Hey Mom and Dad,

Just wanted to let you know that MJ and I have been time-traveling through Pawsburgh! Saving the past and sniffing out history. But don’t worry, we’ve managed to avoid turning ourselves into ancient artifacts! Time to leap back to the 21st century though – I hear dinner’s on. 🐾

Catch you in the present,

Bubby/Cloud

Oh, there we were, MJ and I, setting out at the ungodly hour just after the humans tuned out for the night, the lights dimmed. Pawsburgh called to creatures like us – a refuge beyond the snore-riddled, dull human world. We slipped through the portal, nestled behind the living room’s drapery, a swirling vortex of fur and whim.

Now, the portal in our house (righteous rebellion against hardwood flooring, if I might say) belched us out right onto Kelpie Keys – a whimsical dock where sea farers of my kind exchange yarns of the deep. But I digress. This particular evening, the wind whispered of time-worn yarns; and I, being the shepherd of serendipity, had a zest to tangle in the skein of time.

“Cloud,” warned MJ, her black coat glistening under Pawsburgh’s lanterns, her eyes thinned with concern. “This isn’t your regular bone to chew on.”

Darn right, but adventure never sits well with the cautious dog, does it? In a dashing move, one I reckoned resembled the good Doctor, we took a dive. Not into the water—nah, but through another chasm that emerged like a drowsy eye between the planks.

We landed, a tangle of limbs and surprise, smack on the soft sand of historical Pawsburgh – or so the sign declared – an era when buildings sprouted day by day, and our kind spoke of the future as a fetch-game to be played with gusto. But even in this sepia-toned backdrop, our playground stood: the Canine Café, some form of Whippet Wraps, and a rather rudimentary Pooch Playhouse.

“Bit rough around the edges, isn’t it?” I quipped to MJ, masking a bubbling nebula of exhilaration.

We trotted past the Tail Wagger’s Tailor, its threads hanging like a promise of bespoke garments, yet to gain the polish of our time. “Fancy a frock for the occasion, MJ?”

She offered only an eye-roll in reply; swamped no doubt in the pondering of cause and effect. As for me, my paws were whining to waltz on the beach of yore. And so, we went.

The beaches – oh the beaches! Majestic as the ones in our time, yet untouched. It was there where we played in ignorance of time. My frisbee cut through eons like a disk skimming on eternity’s surface. Time spins and twirls, and yet in those games, I was the axis tired old time spun around.

But what of the civic duty of a Pawsburghian historian? There was knowledge to glean, and perhaps a bone to dig up. I sought out the wise old Bloodhound of Akita Alley, bandying words of the past like they cost him nothing.

“Whiff of ancient history, my fellow?” I asked.

The sagely hound snorted, his droopy eyes buried in folds of wisdom. “The future tends to arrive unannounced, Cloud. Leaves a mess, strews past and present all over.”

He sniffed at us, a book of scents opening between our temporal gap. “Your stench is heavy with the yet-to-come.”

“Any counsel, dear seer, for a time-trotting tail-wagger such as I might be?”

“Only this,” he drawled. “The thread of time is a leash; it can lead or it can bind. See to it that yours lets you roam.”

As night unfurled her starry cloak, MJ and I sipped time-brewed coffee at Canine Café, considered our return. Our paws itching less for familiar vinyl flooring now, and more for the continuation of our epic. Pawsburgh waited, forever suspended in a yawn of time.

“C’mon MJ,” I declared, the moon casting us in silhouette. “Let’s chase tomorrow.”

We leaped back through the current, frisbee and sand as souvenirs – bringing stories back to our human world where the only tales are mundane, and recorded only in dreams and the secret wagging of our tails.

The End.