As usual, Filka was late. He had a hangover and was sitting by the Des Plaines River north of Chicago, just staring at the calmly running water and the grass and trees around him. A bird was chirping somewhere. So was his phone. He was supposed to be meeting a fan at a cafe back in the city and she had just texted him.

"Are you here?" from Sara DeRailleur, Sara "not Sarah", "don't-forget-to-pronounce-it-without-the-'h'" DeRailleur.

"Yeah, I'm in the bathroom." he texted back, and then lifted himself off the ground and flew a few feet into the air. The bird asked him not to go, it was so nice to have an audience, but Filka wished him a good day and soared back into the city.

Filka wasn't exactly capable of supersonic speeds and it was a good twenty minutes before he arrived at Julius Meinl on Southport. It was a beautiful late-May morning and he had enjoyed the cool wind on his aching head as he had darted over the cityscape. He dropped to about a foot and a half above the sidewalk so he could let himself in through the door and spotted Sara who looked relieved to see him.

"Were you taking a piss outside?" she asked as he drifted over.

"The whole word is my bathroom," Filka replied.

"I was just about to leave," she said in a goofy sort of archness.

"No you weren't, you've been waiting all week for this."

"That's true," she said. Filka had various ways of supporting himself, since fauns were barred from contractual employment (the upside was he didn't pay taxes), and while his income sources included selling shoplifted goods on any one of his various Craig's List and eBay accounts, there were people willing to pay him for magical assistance (though there were few jobs he was willing to take), and he also had an on-line following he could crowdsource from to sponsor bigger projects (or, schemes, you might call them). He had recently launched a "What makes Filka so awesome?" contest and Sara here had written a fantastic piece praising his libertarian spirit and fashion sense (flannel shirts had suddenly come back in style again, go figure). And she was hot. So now they were having brunch.

Filka asked the server for a booster seat - "You know, for little kids. I'm only three feet tall." - and ordered a plate of kaiserschmarren, which is basically a pile of candied pancake pieces with cream and fruit and four other kinds of sugar piled on it, and some coffee. And some mineral water. Sara had about one third of what had originally been a large salad in front of her, and was sipping what was probably her third coffee. She had a nose ring and platinum blonde hair tinged with a faint purple undertone, and about half an inch of brown roots busily growing back in. She was wearing a Death Cab for Cutie t-shirt and the rest of her ensemble likewise gave the air of someone who had a knack for finding gems at the thrift store (which is meant as a compliment).

"I wanna know about the St. Patrick's Day caper," she told him, holding her coffee in both hands, grinning eagerly.

"Oh sure, well you know the broad strokes already; the city was going to paint the river green like they do every year, and - you know Joni Dempsey, right?"

"Just through social media, I've never actually met her."

"Well," Filka continued, "somehow environmentalists don't appreciate the symbolism, and she asked me if I could stop them. So I told her it would take about three thousand dollars and she crowdsourced five G's for me, and I always like a tip because I did the whole thing for about eighteen-hundred. Anyway-"

"I donated thirty bucks for that one."

"Oh, well much appreciated. I won't ask you to pay for lunch then. So then," Filka drank a lot of mineral water then started sipping from his arrived coffee. "I was looking at my options, and I decided I should let them pour the dye in the water and let them watch it have no effect, just disperse and the water wouldn't change color no matter how much dye they poured."

"It totally worked."

"Oh yeah," said Filka, "you should have seen their faces!" He mimed shock, scratched his head and turned up an invisible valve lever.

"So how'd you do it?" she asked. She wasn't touching her salad anymore.

"Right, well Joni wanted to make sure that whatever I did was 'environmentally friendly', and I figured my best bet was to freeze some magic in a block of ice."

"Freeze it in the ice?"

"Yeah, rather than enchanting a block of ice, which is different. See, the ice already exists and you add some magic to it. Or you take some magic and you freeze it in the ice."

"Ok, I guess I get it," Sara said. "You make it sound like a physical substance."

"Um, no, it's - so my basic idea on magic is that it's the artificial altering or creating or getting rid of something natural, like an energy or object or feeling or characteristic. Except then there's the naturally occurring magic, like a dragon's fire, so the theory's not perfect. Maybe the word 'controlled' is better than 'artificial'. I don't know. A dragon isn't mixing jet fuel and oxygen and then igniting it in its mouth like a mechanical or physical thing, there's actually two organs called conflagens on either side of the top of its throat that make the fire from nothing, from just the nutrients and stuff they get from the dragon's blood, like any other organ. Like somehow your ovaries make eggs from whatever proteins and stuff they put together, it's a goddamn miracle."

"I know about conflagens," Sara said. "You could say that the conflagens make the fire artificially."

"Sure, but the conflagens are naturally occurring. So that's the naturally occurring magic. And by the way, conflagens are worth a lot of money; if you ever meet any dragon poachers, stay away from those guys - lunatics. Real mofos."

"Right, I'll keep that in mind," she said, taking to her salad again. That was when the kaiserschmarren arrived and Filka was momentarily and duly distracted from the topic.

It was so goddamn good - it was sliced strawberry and banana and caramel and whipped cream and powdered sugar on a pile of candied pancake bits and it was all so warm and fluffy and sticky and sweet, so damn sweet. Filka loved it, he was digging in with enthusiasm. Sara had to laugh. After a moment she asked, "So do fauns have any magic organs?"

"Oh, yeah, wanna see it?"

"Oh, geez, sorry I asked," she said, rolling her eyes. Filka laughed his sophomoric laughter while she shook her head lightly. He was really enjoying the conversation. Sara listened just well enough and asked just stupid enough questions that he could go on a roll. She hadn't asked some of the things he usually expected, like his age, where he's from, can he teach her magic, presumably because she already knew the answers (roughly fifteen-hundred years old, a forest in what is now called "France", and no). Instead she was suddenly interested in his diet.

"I heard you don't eat meat."

"Yeah, I'm an herbivore," he replied.

"That sounds weird, why don't you just say you're vegan? I'm vegan."

