Heal, Boy

Rusty was nothing to mess with, to say the very least. He'd been locked up a time or two as he drifted from town to town in his younger years, leaving in his wake a forgotten troupe of little Rustys.

Fierce as he could be--and usually was--the dry, rigid sponge in his heart immediately and permanently softened in the pool of an unfamiliar potion as he settled in to observe the tiny angel whom Patricia had brought into the newly-painted room and placed gently into the low-set, high-barred crib Rusty watched with transfixed wonder. The newborn girl would twitch slightly every few minutes, and Rusty's heart would reflexively spring into an alert pounding, wringing itself with gushing do-or-die palpations for the next few eternal-seeming moments until he realized she was alright.

Patricia was across the house and all he could think was "How could she be away for even a minute?" At the thought, he felt an even stronger connection to the girl, since he had accepted some time ago that he was the odd-man out in Patricia's heart, with not so much as a back scratch in weeks. But now he felt a new purpose and for the first time since God-only-knows-when, he felt his tail dancing behind him and his floppy tongue tingling for a kiss.

Originally posted at http://sixsentences.ning.com/profiles/blogs/heal-boy