I first met him on the beach, not far from my house, when I went to fetch my father’s pipe from his fishing boat. There he was, staring into the distance, the waves rushing forth and licking his paws: a large, spotted dog.

Despite being almost the same size as the dog, my five-year-old self was not scared by him. Instead, reaching out to pat him, I whispered “Psst, psst, come here!”

The dog turned his head and measured me with his calm and pensive eyes, but he didn’t move. The water came up, quickly wrapped around his body, and as the waves withdrew, the dog was gone. Disappeared like a cube of ice melted into the water.

On the beach where the dog once was, there were four indented paw prints and an exquisite conch. The most exquisite conch I’d ever seen.

Once a month, he would appear at dusk in the same place where we first met. In this time, I got to know more about him. He never snarled nor made sounds: even his footsteps were inaudible. He was friendly to me, but always kept his distance. His eyes remained tender, though he was mysterious. Still, it took me only a year to get his permission to touch him; after all, he was a dog, and dogs were nice to humans.

We grew up together: I grew taller, he grew smaller, or rather, there was a shift in perspective that made him seem tiny. His once-gleaming white coat was dimmer, and the spots on his body increased in size and number. Nevertheless, our friendship endured. I developed a habit of ambling onto the beach after dinner, looking for a black-and-white figure under the setting sun.

As the son of a fisherman, I became a sailor on the merchant fleets, spending most of the year drifting on the waters. To my surprise, he came with me, and soon won the favor of all the crew members with his quiet and gentle company. They would greet him on their way to work, not minding his sudden appearance by the rail. Sometimes he would bring the water up to the deck in a huge wave, trapping inside fish of every type, and thus supplying us with meals. His presence also boosted our spirits. Sailing on the ocean was boring, an endless realm of blue. When the wind was weak, the boat became stationary. At those times, the dog brought the whole ship vigor and energy.

Despite sailing through treacherous waters riddled with shipwrecks and storms, we rarely encountered any danger. The sailors believed it was the dog: my friend was related to the unpredictable ocean. However, besides his powers, I also noticed that he was sick. His body shrank in size while his coat’s gloss of white was long gone, replaced by patches of dull grey. His eyes were often sorrowful.

The crew members ascribed his symptoms to the pollution of the sea. Now, when the dog raised the waves, we often saw plastic bags, fragments of bottles, or half-disintegrated paper in the translucent water. At first, it was only one or two insignificant pieces; very soon it became five, ten, twenty. More and more, trash was found in the waters that we travelled through, floating on the surface and tainting the sea. The ocean was sick.

One night, I dreamt that the dog saw the trash we collected. Immediately he dashed off the deck. I yelled his name and the whole crew leaned against the railing, but we could only see a line of white foam pointing towards the land. The ship returned to the port in ten minutes. We kept assuring ourselves, “It’s fine; he knows what he’s doing.”

Following his footprints, we found him on a field by the coast, far away from the port, dying. His feet were covered in blood, his fur stained with dirt. From those bloody footprints around him, we realized that he had run to many places. For what? No one asked, but they all knew from the wet plastic bag hanging on his teeth, swaying as he gulped for air out of exhaustion. One sailor checked the dog’s condition and slowly turned to us. He shook his head.

I woke up in a sweat.

Dreams were harbingers of future events, as I always believed, but I couldn’t imagine how the sea could “die.”

To clean the thoughts from my head, I left the bunk and walked up to the deck, where I found the dog lying near the railing. As I sat down next to him, I reached to pat his head, a privilege I had earned after all these years of acquaintance; however, tonight, his body looked vigilant and tensed at my movement, so I withdrew my hand.

“Well,” what should I call him? Ocean? Dog? It was then I realized I had never named him. Perhaps I always knew subconsciously that he wasn’t a normal dog.

“Do you hate us?”

He looked at me and tilted his head, questioning me with his eyes.

“I mean, humans, human society,” the ones who polluted the sea, killed the animals, and proceeded to make you ill.

He looked away to the horizon. A few minutes passed as he mused on my words. Then, under the bright moonlight, the sea started trembling, and a glimpse of white flashed from his mouth as he bared his teeth towards the distance.

I was certain that he was pointing toward land.

By Angela Yang