Timber rubs his eyes and looks up at whose scaly and slimy hand is touching his shoulder. Standing over him in front of the blazing, bright sun was a weird looking fish with fimbriae blowing in the wind. The fish had scales like any other fish but it also had what looked to be blue and grey fur covering it. Clear mucus was dripping off of the fishdog's forelimb, and onto Timber's blue and grey coat, but Timber didn't care. He was more intrigued by the fish's captivating, yet soulless, eyes that were as black and sharp and shiny as obsidian found from opening volcanic rock. Timber slowly begins to reach out his paw towards the creature, saying under his shaking breath, "Maw?" The standing fishdog licks its face with its long tongue and wanders away on its hind legs and forelimbs. "MAW!" Timber cries out, but the fishdog continues to scurry towards the crystal waters. He trots quickly, launches himself through the air and tackles the fish dog . Wrapping himself around the creature, Timber tosses and turns on the ground, his fur all the way down to his undercoat becoming soiled and muddy. The muddy creature kept trying to crawl its way out of Timber's firm grasp, the water's edge not too far off from the tips of its furry digits, but he managed to dig his claws into its dorsal fin. "But Maw wait!" Timber whines and grunts, dragging the dorsal fin closer to him with his muddy paws, trying to win the hardest game of tug of war ever. The creature begs in writhing pain. Out of fear and frustration it jabs him in the snout with its hindlimb. "Law, that smarts!" Timber yelps and begins to dig his claws deeper into the creature's furry dorsal fin.
The creature begins punching him in the snout with its hindlimb with the consistent tempo of a paddleball. Timber combusts into a fiery rage and chomps down on its fin, making sure that his razor sharp teeth sink into its squishy and scaly flesh, yelling despite his mouth being full of raw, furry, fishy flesh, "I ain't gonna let ya up and leave me again, ya hear?" The creature screeches in pain. It tries to drag itself towards the ocean, the ocean's warmth and soggy silt practically hugging the tips of its furry digits , but he keeps pulling in the creature like it's his greatest catch and slowly backs away on his hind legs. "Okay I got some rubber parchments for the boat," Maria begins as she arrives down the slanted pathway. She holds the rubber parchments in her hand like she's holding ninja stars over her opened leather bag with its contents jiggling around until she sees that Timber caught a large fish. "Oh good boy!" She exclaims cheerily as the rubber parchments drop in her bag. She he rushes over to rub his back and examine his catch. "No wonder you were in such a hurry to get down here! This will most definitely last us a few weeks, perhaps a month if you don't sneak another serving a day," Maria teases, "although, we might need a bigger knife to shave that weirdly grown fur and cut off its head." Timber mutters under his razor sharp teeth sinking deeper into the dorsal fin, "What in tarnation?"
Maria asks confused, "Well I mean we obviously can't eat fish with fur on it and cutting off its head is usually what we do after we catch a fish and pretty much everything we catch? You know, so that way it's easier to cook in the furnace?"
He grips the dorsal fin tighter with his jaw as he feels his maw digging at the muddy ground, saying, "Ain't this one, no siree."
Maria interrogates him some more, "Why not this one? It's exactly the kind of fish you need."
Timber glares at her, growling, "My maw ain't no fish to be gobbled up."
She starts chuckling, "Your maw?" He grinds his teeth further into the dorsal fin, saying, "Right nice."
"This thing?" Maria asks while squatting down to the head of the clawing creature to where she is eye level with it and pointing.
"Right nice," Timber barks, mostly muffled by his mouth full of dorsal fin. He begins to slowly back away on his hind legs.
"Now Tim, don't be silly. I'm your maw."
"Why, yes she surely is," Timber growls, coughing a bit on the lime-green clotted blood, "She's got fur just like I do. And I reckon I'd know them eyes anywhere."
"I don't think she would have scales and fins."
"Well, might be that water done did somethin' to her."
"Okay," Maria slowly questions, "Then why did you chop down on her like she's your prey?"
"Ma maw ain't no quarry o' mine!"
"Well I mean you're dragging her like a corpse and squeezing what looks to be clotted slime out of her."
"Oh lawdy, maw's right as rain. This here's how we used t'play, ya know—" Timber finally sees the lime-green blood streaming down its dorsal fin. The creature is no longer clawing at the muddy ground. It is lying limp. His jaw lets go of its tight grip as he stumbles back. The thick and scaly fin impales the wet dirt. Tears begin crawling out of his eyelids. M-MAW?! Timber pushes Maria out of his way and scurries towards her leather bag, ripping it off her shoulders. "What do you think you're doing?" She groans while trying to recollect herself. "Tryin' to save maw, I am!" Timber sputters out, lime-green blood dripping down the sides of his snout. He rummages through the leather bag for the medicine. "Tim honey, it's just a fish. I'm your maw," Maria commiserates, reaching out her hand to rub Timber's furry upper back. He rolls back his shoulder, barking, "My maw is not just a fish." He rips out the glass bottle filled halfway with a shiny magenta liquid within the circular base and yanks the cork out with his sharp jaw. Timber lifts up the slimy dorsal fin with his muddy paw and lets the medicine drizzle on the open wound, grasping tightly to the glass neck. Droplets splash out. Some drip down the sides of the fin and seep into the already wet soil. A smile crawls out of Timber's snout. The wound is sealing up like a Ziploc bag. "Timber!" Maria cracks as she paces through the muddy ground and snatches the glass bottle out of his hands, "You'll waste it!" She raises her arm as high as it can go, so Timber's muddy paws couldn't reach it. "Ain't right!" Timber barks, "Y'all's lettin' her fade away!" Maria gently pushes Timber's body away with her more free hand, claiming, "That's not my intention, but we do need to keep this for us." Timber is softly shoved onto the ground. Maria stuffs the cork back into the glass bottle and swirls the magenta mixture from the bottle's neck, studying and suggesting, "And now I'll have to make more when we get home." Timber slips on the squishy and muddy ground. He exhales as his paws push down on the ground and his knee elevated at a ninety-degree angle. He shakes off as much mud as he can and growls, "Fer that there wound, my maw needed every last drop, y'know." She glares at Timber, instructing, "You don't speak to your maw like that," and she lets the bottle slip out of her fingers, so that it can go into the leather bag, "and Timber, honey, I'm sorry, but it's clearly just a weirdly mutated fish, not your maw. I'm your maw."