"It's weird when herbivores call themselves vegans," Filka responded flatly. Also, he wasn't vegan.

Sara paused for a moment. "Well, veganism is a choice, I don't eat meat because it's immoral. Not just to the animals who are horribly treated and killed, but the meat industry is the second biggest source of pollution in the world. There's just nothing right about it. 'Herbivore' is by nature, isn't it?"

"If someone came up to you and asked if you were having a good day and wanted to show you a fun game they just figured out and then you ate them, I would put that in the 'immoral' category."

"Because you can talk to animals."

"I can talk to humans, too, it's not that special," Filka replied.

"So how do you feel about animal rights, then?" she asked.

At this Filka almost spurted his coffee into his kaiserschmarren. "Animal rights? I don't even have rights, and I can talk to humans and have opposable thumbs. I've learned this over a long time, honey: the best right an animal can hope for by humans is not to be tortured. As in, painfully. Humans won't recognize anything else. It's not going to happen."

"Well, that’s where I want to get more active. I think it's possible to make a difference. Animals should be treated humanely and not be tortured emotionally either-"

Filka cut her off, "Do you have any pets?"

"Yeah, a cat." She was a little off-guard.

"What's your cat's name?"

"Pika," she said.

"Boy or girl?"

"Girl."

"Is she spayed?"

Sara frowned. "Yeah, it's the only humane thing to do. It's not even something to get emotional about, it's statistics."

"You ever ask Pika if she wanted to be a mother?" he asked.

Sara didn't like the question. She was talking to a nature god, not her roommate. "No," she said finally, "I don't-"

"When you are willing to grant that right to your cat, when you're willing to give her the right of possession instead of owning her, when you're willing to hire her and give her a paycheck for her services, then we can talk about animal rights."

There was tense silence after this. A lot of bad pictures were playing in front of Filka's eyes as he continued eating. Dear friends - dear, dear friends. Humans were the dominant species of Earth because of their complete willingness to conquer and exploit all other life forms. They even figured out using bacteria as a weapon. And humans are prodigious breeders. Filka was chewing something soft but he barely knew what it was. All he could see was a young faun held down by two men while a third sawed his horns off.

It was a few moments before Sara ventured, "Um... you were telling me about the St. Patrick's Day caper."

Filka smiled wryly, brightening again. "Oh yeah, so I froze some magic in a big block of ice."

"Do you have a spell for you know, conjuring a bunch of ice in thin air?"

"Well... I don't - I mean, it's easier just to freeze water. I know a guy who has a lab for that kind of stuff. Plus, well, magically created ice carries a trace of its origins, the magic that birthed it and maintains its existence, and very likely this would have interfered a bit with the other magic I wanted it to hold. Like sodium is a very reactive element, and so is chlorine, very strong stuff, but you mix them together you and get boring old table salt. So we just made some water cold - ice. But I said earlier, you can do magic with characteristics, abstract things like 'fulfillment' or 'justice'. So in this case what I wanted was 'reversal' and then I also had to contain the reversal or it would have just turned the ice back into water. And that is very complicated and what took most of the eighteen-hundred dollars. I'll spare you the details."

"Aw, come on, I'm not doing anything else this afternoon. I wanna hear it."

"No," said Filka, "I'd be talking for hours and you'd have a million questions and I don't want to explain it." Sara was pouting and blinking her eyelashes. "But," Filka continued, "the end result was this big block of ice, so it was translucent, but it had turned really gray at some point, and it was also glowing slightly, so it looked really freaky."

"Sounds freaky."

"Yeah, and when I showed it to Joni, the first thing out of her mouth was, 'Are you sure this thing is environmentally friendly?' and I said, 'Of course it is.' though really I had no idea."

"What? You didn't know what it was going to do?"

"No, I mean, not to the river. I did know for sure that it was going to get rid of all of the dye. We floated it in the river the night before - it was originally a squarish block of ice, but it lost some of its shape, the corners were rounding off, but not smoothly, the surface was getting all rough. It looked like we were lowering the glowing alien heart of some distant beast into the water." Filka made a long hiss as he mimicked with his hands the ice lowering slowly into the water. "And yeah, it worked perfectly."

"Did anything bad happen to the river?"

"Maybe," Filka said shrugging. "Not that I know of. But something great happened to the dye people."

"What?"

"Well, I did some tweaking on the 'reversal' concept, wiggled around with it to get some 'rejection' in there, and did some more work on that to get 'regurgitation' - so they were trying to figure out what was going wrong, the dye was pouring out but the water wasn't changing color, and then all of a sudden -" Filka aimed an invisible gun, or maybe it was a fire hose, "all the dye shot out of the river back at them! Covered them all over, it was awesome! I told Joni that bit was for free."

Sara was laughing. "You're terrible!"

"Yeah, I know. The official report was that the machine back-fired."

Filka looked down at his empty plate with its little swirl of leftover caramel. "Are you done overdosing on caffeine?" he asked Sara.

"This is only my second cup," she said.

"Great, let's go."

When they were paying as they left, Filka said, "Hey, wanna see something neat?" He pulled his wallet out of his satchel and opened it up to show her the inside. "Completely empty."

"I am totally not paying for your lunch."

"No, look," he reached into the wallet and pulled out a twenty dollar bill.

"Oh cool! Is it counterfeit?"

"No, no, the wallet is linked to a literal bag of cash that I have stashed in safe place. You know, since I don't have a bank account."

Filka floated with her for a few feet along the sidewalk outside. It was a spectacularly beautiful spring day, probably the best so far that year. "So now what?" Sara asked him.

"I want to meet Pika," he said.

A short while later Sara and Filka were in her apartment, where a five year-old cat with fur in several mottled shades of gray was perched on a short bookshelf. Like the average human, Pika was of mixed lineage. She was eyeing them intently as they walked in; this was a cat that was interested in everything that moved.

"Hi, my name's Filka," he said, flying over to eye level.

"Oh hi, I'm Pika. Thanks for coming, I like you."

