“Why do all the clouds look like Peter Pan?” Silky asks, “And none of them look like me?”

          We are atop High Hill again—Silky, Peter Pan, Harley, Bobo and me—looking upward into a sky afloat with white and bulbous clouds, which do in fact look a great deal like Peter Pan, in an assortment of his various sleeping shapes.

          My gaze had been intent on the smallest of these clouds, attempting to make it disperse. I held steady, noting some success around the edges, but could sense the four of them watching me, awaiting my reply.  

          ‘I don’t know’, is a phrase that does not exist in the vocabulary of dogs. For them it is better to fabricate an answer, than it is to go on without knowing. Not a lie, per say, but a true possibility.

           “Silky,” I say, aware of this thing, and look down the line of boy dogs to find her brown and anxious eyes.

          “Your clouds are night clouds.”

          Bobo and Harley look slightly puzzled, hearing me say this. Peter Pan’s ears perk. And Silky, her eyes positively dance.

   
           I go on.

         “They are rare and magnificent, black as your fur, and can only be seen at three forty-two, when the moon is blue and double full, and only the oldest of crickets is chirping.”

          I know they are coming—the questions—and stand after saying this, to brush the grass from the seat of my pants and rub the clouds from my eyes.

          So grows the history of dogs.