"My maw ain't no peculiar, mutant fish, I reckon!" Timber barks while spattering out some mud he found on his tongue. He crawls over to see if the creature still moves. He cradles its body and lifts the creature's head off the ground, whispering, "Maw?" Timber tries rubbing its face with childlike tenderness. The creature blankly stares at him, its long, slimy, pink tongue licking the moisture off its face. Timber squeezes the creature in his arms. "I reckoned y'all would be a-comin' back," he huffs. The creature throws its head back and lets its tongue hang from outside its wide mouth. Maria notices the creature's lack of reciprocation to Timber's affection and fidgets with the strap of the leather bag, suggesting, "Sweetie, I don't think your maw wouldn't hug you back after not seeing you for a while. I know because I wanna hug you after not seeing you for five minutes!" Timber wraps his furry arms deeper into the creature. He turns his head over to stare down at Maria and barks, "She's just plum worn out from swimmin' back to me!" Maria walks over to the dry dirt path and places her leather bag down. She squishes over to Timber. She could hear him sniffling and saw tears streaming down his face as she squats down to his level. Her hand reaches over and pauses at his furry back, her fingertips curling in. She places her hand on Timber's furry shoulder instead. Maria leans over to Timber's ear to whisper, "You'll have to eat it eventually, honey, I'm sorry. You know how your stomach is. Besides, it's just not your maw." Timber growls and cracks, "My maw ain't no victuals!" He scoops up the creature in his arms, and trots away through the oak forest path, his hind paws snapping isolated twigs and barely leaving footprints in the dry and ashy soil. He looked down at the creature whose eyes were blankly staring at him and its head was hung back over his forearms so that it almost appeared dead. The creature felt squishy yet firm within his paws. Drool started dripping down from his snout. Timber shakes his head and keeps trotting forward.
Timber feels the prickly grass between his toes and could already smell the sweet, burnt scent of the wooden hut. He moves faster on his hind legs, listening to the wonderful sounds of his paws pitter pattering against the wooden steps, and bursts into the hut with his hind paw, hearing the hinges that hold the door up snap, iron screws clanking against the wooden floors. "Welcome home, maw!" Timber paints. He looks down at the ice pack curled up in his arms, its long tongue hanging out on the side of its face and its eyes still wide open. He lays the creature to the middle of the house where the sun typically peaks in their wooden ceiling and the fire is still crackling. "Here's a bit o' warmth fer ya," Timber yips. He looks closely into the creature's obsidian eyes, hoping to get some kind of green light that the sun was warm enough for his maw's dry and icy skin. Instead, the creature just licks around its chapped and pale and scaly face to get some moisture into its pores. Its entire body is twisting as if someone had finished wringing out the last bit of water out of it. Its obsidian eyes were looking up to the wooden sky, darting around to observe each passing cloud. Timber smiles back at the creature, searching for the creature's eye contact. He whines, but its obsidian eyes keep darting away. He decides to trot around the empty space nearby, and snuggle up next to it. Timber digs his snout into its chest to feel its warmth, whispering, "Maw, do you recollect that old lullaby y'all used to croon to me?" All Timber gets in response is the feeling of the creature's lungs moving up and down and the sweet rhythmic thumping of its heart against his pointy ear. "Don'tcha fret none, sugar. I reckon y'been plum worn out tryin' to paddle back to me fer them many years. I'll just hum to myself, y'know," Timber chuckles and begins to sing, "Hush a by...an'don't you cry…..An'go to sleep little baby…..When you wake…..you shall have some cake....An'ride a pretty little….." He yawns, a cute little squeal escaping his jaw…..horsey…..and his eyes finally close.
Damn! Maria thinks to herself. Perhaps I should have kept that whole eating-the fish thing to myself. He always scurries so fast. She continues as she squints a bit. The summer heat has made so much blood rush to her feet that they are swelling up like a kitchen sponge in her leather boots. Maybe it was better to wear no boots at all….Maria squishes all the way through the dry, short grass and up the wooden step….but then again….She fumbles a bit on the door knob thanks to her sweaty palms…..I don't like my feet being stabbed by twigs and grass. Maria opens the door. She calls, "Tim sweetie—?" She stops in her tracks. Her heart twisted like a pretzel at the sight of Timber snuggling the creature with so much warmth that heat visibly emitted from them. She began fidgeting, looking down at the floor. She paces into her and Timber's bedroom, holding back tears by squeezing her facial muscles together and gripping her hands into fists tightly. Timber's ears twitch over the sounds of the clamping footsteps as he snuggles closer to the creature.