"It's just Pika?"

"You could call me Millow if you want, that's how my mother called me. But Sara calls me Pika."

"How old were you when you met Sara?"

"Oh, about a month, yes, the days were quick and some I don't know about. But my mother was soft and loved me. Sara is soft and loves me, too. And Sophie’s hair is fun to play with."

"I just met Sara today, she's easy to like," Filka said.

"Yes, she's very nice, sometimes I go and pet her." Pika was craning her neck as far out towards Filka as she could go without jumping off the bookshelf, so Filka sat down beside her and she began immediately rubbing all over him.

"Is it just you and Sara here?" Filka asked. This was one of the loneliest damn cats he had ever met.

"And Sophie, the human with the night camouflage. And the plants, but they don't hide from me so it's no fun. You are so fuzzy."

"Hey, I have another question, this is more personal, I hope you don't mind, but Sara mentioned to me that you're spayed, and I was wondering how you felt about that."

Pika stopped immediately and looked Filka dead in the eyes. "Are you kidding? Unlimited contraceptives for life! It's the best thing ever!"

"Do you ever even meet any tomcats?" Filka asked.

"Um, no. Actually, I'm a virgin." Pika just sat on the shelf, swishing her tail.

"Well, I'm going to tell Sara to let you out once in a while," Filka said, pushing himself off the shelf and back into the air.

"Oh wow, could you? I want to see the world!"

Sara collected Pika in her arms and set her on the floor, where she began rubbing against Sara's ankles. "I think I heard my name in there a couple times," she said.

"That's very perceptive of you," Filka replied.

"So what's the verdict, am I a terrible slave owner?"

"Well, Pika likes you a lot, but she's very bored. And she wants to meet a tomcat."

Sara blinked. Filka continued, "Can you imagine being stuck in this apartment your whole life, and never meeting any guys?"

"Aw, I'm sorry Pika," Sara said, rubbing her behind her ears, "Are you lonely?" Pika mewed. "Maybe there's a cat dating service we can sign you up for." She lifted Pika and went over to her laptop perched on a small table by the window and sat down with Pika in her lap. Filka hovered over her shoulder. It should not surprise you that Sara actually found a website - whiskr.com.

Which was about when Sophie walked in. She was black, and about Sara's age (you know, twenty-something), with a lot of black curly hair coming out from her head in every direction - not messy, but voluminous. Huge grin on her face when she saw Filka.

"Oh my God, you are so cute! Look at those goat legs! Are you Filka? Must me, only faun in Chicago. We have to take selfie." And then she was right next to Filka and Sara, with the window behind them, and she managed to get all three of them in the photo with her phone held and arm's length. "What are you guys doing?" she asked as she posted the photo.

"We're signing Pika up with a dating service, trying to get her laid," said Sara.

"That's weird. Hey, did you tell him about the animal shelter?"

"Oh yes," Sara turned back to the laptop. "Don't worry Pika, we'll get back to this later." Sara navigated to a new website, one that was similar to Whiskr in that it showed rows of pictures of furry faces on it, but different in that these pictures had timers below each one. Filka did not like the looks of it.

"What is this?" he asked.

"This is the website of one of the local pet shelters. And those timers are how long until the animal gets euthanized if no one adopts them."

Some of the times displayed were in hours. At the top of the list was a twelve year-old calico with "thirty minutes" displayed under his picture. Filka felt a spring pop loose in his skull. "Aw, not this shit again. Listen, this is happening all over the world in ways way worse than this. I can't go gallivanting around saving every damn beast from getting executed just 'cause some bunch of humans can't think an inch past their hornless heads." Filka was flying around the room, not even looking at Sara or Sophie or Pika. He was looking at a farmer drowning a dog that had served him his whole life but was now too old to work, he was looking at a horse trainer shooting a beautiful mare with a broken leg at point blank range, he was looking at a bunch of kid's gawking at a tiger choking to death because one of them had thrown her a chicken wing, and he was looking at his brother's horns. Getting. Sawn. Off. His. Head. He took a swig of whiskey from a flask in his satchel.

"We have an idea," Sara said, not waiting for Filka to calm down. "I have a degree in Internet marketing, and Sophie is a straight-up lawyer."

"I did pass the Bar, it's true."

"We want to start an actual animal sanctuary, one that's both indoors and outdoors," Sara continued, "No cages, where people can come and play with the animals and donate."

"I have a friend who already has some property," Sophie said, "but we want to empty out the pet shelters."

Filka brought his attention back to them, "Well it's all a big stupid load of bureaucratic baloney and they're not going to give you the animals."

"If they were going to <i>give</i> us the animals we wouldn't be asking for your help," said Sara.

"Ha ha, you're hilarious. No."

"You mean 'no' you don't want to help, or 'no' you're a titanic asshole," said Sophie.

"Oh, that was a good one, I like your style," Filka said sincerely.

"Look, do you want to just complain and pull stupid pranks or do you want to actually do something for somebody?" Sara was eyeing him intently, still holding Pika in her lap. Filka hesitated. She had just used the word "somebody" to refer to a bunch of shelter pets. There was something special about her. For probably the millionth time, he asked himself "What would Rogi do?"

"Aw, fuck it, let's go save them."

It was not long thereafter that they arrived at the pet shelter. Filka had said he wanted to talk to them first. They walked in to find the walls lined with cages, stacked on sturdy shelves, each holding a cat or dog. The animals all peered at Filka and made a variety of noises. They were calling to him, wanting to tell him things, asking him questions. Filka stopped at a cage holding a big gray dog that had a few mastiffs and a boxer in its ancestry. "How long have you been here?" he asked him.

"Long? Oh, I don't know. I get fed every day," the dog said.

"He arrived about six months ago," said a brownish tabby cat across the aisle.

"Okay, thanks," Filka said, "And do you go outside ever?"

"Outside? Oh boy, I get to pee wherever I want!"

"He gets walked once a week, like all the dogs," the tabby said.

"But not you I guess," said Filka. "What's your name?"

