Belsar finds the important thing

Belsar stopped and wagged his tail hopefully. The elf was coming from the direction in which the source of the odor presently seemed to lie. Perhaps he would know.

“What have you seen?” Belsar asked.

The elf scarcely glanced at him as he walked by, but Belsar got a good sniff as he passed.

The elf hardly bore a trace of the odor.

Belsar sighed mightily and walked on. He had walked and walked through the tunnels, farther in one day than he ordinarily walked in four plus four. He did not even know what he was walking towards, but he knew he wanted it.

Something about that odor made him feel a spring in his hind legs, as if he were again a young dog who liked to leap. Something about that odor reminded him of… something.

The old halls were connected in strange ways and crisscrossed with a stranger web of ventilation tunnels. The result was a dizzying muddling of the odors. How many times had he run towards a heady whiff of the scent, only to find himself before a blank wall?

He had dug until his claws ached, but there was nothing for it but walking, nose high, nose low, nose to the earth by turns.

And then–

His gray muzzle began to quiver, and his stub of a tail wagged so hard his hips swayed in time. He whined anxiously. Could his old body bear such an explosion of joy as was rising up in it?

But his old body could not hold it back.

“I found you!” he barked. “I found you! I found you! I’m so happy! I’m so happy!”

“What’s that?”

Belsar threw himself against the gate, rolling and squirming, whining and yipping, and his little tail beat the earth like a drum. He remembered it all now!

The boy dragged himself to the gate and pushed his hand through the bars.

Belsar recovered his self-​​control well enough to concentrate fully on licking the hand, though his tail continued wagging on its own.

It was not The Taste. It was not The Man. But it was close!

He remembered it all now – The Man, The Horse, The Shed, The House. He remembered the elf lady, too, and the two little pups of The Man that Belsar was only rarely permitted to sniff.

He remembered the stone trough in which The Man dropped his meat. He remembered all the pine trees, and how nice it was to lie on a bed of scented needles, where the fleas never liked to hide. And the sky! And the rain! And The Outside! He wanted to tell the boy all about it.

But there was something wrong. The boy smelled sick. He smelled sour, like a starving animal whose body is consuming itself from the inside for meat.

“I know where there’s meat!” Belsar said eagerly.

“That’s good,” the boy chuckled.

“Come with me!”

The boy shook the gate on its hinges, and Belsar cringed away at the terrible sound. But the boy did not seem to mean it as an aggression.

“I’m tired,” the boy sighed and stretched out on the ground again.

“Come with me!” Belsar insisted. “I know where there’s meat!”

“Hush,” he said sleepily.

It was true the boy’s mouth smelled of meat, but he must not have eaten much if his body was still so hungry. Belsar whined in distress and tried to dig beneath the gate.

“Stop,” the boy commanded firmly. It was the command of an alpha.

Belsar did not know what to do. His hind end wanted to run for the meat, and his front end wanted to lie down beside the boy, and his tail was pleading with the boy to decide for him, and he was getting nowhere.

Then the boy slipped his arm out beneath the gate. A whole, Man-​​scented forearm to himself was a temptation Belsar could not resist.

Painfully he folded his legs beneath his hips and flopped down onto his side. He pushed his body tightly against the gate and then abandoned his snout to the luxury of the boy’s palm.

He was a tired old dog, after all, and a loyal one. He would stay and starve with the boy, since he had never found The Man again. There were more important things than meat.