Kiba\'s Heart

Kiba was running for paradise. Now he was running for his life. He wasn’t quite sure what he had done, but he knew that he was bring fired upon from a long way away, and he knew that the only thing that he could do was to try and escape. Dodging through the forest, the only thought that was on his mind was “why?”
The townspeople could clearly hear the ak-ak of machine guns, the distinctive thwok-thwok-thwok of the helicopters and they knew exactly what was going on. The nobles were on a hunt. What it was that they were hunting for didn’t matter, only that they weren’t involved.
But of course, things weren’t that easy for Kiba. He was dealing with this threat out of necessity.
“Fly a little lower, I think that I can get him from here!” shouted a voice from the aircraft above.
Kiba heard the shot, and then saw only blackness.

Vague blurring lights. A scent that seemed somewhat familiar. Footsteps muffled by cloth. Kiba awoke feeling as though his head was stuffed with cotton balls. He felt as though he couldn’t even think straight. All of his recognition processes were rather dulled, and he immediately leapt to his feet snarling.
Or at least he tried to.
A rather large weight was pinning him down, keeping him from seeing the source of the footsteps. He snarled out a warning, loud enough to tell any who could understand that he still had enough power to bite, and would do so. The footsteps moved around behind him, and he tried to move to see what was their source. The weight was obstructing his view, and the vaguely familiar scent that was still irritatingly eluding his recognition. Kiba nearly leapt out of his fur as he felt a hand touch the back of his head, and he tried to snap at it, but couldn’t reach. The hand kept stroking his head, and a voice spoke to him, nonsense words, in a soothing tone of voice. He couldn’t help himself; the voice in addition to the hand was starting to reassure him, and his growls lowered to a slight rumble, almost a purr.
“There’s a good boy…” A feminine voice woke something inside Kiba. “Now if you’ll just hold on tight for a moment, I’ll get this tree off of you….” The hand left off of its petting and moved away. Kiba’s ears flattened.
“Almost, almost have it…” the feminine voice continued from off a ways. Kiba felt a sharp pain in his left hind leg, but remained still, trusting this human for some irrational reason.
A loud thud sounded in the otherwise quiet forest as the tree trunk rolled off of Kiba’s leg, and the humanale ale dropped her crowbar. She let out a gasp.
“Your leg… it’s broken! You’re not going anywhere on that thing… Let me help you, I can make it feel better. Though I don’t know why I’m talking to you like you’d understand, you’re just a dog.” She broke off as Kiba gave a little “wuff” and licked at her hand, putting his head in her arms.
“Well, I guess you can understand. Odd…” She mused over this a bit, then with a mental ‘what the hell’ picked Kiba up, and continued talking to him, as though she were just thinking out loud.
“Hmm, let’s see. I can take care of you, I’m a veterinarian. Now the problem comes with where to hide you. It’s obvious that you were the one that those idiots in the plane were after, Gaia knows why. Well, I guess I’ll just have to take you home. Nothing else for it!”
Kiba whimpered softly, as a puppy would. On an impulse, Kiba, leaned up and licked her cheek, startling her out of her reverie.
“Huh?” she said. “Can you understand what I’m thinking? What I’m saying? Are you not really a doggie?”
Kiba cocked his head at her, and let his tongue loll out into a wolfish smile.
The woman carried Kiba to the village and brought him inside her house.
“I guess I could tell people that I just got a guard dog, that might work for a while. At least until you’re healed.” Kiba whuffed in agreement. For the time be at at least.