"Sindess. My owner called me 'Petals' but she's dead now so I'm sticking to Sindess. And you're Filka, right? I've heard about you."

"My reputation precedes me. So what do you think of this lot?"

"Oh, a lot of good souls," Sindess said, "but some have had it pretty rough, some are not the sharpest thorns on the bush."

"Do you think you could run a business?" Filka asked her.

"Oh, like 'Caviar To Go'? Yeah, I could do that," she replied. "But I've always thought it would be fun to be a queen, start my own kingdom like the dragons have. What's it called, Kaladan or something?"

"Kaladastra," said Filka, but then he heard a human voice behind him.

"Can I help you?" asked a short woman who appeared from around a corner. She looked wary and harried.

"Yeah, I'd like to adopt all of them," Filka said.

"Excuse me, what's going on here?" asked another woman who suddenly appeared. She was matronly, a false blonde in a light blue cardigan.

"I want to adopt all of the animals you have here," Filka told her.

"I'm sorry but I don't believe that will be possible. I'm going to have to ask you to leave, you're disturbing the animals."

"Naw, they like me. They're just excited, that's all," Filka said.

"Sir, please leave, I don't want to say it again," the fat lady said while the other one fidgeted behind her.

"Sure, fine, adios," said Filka, flying out the door.

Shortly after they were back inside Sara's car, parked on the side of the road. "She called me 'sir'," said Filka.

"Well, that was pretty pointless," said Sophie.

"The first thing was to try the easiest route. Might as well make the first attempt the most direct one. I don't see why they couldn't have just given me all the animals since they are planning on <u>killing</u> all of them." He shouted the last part of that sentence out the window in the general direction of the pet shelter. "But really, I was actually just casing the joint," he concluded.

"Oh, nice," said Sara.

"And I have a plan. And for this, I will be transforming myself into a dog."

"Like, all the way, full magical dog form?" asked Sophie.

"You got it."

"Wait," said Sara, "can you change us into dogs, too?"

"I- yes. Yes I can. But - part of the spell requires that you eat a little meat."

"Oh no, really?" asked Sara.

"Yes, I have tried many different types of transformation and definitely the easiest and most effective and the only way I am going to change you involves the consumption of food. And in the case of a dog, it has to be meat. Like some nice raw beef would do."

"But I thought you said you were an herbivore," said Sara.

"By nature," said Filka, "eating meat is by choice."

"Can't it be a vegan dog treat?" she asked plaintively.

"Oh, no way! That would be horrible! I don't know exactly what that would do to you but it would not be pretty. No, trust me, if you wanna be a dog, you have to eat some meat."

Sophie looked at her friend. "Come on, one time? When are you ever going to get to do this again?"

"And you can change us back, right?" Sara was still making a pouty face.

"Oh yeah, changing back is a snap," Filka said.

"Fine, I'll do it," said Sara. They looked up a nearby grocery store and Filka instructed them to wait in the store parking lot after they made the purchase, there were a few things he had to get.

He flew off in the direction of his self-storage unit, and accessed the building's sixth floor via the fire escape, just because it was faster. The door wasn't supposed to open from the outside, but such doors were no match for some of the tricks in Filka's satchel. The door to his storage unit had seven different types of lock attached to the handle and each other in an obnoxious pattern that responded only to a specific emerald he had on him at all times. Even if you possessed the keys (which Filka had destroyed a long time ago), as you started unlocking the locks, you would find ones you had unlocked earlier locked again, and if you attacked them with bolt cutters or crowbars they would start splicing together in complicated knots, and if you pressed on trying to constrain the locks as you worked they would start biting you. Filka held the emerald out and the locks fell apart and arranged themselves in a neat pile on the floor. If anyone but Filka had possessed the emerald and tried to do that, instead of unlocking, the brand names on all of the locks would have changed to rude words.

Inside was, simply, storage. Filka tried not to commit any felonies here. Those happened at the main lab, where his friend Doug the centaur worked. Filka gathered up some pouches from various drawers, then opened up his refrigerator unit. It ran without electricity or other means of external power, the perpetual chill coming from a magical alloy carefully crafted into the shape of a snowflake, hanging from a metal thread in the center of the fridge. He pulled out two small vials and then closed the fridge again.

Flying over the city towards the meeting place, Filka was glad for the millionth time that he didn't have to drive, looking at the midday congestion. It was only a few minutes until he was swooping over the parking lot and climbing back into Sara's car.

"Alright, show me the beef!" Filka half expected them to pull out a box of frozen tofu burgers. But Sophie opened the grocery store plastic bag to reveal a large vacuum sealed sirloin steak.

"Perfect! That is plenty. Now the next part: we need some dog samples."

"Um..."

"Like saliva, or mucous. It's the last crucial ingredient. It's such a nice day, Montrose Dog Beach is sure to be packed - let's go!"

While they were driving, Filka had Sophie open the steak package and he set to work. He pulled out a few small pouches and began shaking aromatic powders and tiny dried leaves into his hands, which he then rubbed into the steak, breaking off bit-sized pieces and massaging them into little balls. Sara eyed him in the rearview mirror. "Is that the magic recipe, the spell or whatever?" she asked.

"No, these are just herbs and spices, for taste," said Filka, "I'm making steak tartare. The magic is at the end, just when we're ready."

The car ride was pretty long, with traffic and all, so Sara and Sophie explained to Filka the rest of their plan. Sophie had a new boyfriend named Gary who worked in real estate and was obviously really trying to impress her because he agreed to get them the land they needed for the sanctuary. They were going to start a non-profit and fundraise the rest of what they needed.

"Well, you have half of one steak so far, so you're doing pretty good for supplies," said Filka. They realized it was a big undertaking, and was going to be a lot of work. Filka was not the sort to remind them that they were not quite prepared for the big load of animals he was just about to land on them.

