[ WP ] In the canine world , humans are celestial beings who live for more than 500 years at a time . The caretaker of you and the past seven generations of your family will die soon .

He's been here forever. He is n't as old as the mountains, but close, I suppose. His name is Friend. 
 
 My mother worried about him once, before she went into her hole in the ground. The history of my family is there next to her, laid out in a row. Over each generation of my line there is a rose bush planted by Friend. My mother, whom Friend called Molly, has yellow flowers that sprout with wild abandon from her grave. Yellow as her sunny disposition. 
 
 But before Molly went into her place under the roses she was worried about Friend. She ignored her own joints that seemed to rust into place when she laid on the old rug near Friend's chair, and stood sentinel. She noticed something, something she tried to alert me to many times, but I never knew what she deemed to be the issue. 
 
 After all, do we run outside to put a blanket over the big Squirrel Squirrel Chase tree when it rains? That tree has maybe been there since Friend had one of my ancestors. My blood had been with Friend as far back as any of us could remember. If i really get to think of it, I'm sure that Friend just appeared one day. Just like the sun, the squirrel tree, mountains. 
 
 I know that Friend's unsteady gait made Molly concerned, but mountains are reshaped by landslides, and they remain, so it ca n't be anything too awful, this impending change in Friend. 
 
 I think these things as I lie by his feet, unconcerned for what life can hold, since Friend has never failed even one in my line, as far back as we trace our history. I am confident in the very *permanence* of Friend until there is a shift in the air and Friend smells All Wrong. I whine at him, but he does n't care. I push him with my nose, increasingly frantic, but he does n't soothe me. I cry. He smells wrong. He is n't really Friend, he's almost Friend, but not. I panic. I run from room to room, I search for the real Friend, the one that smells right, the one who calms me. 
 
 But Friend does n't come. I go out my small door into the yard and mourn him. I sing from the bottom of my soul. I call to Friend, to Molly, to Rex before her. I cry as my reality crumbles. Mountains can blow away in one day. Trees and the obnoxious braggart squirrels in them are not guaranteed an eternity. The sun is not guaranteed to come see you every day. 
 
 I cry and still Friend does not listen.
