MERRY AND CORT

Cort laughed as Merry licked his face. He was lying in fresh straw in the Meridius barn and had been rolling around, playing with Alistair's pup. Immediately after the fire, Cort had gone to the mill and taken the young golden off her cable, bringing her back to the Meridius house as Joimus had asked him to do. He liked dogs. Well, it seemed he did, anyway, but what surprised him about taking Merry into his care was just how much he liked the pup. She was about half a year old now, frisky as all get out and slurped up all the attention he showered on her.

He started taking her everywhere with him, even when he rode horseback across the Meridius land. He knew she wasn't his, of course, would never be his, yet he couldn't seem to stop himself from getting whole-heartedly attached to her. There was something so fresh and clean-spirited about her, something that made him feel more a part of this place where he found himself, something that made him feel he belonged.

At night in the Meridius house, Merry slept up on his bed with him, her chin resting on his thigh. When he'd wake up in a sweat from some unremembered nightmare, she was right there and he held onto her while she wagged her tail and licked his chin. She seemed to sense he had a need for her and responded to that, quickly bonding to him and developing a sense of protectiveness toward him. Within two or three days an observer would have thought the two of them had always been together.

There was, however, the fact that she liked to eat his socks. First she'd shred them and then gobble down all the little pieces. She went through three pair in the first week.