Montrose Dog Beach was definitely packed. It was a leashless beach, and canines of all varieties were running and splashing, digging and catching, smelling butts and licking questionable objects. "Ok, so pick one that you like, it doesn't matter really which one, just a dog you think you would like to be. You want to get as much saliva and mucous on your hands as you can, so chat the owner up, get the dog to lick you, squeeze its nose if you can, you get the idea."

"Ooh, I like that one," said Sara, eyeing a big white Samoyed with its fur cut short.

"Well go for it!" said Filka. He spotted a big powerful looking sandy-colored dog and flew over. The dog was mostly Great Dane, but his grandmother had been a full-blooded bull terrier.

"My name's Filka, what's yours?"

"I am Commander!" the dog exclaimed. "You are in my domain and subject to my rule!" He was practically yelling.

"Wow, sir, it is an honor to meet you. I have something tasty in my hand, you want to lick it?

"What trickery is this?" Commander demanded. "Your hand smells of delicious meat but it is clearly empty!"

"Oh yeah, my hand is covered in delicious meat juice. Go ahead, try it!"

"Ha, I laugh at your puny attempts to curry favor! Kneel before me, goat man!"

But Filka was gone. Not wasting any time with that dog. He looked around the beach some more, and then he saw the one - a reddish brown poodle, sans any kind of ridiculous haircut, just lounging on a slight rise in the sand, it's luxuriously curly fur lit by the midday sun. He was one of the most beautiful dogs Filka had ever seen, and Filka was a fifteen-hundred year old nature god. Filka looked around, but didn't see any sign of an owner nearby. The poodle wasn't moving, just lying on the dune, parallel to the shoreline, head up, staring off into Lake Michigan. A frisbee flew overhead but the poodle didn't blink. Filka flew slowly up to him.

"Hey dude, what's up?" Filka asked.

"Not much," said the poodle.

"Wanna lick my hand?" Filka asked.

"Sure," and the poodle did so.

"I'm gonna rub my other hand on your nose," said Filka.

"Whatever," said the dog, and Filka did as he said.

Sophie was already back at the car when Filka arrived, and Sara showed up just a moment later.

"Are your hands all slimy and gross?" Filka asked. Both girls displayed their hands to him. "Perfect, so now we're going to rub all this into the tartare balls."

Soon they were driving back to the animal shelter. The air was electric, the girls were so excited and nervous. They believed Filka, he was going to magically turn them into dogs and they were going to set a bunch of shelter pets free. But there was another crucial point they needed to discuss.

"Now, there is the matter of your clothing," Filka said.

Sara glanced back at him and then to the road again. He continued, "The spell will turn your body into a dog, but not your clothes, of course. You don't want to be tangled up in all of that, and you might even tear it up, that Samoyed you picked was pretty big."

"Wait, so-" Sara started.

"You'll need to be naked, when we do the transformation," Filka concluded.

Sophie busted out laughing. "You are such a little pervert! Ha ha ha, you knew the whole time! And now you tell us!" She was genuinely laughing hysterically, like she was impressed with the ingeniousness of his plot.

"Well, I was going to suggest you do it in the trunk of the car, actually," Filka said, though he was grinning. "I'll go last, so I can open the trunk door for you. And I don't mind stripping nude in the middle of the sidewalk, particularly."

"Oh, brother," Sara said to herself. They had arrived. She parked the car discreetly a few blocks away. Filka reminded them of the whole plan again and they got out of the car. He pulled one of the vials out of his satchel and poured a couple of drops onto Sara's meatball.

"<u>This</u> is the magic right here," he said. "Think of it like a hot sauce, except it's not pepper extract. Now, when you eat this, really chew it. Chew it and chew it, don't swallow it until you've fully transformed, the magic is in the chewing. And it's important for you to really think about that dog you're turning into. Don't just picture the dog, think about the way it moved, its manner, think of the dog as a being. And most importantly, in the end, you're the one doing the magic. All this other stuff, it's just an aid, it's just a recipe, but for it to really work, <u>you</u> have to do it, you have to turn yourself into that dog, you understand?"

They both nodded. Sara popped the trunk and climbed in. They heard some thumping, it's hard undressing in the dark trunk of a sedan. At a certain point, Filka undid the latch of the trunk door and opened it a crack, and Sara exclaimed, "Hey!" from inside, but Filka closed it again. "Ha ha, just kidding!" he said. Sophie shook her head.

There were several minutes of silence, and then, as Sophie began to feel worried, from inside the trunk they heard a miraculous sound: the bark of a dog. Filka opened the trunk lid and sitting there, in a pile of hipster thrift store clothing, was a big white Samoyed.

"How do I look?" Sara asked. All Sophie heard was a loud bark.

"Spectacular! You even still have your nose ring. Now get out!" Filka told her. Sara climbed out of the trunk and Sophie piled her clothes into an empty bag that was in there.

"Ok, here goes nothing," Sophie said, as Filka applied a few drops from the vial to her meatball. Then she suddenly pointed a finger in Filka's face. "If you even think about popping that trunk and taking a peek, when I get out of there I am going rip your little face off with my dog teeth."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Filka said, gesturing urbanely with one hand into the interior of the trunk while holding it open with the other. She climbed in and Filka closed the lid. It was just then that he realized a middle-aged couple was watching them from the other side of the street.

"Oh, just stuffing a girl into my trunk is all, nothing to worry about," Filka said to them. "Don't bother calling the cops, they'll just say, 'Oh, she was hanging out with that faun guy, yeah, we don't care.'."

They kept walking, but one of them was on the phone. Filka didn't like it. "Uh, Sophie, you'll need to be a lot quicker than Sara was, it's possible we've been spotted." Filka heard what sounded like a muffled expletive from Sophie, then silence, and then just a moment later, barking. Lots of it. Filka opened the trunk, and there were all of the clothes Sophie had been wearing, with a living lump dancing around inside it. Apparently she hadn't bothered undressing. Filka sifted the articles apart, and there was Sophie - a cream-colored bug-eyed Chihuahua.

"Look at me, I am so cute!" she exclaimed, holding out her front legs one at a time to examine them, then looking back to check out her side and wag her little tail. Filka picked her up and set her down next to Sara, and they, of course, started jabbering away.

