“Flying Rat” by Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen

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You’re listening to The Voice of Dog.

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I’m Khaki, your faithful fireside companion,

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and today’s story is

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“Flying Rat” by Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen,

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or just leinir,

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who can usually be found relaxing in the English Midlands, where they split their time between cooking usually delicious food,

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writing various bits of social realism and science fiction, or creating free and open source software

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in the KDE project.

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Sometimes all three happen at the same time,

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and they tell me that sci fi epic they’ve been working on the

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last most of a decade is getting closer to wrapping up.

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While waiting for that to land, if you would like more after this one,

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you can find more of their stories in the anthologies found

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on their GoodReads profile.

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“Flying Rat”

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by Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen

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"But Miss!" my client says in a tone somewhere between exasperation and desperation.

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Unsure which of the two it's closer to, I glance up from the paperwork I have been flicking through

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to find a pair of red, glistening eyes staring back at me.

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I clack my beak before taking a deep,

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slow breath. Here I am;

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a council housing officer who has just given her client an offer of a residence large enough for her and her family,

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and she is about to tell me why she thinks it is somehow reasonable for her to refuse it.

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I know it's not optimal, but it's what's available.

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"You know there's no way I can do that commute,"

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she continues after rubbing her snout with her forearm.

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"Five hours there and back, for a ten hour shift. Not even counting rush hour on that.

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I'd have to find someone to...

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to..." She tapers off.

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In the silence, I feel like I do every time this happens.

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Like a kind of silly joke,

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I'm a pigeon supposed to give her a message,

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and one that she really doesn't want to hear.

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I wait a few moments before adjusting the position of my wings

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and looking through the security glass at the rat on the other side of it.

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The next poor sod that I am going to have to tell

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there aren't enough resources available to do what they would like me to do.

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"Surely, Miss Johnson,"

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I say, making sure to use my most disarmingly sympathetic voice.

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That one the occupational speech therapist taught us during one of those courses the county council helpfully sends us on.

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"You must understand that

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even given the circumstances,

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there is just not a lot of accommodation available at the moment.

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The people from the tower block fire have filled up everything,

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there's already a waiting list.

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You've rejected the first two offers we gave you,

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and you know what the rules say.

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It's a really difficult position you're putting us in here.

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here." It is a rehearsed speech, and I feel barely any of the sympathy the voice is supposed to convey.

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Sure, it is sad that people have to suffer

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and not have space to live in, especially when the council is supposed to help find it.

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But it is true as well,

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whether or not they were a few hundred miles away,

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she has rejected two offers.

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What I do feel as I speak, though,

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is the heat of her steely glare,

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powerful enough that it makes my feet tense up around the perch.

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I know what is coming next.

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Rats are notoriously progenous.

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Just the fact that the term litter applies to what happens when they have kids says everything you need to know.

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There simply is not a great deal of housing available with eight bedrooms.

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She rubs an ear forward with one hand, and sniffs.

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Here it comes... "What happened to you?"

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she says with her head tilted slightly and her whiskers twitching.

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In a voice that sounds much more sad than angry,

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and with eyes that make it look like she feels sorry for me.

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"Pardon?" I say, trying to keep my neck feathers from poofing up too much,

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but knowing that no amount of training can remove that reaction.

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"I said," she replies to what I have no doubt she understands was a rhetorical question. "What happened

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to you flappy bastard?"

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The voice does not match the words,

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the slur as much out of place as out of time,

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and that stops me from pecking at the supervisor intercom to call up assistance for a verbal abuse situation.

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It stops me long enough

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to realise that the person on the other side of the glass is not just another client.

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Clara Johnson looks nothing like the kid I used to hang around with twenty five years ago.

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Back when that slur was the name I had allowed to be chosen for me.

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"I, uhm," I begin, and falter.

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I never used to have trouble finding words to say to Clear Claws.

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Words to say with her.

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Now they fail me.

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"How'd you end up with this sorry lot?"

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she continues, and spreads her weedy,

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brown-furred arms, indicating the row of cubicles on either side of us.

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I am the only pigeon on this side of the security glass that separates the officers from the very occasionally

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very angry clients.

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There is another one down the row, on the other side,

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white plumage against my own dark grey.

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This side has three crows, four cats, five dogs and a raven for a manager.

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But no pigeons except me,

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and no rats at all

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on this side. Four on the other.

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"I," I begin again, and falter once more.

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I look down at the papers spread before me,

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reach up with a talon and flick through one stack.

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There has to be an option here.

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Something. Anything.

