the rosy future. Looking around the dog saw gulls around him, swooping, diving, soaring - calling him on. People walked below him, two dimensional, unseeing, unobserving, used, he supposed, to seagulls in the skies above them. And now the dog saw that the white and yellow birds were shedding their feathers - feet of gold, now clawed not webbed, stretching back below a thrashing tail, their beaks curving into golden scimitars. And on they flew - beyond the rooves of the peoples’ towns to the seas; wild, grey, foaming into gold topped blue. The waves reached up for them, almost touching, almost tearing them down from the weightless sky. But up they rose, leaving the grasping fingers of the spray, and soaring on until , finally, they reached land, a dry and safe land, beyond. And the birds, that had been birds, the winged creatures that surrounded him and that had brought him with them to this place, now seemed to settle and he felt his body lower, quite gently, into soft, green landings. He looked around. There, in a trough, half covered in leaves - red and crisp and pointed on the gound - he saw a gleam. More than a twinkle or a sparkle, it was a strong metallic gleam that attracted him, as might in his other self, a bone. He approached it, sniffed and pounced. And suddenly he knew. It was his grail, he realised, his gift, his own. And seizing it in his mouth, he swallowed it. Immediately it swelled. And his heart grew to the size of a mountain inside him. And he was mightier, more himself than before. He didn’t remember the return. But there he was at last, on his bed, in his people’s house, looking upwards through the glass at yellow feet. Webbed feet. But the dog knew then that the birds above him were much more than gulls. They were the guides appointed for him in his quest and they would be the guardians, in the times of shadow, not only for the people, although they were feared and mistrusted by them, but also for his alter-pack, the dogs. And so, with his heart now as big as a mountain, and with the guardians around him, the dog left the people in the house by the sea, an avatar in place to comfort them, and went back to his own pack. The shadows had spread there and the seas were wilder, and the pups were growing now, not in a time of happy barking but through whines of fear. So, the dog with the heart the size of a mountain flew through the shadow with his cohort of guardians. And the golden claws tore into the shadows. And the wild tails thrashed at the waves till they whimpered and subsided into foam. And the scimitar beaks opened wide to swallow the winds. And the days of sunshine and the days of plenty were returned to the pack . And the pack, with the dog with the heart the size of a mountain, lived out their days in a new time of plenty, in days of sunshine and warmth and happy barking.