Filka cut them off. "Alright, seriously, cops may or may not show up any moment, so we gotta go find another place I can stash the antidote and change." They moved quickly down the sidewalk a few blocks, then down the other end of a side alley until they ran into the beginning of a row of bushes surrounding a small parking lot to what looked like some kind of sales office.

"Ok, this will have to do," said Filka. He took a swig from his flask - "For good luck," he said - and then swallowed a fistful of tiny emeralds. He then took off his red and orange and white flannel shirt and his grey cotton shorts and stuffed them in his satchel, which he put behind a bush that he spoke some very kind and sweet words to, and it agreed of course it would look after his things for him. He then blew a small pinch of powder across the satchel, and Sara said, "Whoa, where’d it go?"

"I just made it invisible to anyone but me. Pretty simple trick. Ok, here goes," he said, and stuffed the magic meatball in his mouth and chewed. Wasn't that just an awesome poodle? Seriously, the owner had good sense not to cut that hair all silly. And just like that, it took not more than seven seconds for Filka to become fully the dog.

"Wow, that was fast!" said Sophie.

"Oh yeah, I've had loads of practice. Ok, let's go!"

They agreed that they should take a different route to avoid passing by Sara's car again, though they did peek down the street to make sure it was still there, and there wasn't a swarm of police officers looking for human traffickers or rape victims.

"I just realized that I'm a boy dog," Sophie marveled. "What about you Sara - lift your leg, let me see!"

"Sophie, stop, what are you doing?" Sara nipped at the smaller dog that was suddenly sticking her/his/its head between her legs.

"Yep, you're a girl," Sophie declared. "What about you, Filka?"

"This poodle is definitely male," he told her.

"Ha, ha, I got a sex change." Sophie was enjoying the moment.

Sara on the other hand sand seemed nervous. "Ok, here we are," she said, with hints of trepidation. It was late afternoon and Filka was hoping some of the shelter staff would be leaving soon. It was quiet in this part of town, save for the animals sounds coming through the open door. Filka started barking loudly, inciting several dogs inside to join in, and then he head butted Sara in the side.

"Hey!" she cried, which Filka knew would sound to humans like more barking. He barked at her some more, and Sophie started jumping around and yapping.

"Yeah, let's make a ruckus!" Sophie said. "I'm gonna go run inside," and she took off.

Sara finally got into it. She put her front legs out, lowered her head and growled a good threatening growl. Filka snarled and barked some more, trying to circle around her, and then they were pawing at each other and snapping their jaws. There were voices coming from inside.

"Debra, come out here, what's going on?" It was the same matronly woman in the blue sweater from earlier. "Oh, I hate it when people thing they can just dump their animals here! Look at these dogs! Debra, get Jacob and Larry out here quick!"

There was much fussing involved in the process - especially over Sara's nose ring which was viewed as a cruel joke that would have to be dealt with later - but eventually Filka, Sophie and Sara were stuck in cages, and evening fell upon the pet shelter.

"Yeah, I'm actually a human, and we have a plan to set you free!" Sophie was explaining to an old white cat bigger than she was.

"You're a human! Well I'm Simba, hear me roar! Ha ha, you dogs have it pretty rough," and the cat went back to licking himself.

"I wanna be free," said the dog on Sophie's other side. He was a small brown dog, a mix of many breeds, and he was quite young, barely more than a puppy. "I was meant to be free. It's a good feeling. I can find my own food, I don't need anyone."

"Did you have a family, before you came here?" Sophie asked him.

"I have a lot of brothers and sisters, but I don't know where they are now. I'm all alone," the little dog said.

Filka didn't know why he was crying. He was supposed to be part rascal, part hardened asshole, but who was he kidding? A thought had occurred to him, that for a long time he had been thinking just "dog", just "sparrow", just "animal" - the plights of each were the plights of all, and all of it was way more than Filka wanted to deal with. But this puppy's plights were few and specific, and a small important act would make a lifetime's worth of change for him. A good family would adopt him maybe, and he would be loved, or he might get euthanized before his second birthday.

"Filka, what's wrong? Is something wrong?" It was Sarah, in a nearby cage, eyeing him intently.

"Dogs used to be free," said Filka, softly. "A long time ago. Before I was born, even. Men started using them to help them hunt - there's nothing wrong with that, if the trade is fair. But men started <u>punishing</u> the dogs when they ate their kill - they gave small rewards for leaving the kill alone and helping the human's find it but <u>punished</u> them for eating it. It got so bad that dogs stopped eating their kills altogether. I saw it happen, in some places where it wasn't so bad; I spoke out against it sometimes, but it always caught up with the species eventually. I once saw a dog kill a rabbit, out in the woods, and then just stare at it. Eventually he walked away. He would have sooner starved to death than eat that rabbit. The burden of millennia of oppressive punishment was more than he could think around. It was like watching the gears of a motor that just couldn't engage. Because a big damn iron wedge was shoved between them. Obey and be fed. Your life is ours. And if we have no use for you - <i>schlick</i>." He drew a furry paw across his throat.

"Maybe we can start it back again, going in the other direction," said Sarah. "Maybe it will take more than my lifetime, or maybe we can do it in one generation. Might as well make the first attempt the most direct one."

Filka straightened himself, head up. "Let's do this thing." He then proceeded to carefully regurgitate one single emerald from his belly to his mouth and spit it out on the floor. The latch of his cage could not resist undoing itself and the door swung open with a gentle push of his muzzle.

His claws clicked lightly on the plastic flooring and he pulled up another few emeralds from his belly, a trick he had learned from an Austrian circus performer a few hundred years ago. He spit these on the floor here and there, and cages clicked open, and furry paws and faces began peeking out from the doors.

"Everyone, we're getting out of here!" Sara yelled to all the animals. "Help your friends get out of the cages!" Bigger dogs reached up, on their hind legs, to help smaller animals on the higher shelves get down by climbing over them, and soon the aisles were a mass of running panting swishing furry bodies. There were questions and questions and Sara and Sophie tried their best to answer the, but Filka just made his round, barfing up emeralds here and there until every last cage in the facility was vacated.