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I look up again and am painfully aware that I have by now completely failed to stop the poofing.

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"I'm going to set you up with a closed interview.

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With me. We have to talk I think.

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think." She leans back in her chair and folds her arms before her.

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Her whiskers twitch again

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and I feel certain I can see the spark of her neurons firing behind her eyes.

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She nods. *** Excerpt from unreleased demo, 1994

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Beat loop from Essential Drum'n'Bass Beats Vol. 3 1:

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This is your total ruler Flappy Bastard with the most wicked whisker face Clear Claws

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We come spitting your words rite back in your face Just when you thought you was safe, we bring it rite back to base. 2: Yo, wipe your eye dry, I'm Clear Claws

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Here to get right up in your face

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Flappy Bastard gonna peck it out, peck it right outa there When we step to the mike, you best pre-pare

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We step right up to be your teachah,

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you best listen imma be your preachah No limitations. Deep iterations Accept no imitation. ***

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"You could spit for hours, Flappy, but I never guessed this'd be the kind of crap you'd end up letting out.

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Didn't we use to say you had to get to Auntie Beeb and get a show or sommat?"

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I look at the rat across the table from me.

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This time the pane of security glass between us is replaced by a plate of biscuits and a steaming thermos.

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She picks up her mug with

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a daintiness I do not recognise from our childhood

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and she takes a sip of her coffee.

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As I lean forward to take one myself,

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I try to remember last time I saw her.

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"A hug," she says before my beak reaches the bowl,

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and she puts down the mug.

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I look up to find her smirking at me,

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and the years seem to disappear from her.

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"I remember that look well enough.

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You're trying to remember last we saw each other, yeah?"

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"A hug," I say and have to restrain myself to stop a near instinctive brush of my wing over my beak.

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For one thing it is terribly unbecoming, but even more,

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a blush is just so obvious in pigeons.

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"A more than normally friendly hug."

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"I'm sorry, but apart from Harald,

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your wings're the safest place I've known.

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Best feeling I've ever had.

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had." She sighs and leans forward, crossing her arms before her on the table.

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"I've hoped we'd meet again,

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but I never thought--" She closes her eyes

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as she hangs her head,

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then reaches up and flattens her ears down with her handpaws. "Ah,

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it's all going wrong.

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I've run the whole idea of us meeting again in my head,

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over and over for the last two decades.

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I'd turned it into this whole little story, you know,

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we'd meet in down in Cesto, both grab for the same bag of Value Grains and, well, we'd just get right back to our symphony."

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"But," I say, failing entirely to stop myself from flapping just a little bit.

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A few downy feathers escape, and one lands between us, on top of a chocolate biscuit.

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"I'm," I begin again in the silence that spreads awkwardly after that desperately uncivilised display,

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and falter once more

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as Clara reaches out and picks up the feather.

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She brings it close to her muzzle

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and sniffs at it,

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slowly and tenderly.

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"I'd forgotten how good your scent is,"

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she says. Aside from how improper this might have seemed

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had it been anybody else across that table, I know full well what I should be saying now.

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We are supposed to be a council housing tenant in danger of eviction

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and the officer offering her the final option.

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I am supposed to tell her that there is nothing else we can do.

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That she and her family will become homeless

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if they reject another offer.

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"I have missed you too,"

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is what I say. Because of course it is.

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If I was going to say all those other things and just dump her out the door, we would not be in this room.

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"I know, I know," she says and gently puts down the feather on the table before her.

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"Don't worry, I'm sure you've got a family as well, and a nest full of twiglets in need of food and shelter same as me.

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You got a job to do, and I know that."

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"I just wish," she begins to say,

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staring at the feather,

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and pauses with the softest of sighs

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as she closes her eyes again for a moment.

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She opens them again and looks at me with a sadness as deep as,

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well, as the same sadness I felt on the night of that hug.

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"I just wish it wasn't you, you know?"

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What we had had back then wasn't love.

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Not the romantic sort, never that.

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Not even the lustful sort, however affectionate rats tend to be.

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It was the kind of companionship you had with someone who could not only finish your sentences,

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but pick up when you were starting to falter in a verse,

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finish your unfinished lines

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and then let you pick it up when you had it ready again.

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That night was the most terrible moment

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that my youthful, naive self had experienced.

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The moment I had to lie to my songmate,

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tell her that I was just going away for a little while when in reality I knew it was going to be years before I could return.

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There was no way I could have done that, so I didn't.

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My father had set me up with a new school in Australia, and told me to "tell that rodent friend of yours you won't be coming back.

