Her breath exited her mouth in big puffs as if she were smoking a cigarette.

The
morning dew had made her clothes damp and she shivered from the chill in the air.
There was only one thing that could get her up and out this early in the morning.
He heard the crack echo in the late afternoon about a mile away. His heart started
racing and he bolted into a full sprint. "It wasn't a gunshot, it wasn't a
gunshot," he repeated under his breathlessness as he continued to sprint.
What if dogs were racist? Would they care about fur color….. “son, only play with
other tan dogs”? Or maybe it would depend on breed, “honey, only play with other
German Shepards, never poodles”. Better yet it could depend on occupation. “I’m a
sled dog while you’re only a running companion, leave me alone”. Maybe the
neighborhood they live in could be the way they choose which dogs to associate with
and which to shun? Size could be the determining factor, “see how tall that dog is,
they are probably dumb”. Luckily dogs don’t discriminate. Just watch at a dog park.
Big black and white dogs wag their tails and play with tiny tan dogs. A service dog
chases after the same ball as the off-duty police dog. So if dogs don’t
discriminate then why do we?
She had come to the conclusion that you could tell a lot about a person by their
ears. The way they stuck out and the size of the earlobes could give you wonderful
insights into the person. Of course, she couldn't scientifically prove any of this,
but that didn't matter to her. Before anything else, she would size up the ears of
the person she was talking to.
They told her that this was her once chance to show the world what she was made of.
She believed them at the time. It was the big stage and she knew the world would be
there to see. The only one who had disagreed with this sentiment was her brother.
He had told her that you don't show the world what you're made of when they are all
watching, you show that in your actions when nobody was looking. It was looking
more and more like her brother was correct.
They had no proof. He knew that they knew he had done it but they didn't have any
proof. It was a huge distinction and it was the difference between him keeping his
freedom or being locked away for decades. They continued to question him, probing
him for information that they could use against him or find the proof they needed
to put him away. He smiled and continued to block their every inquiry by feigning
his innocence for a crime they all knew he committed.
There was something in the tree. It was difficult to tell from the ground, but
Rachael could see movement. She squinted her eyes and peered in the direction of
the movement, trying to decipher exactly what she had spied. The more she peered,
however, the more she thought it might be a figment of her imagination. Nothing
seemed to move until the moment she began to take her eyes off the tree. Then in
the corner of her eye, she would see the movement again and begin the process of
staring again.
The song came from the bathroom belting over the sound of the shower's running
water. It was the same way each day began since he could remember. It listened
intently and concluded that the singing today was as terrible as it had ever been.
It probably seemed trivial to most people, but it mattered to Tracey. She wasn't
sure why it mattered so much to her, but she understood deep within her being that
it mattered to her. So for the 365th day in a row, Tracey sat down to eat pancakes
for breakfast.
Dragons don't exist they said. They are the stuff of legend and people's
imagination. Greg would have agreed with this assessment without a second thought
24 hours ago. But now that there was a dragon staring directly into his eyes, he
questioned everything that he had been told.