Two men were there, an older one and a younger one, and they flicked on the lights and tried to get some handle on the situation, but they had no hope; the fur was flying, a loud and squirming living carpet of animals.

Then suddenly, the front door burst open, and every one of them rushed like a furry river out into the night.

"Hey, get back here!," the older man yelled fruitlessly, trying to wade to the door to get it closed again, but four of the largest dogs in the place were blocking the way, barking and snarling, pacing slowly towards him, and he grabbed his companion and pulled him further into the back, to find the tranquilizer.

Sophie and Sara were leading the pack, with Filka taking up the rear, ushering them only half a block away where it was waiting for them, just like Gary promised - a big yellow Penske truck, the back door open and gate down. There was scrambling, barking, meowing and cramming, a lot of cramming, but very quickly the truck was full and every animal was inside.

Gary stood by the back of the truck, amazed at the sight in front of him. He looked around for Sophie, wondering if this was it and where she was. He was a tall, young black man, dressed in clothes that looked ready to work in but still made him look like he had just stepped out of a GQ article. Filka ran up to him and started barking.

"That's all of them, close it up and get out of here, quick!" Gary stared at the poodle barking at him, with the strange feeling like the dog was telling him he needed to go, now.

"Are you gonna get in?" he found himself asking the poodle. The poodle quite obviously shook its head no, just as a big white dog and a Chihuahua showed up behind it. The Chihuahua started yapping excitedly and ran up to Gary's, but the big white dog pushed the Chihuahua away and ran off with it. Gary was dumfounded. He hated Chihuahuas but that one was the cutest dog he had ever seen. The poodle gave one final bark and then it ran off as well. Gary sighed and closed the truck up, got in the cab and drove off, just as he saw two men come running out of the pet shelter yelling something. The things we do for love.

"Oh my God, we did it, I can't believe it!" Sara the Samoyed was bouncing and yipping excitedly. The three of them were heading back to the alley were Filka had stashed his satchel. Filka was grinning, too, he couldn't help himself. He saw the friendly bush he had met earlier and they made a straight line for it. Filka stuck his muzzle in to pull the satchel out and froze.

"Oh, no," he said, pulling back to face the two dogs that were actually humans, humans who needed the antidote to go back to their lives. "I-" he couldn't go on.

"What's wrong?" Sara asked, "Don't tell me-" She looked in the bush. The satchel was gone.

"Ha, just kidding, it's right here," Filka said, the satchel suddenly hanging from his teeth. "Remember, I made it invisible to everyone but me."

"You are such a jerk!" Sara exclaimed, pushing him with her snout, but she was laughing, too.

Sophie was jumping around impatiently. "Gary needs us, let's go!"

Filka stuck his nose in the satchel and fished out the antidote with his teeth. It was a small glass bottle with a cork stopper, a dark blue liquid inside, like ink. He managed to carefully pull out the cork using his doggie body not meant for such feats and lapped up a small amount of the liquid. It was bitter but had its effect almost instantly. He lost the fur on his face and chest, shortened, broadened, had proper limbs and horns and head and was otherwise fully Filka again, body and soul. He got his clothes on and told the girls he would scope out Sara's car to make sure the coast was clear before they headed back there.

Flying up just above the buildings, Filka was able to get a clear view of where they had parked despite the darkness. He was relieved to see that the car was still there. There were no obvious signs of policy activity, but there was a lot of hubbub over at the pet shelter. It was best to be safe.

Once, long ago, Filka had had a crystal ball, but he had never had the patience, clarity of mind or the sobriety necessary to use it. Then, sometime in the 70's, a friend had showed him how to enchant a Magic 8 Ball so that it mostly gave the right answer. Filka had improved the design slightly, and had had his current one since 1994. It was one of the items he carried in his satchel at all times. He held it in his hands now, and shook it and asked, "Are the cops watching Sara's car?" He flipped the ball over, and a white message floated up to the glass in the midnight blue chamber.

"Concentrate and ask again."

Filka sighed, reversing the Magic 8 Ball. "Is there someone staking out the car and waiting for us to come back?" He flipped the ball over again.

"Reply hazy, try again."

"Oh, come on," he groaned. He shook the ball and asked, "Is there any bad consequence if I bring the girls back to the car now?" He flipped the Magic 8 Ball over once more.

"My sources say no."

"Thank you," said Filka, and he darted back to the alley.

"Sorry, your car got towed. Looks like I'll have to change you back right here."

"Oh, shut up," said Sophie, "Let's go!"

At the car, Filka unlocked the trunk and lifted Sophie in first. He put a lit flashlight in as well, so she could see as she got dressed. It was a Maglight, powered by batteries.

"Do I have to think really hard about what I look like when you give me the antidote?" Sophie asked.

"No, your body naturally wants to return to normal, there's an 'abhorrence' to the changed state, and the antidote is really just a catalyst on that phenomenon. So in this case your body will do all the work." And with that, Filka dropped a few drops onto Sophie's tongue and slammed down the trunk lid.

"You don't have to slam it so hard," Sara complained.

There was a knocking on the lid a few minutes later, and Filka opened it again, letting the fully human Sophie climb out. Sara clambered in and the process was repeated. When she emerged from the trunk, Sara stretched her limbs and ran her hands along her smooth skin. "Aw, that was fun. I liked being all fuzzy and warm."

"We gotta go," said Sophie, sitting in the front passenger seat. "Gary's waiting for us!"

They drove in the opposite direction of the pet shelter, getting on the freeway and heading west. Sophie alternated between navigating on her phone and texting until they reached a small road branching off into the trees, and down this road they went until they reached a tall wooden gate. Sophie got out and Filka helped her swing the gate open, and there up ahead was the big yellow truck.

