The Winds of the Pond
Photo of an oval pond with a windswept tree at each end. There is a golden retriever dog in the pond, on the left hand side. The pond is surrounded by grass, and the sky is blue with a lot of white and grey clouds.
This is one of the places dogs go to receive instructions. People say it’s cats who have ulterior motives, but it’s not, it’s dogs. Not that the dogs’ ulterior motives are bad, mind—I’d never be so slanderous as those who talk shit about cats—but you should know that they are here for more than head rubs, ball fetching, stick carrying, inappropriate chewing, and cuddles. This is a true and verifiable fact.
As you can see from this extremely rare photo, this Labrador Retriever is in the midst of communion with the Winds of the Pond. If you are a dog, the Winds exert a strong pull on your soul and cause you to enter the water in order for the being within to attach nodes to your paws through which it provides you with instructions.
The Winds of the Pond are actually aliens. I’m not sure exactly when they arrived here as they only speak with dogs, but I have a feeling it was quite some ago. Anyway, there are actually a lot of Winds up and down the island, and probably more overseas too. Each disguised themselves as a pond or a lake. You will know a Winds body of water from an ordinary one, as it will be the one your dog feels compelled to enter on each and every passing, no matter how much you forbid it. FYI, dirty puddles are actually baby Winds.
Anyway, once the Wind has affixed the nodes, it recruits the dog into its mission. Going by the fact that the Winds could actually have chosen any species to overlord it with, I am thinking that the reason they chose dogs is because their mission is one of peaceful fact-finding. Let’s be honest, an alien as sophisticated as being able to disguise itself as a pond probably didn’t need an assistance dog if it had a more nefarious mission. As such, I’m prepared to go out on a limb and say the dogs instructions are to retrieve certain types of information and return it to the Winds on their next passing.
Now I think about it, this would explain why dogs chew pretty much anything. For in doing so, they are generating a lot of useful information about taste, texture, smell, and the relative digestive powers of a mammal in respect of said object. If I were an alien overlord, I would want to know things like that because it would be useful for the time when I kidnap you and need to feed you to keep you alive.
This dog, who is called Soren, was actually here for a re-up as he was too busy playing and forgot his original mission. This is not an uncommon scenario, especially for Retrievers, but Soren told me that the Winds are quite forgiving about things like that as they don’t have a concept of time. It is possible that Soren was lying to me and the Winds are stricter than he claims, but I doubt it; dogs aren’t a particularly deceptive or masochistic sort.
I found Soren and this particular Wind of the Pond on the South Downs Way, near Ditchling Beacon. I quite enjoyed this walk, and since I have been growing my hairs recently and have quite large callouses on my hands from calisthenics, I’m thinking that I might pop back and have a handstand paddle myself. It may well be that the Winds mistake my tough hand-pads and shaggy mane to be of the canine variety; in which case, I might receive my own set of instructions. It’s worth considering, so it is likely that I shall enter a Winds in the near future. I promise to keep you apprised.