So rarely were Dael and Gale seen without their animal companions – hers a dust-brown mutt puppy; his a turquoise hummingbird – that their neighbors believed that their parents had given them the dog and bird as pets, and their parents believed that the children had somehow found the dog and tamed the bird through a magic unique to childhood innocence. They weren’t exactly right, but they came close enough, as the two animals would sometimes discuss.

When the children’s eyes were closed long enough that their minds were less bound by the limits of the obviously possible, the animals that they had conjured into existence by want of them alone could live fully and freely. The mutt puppy could fly, and the hummingbird could truly fly – swimming through the air as it moved without moving – and they did, passing through the bedroom windows of their beloved children to confer in the sky.

“Do you ever think,” said the mutt puppy – speaking without sound as so many animals still remember how to do – “that Dael and Gale will ever talk to us?”

“They talk to us all the time, silly,” replied the hummingbird – smiling without changing its face, as animals are likewise able to do – “and if you weren’t being so silly all the time, you’d hear them.”

“No, no,” the mutt puppy growled as it snapped at a passing cloud. “I mean really talk so that we could talk back.”

“Oh, that,” the hummingbird sighed as it pointed its attention toward the moon. “We don’t have much time for them to try, I think.”

“They will be too old soon to believing it can be true.”

“So they won’t be able to make it true.”

“I like Dael the way she is, no matter how she is,” declared the mutt puppy. “Isn’t that good enough?”

“Yes,” affirmed the hummingbird. “Of course it is.”

And they flew without flying back to the bedsides of their chosen children who had chosen them, and they nestled in close to their necks to share in their heartbeats – the feeling of which they cherished while they were together and the memory of which they would cherish when they were apart.

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Year 9, Day 176

September 23, 2022

AI-Generated Writing Prompt: The main characters were both able to summon animals as pets. One was a hummingbird, which fluttered around his head, while the other was a puppy. What if they took it one step further and managed to actually talk to the pets?