"Surprise!" Gary said, waving one arm around at the surroundings as they pulled up. Filka took a good look around, getting up above the trees and taking it all in. There was a relatively small building, maybe 20,000 square feet, as well as a long wooden stables and a few dirt enclosures. The rest was green and wooded, with a wooden fence running the perimeter. Filka couldn't quite see how far out the fence went but he guessed the whole place was several acres. He whistled, impressed, as he flew back down to join the others.

Gary had one arm around Sophie. "It used to be an equestrian club, we were able to get a really good deal on it."

"It's amazing, baby, I can't believe it," and she gave him a long kiss.

"I'm telling you, Ned really likes me," Gary went on, "He really went to bat for me on this to get the property donated. At least, partially." He scratched his head, part of him still wondering how he had gotten talked into this.

"Alright, let's show these guys their new home!" Sara led them all to the back of the truck, where they opened the door and started piling the multitude of barking, mewing, shaken-but-not-stirred animals out onto the lawn. Some started to take off for the trees or down one path or another, but Filka called out, "Hold on! Gather 'round everyone!" in a loud, commanding voice. The animals all stopped and came to him, hovering above their heads, every dog and cat giving him now their full attention. Filka felt, knew fully what he was to do here. This was his job, why he was on this planet, what the world needed from him. It had been so long.

"First I want to welcome all of you to your new home. It is yours. It may surprise some of you to hear this, but you are free now. Nobody owns you, nobody owns this land but you. You have to take care of it, you have to take care of each other, but most importantly you have to establish a new way of living in this place that will last into the future, will last to your old age and for your children and your children's children. There are some kind and nice humans here, and they will help you, but you will have to teach them what you really need. In the end it will be you who decides what happens within these walls."

This was met with a multitude and tumult of responses. Some were smug, others dumfounded, some confused and others excited. Filka hushed them all again.

"There are millions of questions, I understand. We can sort these out in time. But the first and most important question I will answer here. It has come to my attention that you have royalty among you. Yes - thousands of years ago, there was a royal cat in Cleopatra's court, the queen of all cats. Through generation after generation, the bloodline continued, in hiding for their own protection, until such day as they could emerge again in their full glory. This is that day. Sindess, where are you?"

Sindess mewed and raised her paw, and the others around her murmured and backed away, giving her space in the crowd as Filka plucked the brown tabby up and placed her on top of a short fence along the path.

"By the power in me as guardian of this green earth, I recognize you as queen of this land, sovereign leader of this free people. At this point you should give your new kingdom a name."

"How about 'Catopia'?" replied Sindess.

"Um, there are a lot of dogs here, too," said Filka.

"Ok, Sindestra then," she said.

Filka turned to address all the animals again. "Citizens of Sindestra, I present to you, Queen Sindess!"

There was baying, mewing, barking from the crowd, sounding in assent of their new queen. Queen Sindess raised one paw, and all the others followed suit.

"Um, what just happened?" Sara asked Filka as he flew over. Queen Sindess was behind him, addressing her subjects.

"I crowned her queen," said Filka. "Which reminds me, I'll have to make her a crown. And they should set up as a constitutional monarchy with elected representatives and all that - Sophie, you're going to need to help them out with that one."

"Oh, great, I can turn into a dog again!" said Sophie. Gary had one eyebrow cocked, but he had decided a while ago to just roll with it.

"You can't just declare this land a new country, that's illegal," said Sara.

"That's true, they'll have to pay taxes on commerce and obey the law and stuff. Not like I do either of those things. Anyway..." Filka scratched the back of his head. "It's the spirit of the thing that counts."

Sindess approached them and Filka turned to greet her. He noticed that the rest of the animals were dispersing.

"I told them all to find somewhere comfortable for the night, and we'd reorganize when it's light out," Sindess explained. "You really set me up there - I have to tell you that I'm spayed. Almost all of us are spayed or neutered. I'll be queen but there'll be no heir."

"I have some ideas about that, it's not hopeless," said Filka. Even if it took a couple of years, he and Doug the centaur could cook something up. He was a woodland fertility god after all.

The next day was a busy one. They had talked about the importance of "shared rule" and the dogs elected a representative to co-chair the organization of Sindestra. She was a hardheaded fourteen year-old collie/greyhound mix named Erdy who had spent most of her life successfully fending for herself before she was picked up off the streets.

Sara brought Pika over as well, and it wasn't long before she could be seen everywhere with a black tomcat with white paws.

Then there was the matter of the crime committed - they had made no attempt to cover their tracks and it took only a couple of days before Gary was arrested when the Penske truck rental was traced back to him. Sophie and Sara were also arrested soon after, but there were a lot of activists who had been waiting for a chance to make a stand against pet shelter killings, and they successfully prevented a full police raid of Sindestra with their human wall.

All of this made headline news, which had been the plan all along. "If we play this right, we could get every pet shelter in the city to give us the animals they consider 'existentially challenged'," explained Sophie, out on bail and organizing their defense with some of her friends from law school.

Filka didn't like headlines, though it was unavoidable that he would wind up mentioned in every news story. He stayed away from Sindestra as much as he could, popping in only when Sophie and Sara insisted they needed his help to translate. He even turned Sophie back into a Chihuahua for a couple of days so she could converse directly with the Constitutional Committee, to help them draft their articles and codes. Sophie's specialty was corporate law for small businesses, "But I'm always up for a challenge!" she declared of her foray into constitutional law. Gary refrained entirely from complaining. Sophie was pretty sure he was the one.

And so it was that Filka was up north of Chicago on an early June evening, hanging out by the Des Plaines River, watching the sun setting over dense and swaying trees. His phone chirped from his pocket, and he let it wait a few minutes before pulling it out.

"You thirsty?" said the message from Sara "not Sarah", "don't-forget-to-pronounce-it-without-the-'h'" DeRailleur. Right below the text was a picture of Gold Star Bar on Division Street.

"8:30?" said the next text. Filka checked the time. He had about an hour. He bet he could get Sara to eat some more of the doggie steak on a dare after enough drinks.

"Sure thing" he texted back, and he was off.