Vaikaya

Head bowed in supplication, he watches with wide eyes. There’s a tense readiness to his slender limbs, taut like bowstrings until a soft word, a silent gesture, gives him the direction he craves. Eagerly he springs into action, that poised energy releasing to fetch, to follow, to reassure, to perform. No one can better sense what’s needed, responding to the cool petrichor of sadness, the spiced heat of anger, the sour tang of loneliness. He is rewarded in crooning praises, gentle touches, fingers tangled in soft strands of his hair as he drifts into slumber, surrounded by honey-sweet happiness.

What would he do without a reassuring hand to guide him? He doesn’t know. He prays he never needs to.