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back." He had never liked rats, but that had been more than his usual grumpiness about it.

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He was not going to let his daughter strut about with that lot

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if he could help it.

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And, as it turned out, he could help it. "You can't throw

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it all away," Clara had said to me in the softest tone I had ever heard her use.

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It was at the end of a Saturday night, but even though I was due to fly out the next day, Dad had relented and agreed to let me go to Clara's one last time.

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I had thrown a few things in a pouch,

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strapped it on and flown there.

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I had just told her that I was going to run away, because screw my father and his racism and his notions of poshness. "He's doing it for every wrong reason you can come up with," she said. "I don't know if

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he's doing it for any of the good ones, but he's still giving you everything you need to set yourself up for eternity.

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He's sending you down under, to a really good school.

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It's more than I'll ever be able to do.

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The trip alone. I mean,

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I have to pay air fare, you just have to spend a bit longer getting there, right?

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And that school? I've seen the flyers.

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Most amazing after class music clubs ever.

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Get yourself in there, soak up all that clever juice, we'll be able to spit in Carneighvore Hall soon enough when you're back again.

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It'll just have to, you know, wait a little...

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little..." I had not been able to answer her then.

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I knew she was right,

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but it had not felt like logic.

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It had felt like betrayal,

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when betrayal was the furthest thing from the truth.

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The deep, dark sadness in her eyes had

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told me it was the sensible choice.

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But I had not wanted sensible.

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I had not answered her,

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and only been able to embrace her.

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I wrapped my wings around her and held her close just once before leaving.

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Not a word said. Not one.

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Between two people whose song had been everything.

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I was not able to answer her now either.

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It had been the fire of youth, but during the journey to Australia, the feeling of betrayal disguising the truth of what she had said had finally covered up the words, leaving

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only the feeling.

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I had acted on that feeling

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and thrown myself

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into the studies.

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Discarded the music that had been our shared life until then, because it reminded me of her and what we had had.

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What had happened to me was not her.

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Not my dad. What had happened to me was...

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Me. I had gone back to the roost that night,

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seething at both Clara and my father,

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and anger gave me all the lift I needed to get on my wings and leave for the other side of the world.

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It took me weeks to fly that far, but when I arrived,

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I had spent so much time in my own head, with Clara's words just spinning around and losing all meaning,

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her expression slowly dissolving into a vague memory, that I was ready to do what my father had hoped I would.

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Numbers filled my life for the next four years.

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Population statistics and analysis.

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I barely managed to make friends, and those I did make were nothing like what I had had back home.

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Nobody I could share my music and my words with.

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I forced it to not matter,

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and for four years I pushed it further and further away, and eventually, somewhere along the line,

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I must have succeeded.

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I had returned with my diploma, graduated with distinction after all my hard work at reducing my life from what it had been

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and distilling it into that piece of paper.

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I had been rewarded for it.

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Of course I had. Twenty years of sitting in these council offices, telling people to their faces that they were not going to get that help they so desperately needed,

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because the numbers

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said they were, somehow, not worthy of it.

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What a reward. Clara puts down her mug and leans forward.

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She reaches out and strokes my cheek,

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and her paw comes away wet.

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"You ok?" she says,

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whiskers twitching

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and never breaking eye contact.

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I close my eyes and take a deep,

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slow breath, trying to keep it from stuttering in my throat.

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It had stopped mattering, it really had.

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Near enough everything had.

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I had come back, and taken up my perch in the roost, the way pigeons are supposed to.

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I had gone and done my job, and year after year I had poured everything I had into it, because there had been nothing else for me.

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The music had gone away.

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And now, here she was, back again, strolling right back into my life, exactly the way she had done so long ago.

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The amazing, cool rat

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who could have picked any rodent she wanted to hang with,

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but strolled over

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and helped the pigeon cowering behind the bins in the corner of the school's cafeteria after she had been pecked bloody for daring to raise her voice against one of the ravens.

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"Yeah," I say, and deliberately lean forward to take a sip of my tea.

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"Yeah, I'm ok." As much as I was the one with the wings,

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she had taken me under hers back then.

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I had had the mouth, but she was the one with the family willing to let us work on the words.

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It had been one of her friends who found music for them.

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The rats never had a lot of, well, anything really,

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but one of them had got a hold of a pair of decks,

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some microphones,

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a big speaker and a cheap amp. Harald

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had spun the tunes, and we spat over the top of them.

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It made sense, wonderful, beautiful sense that the man who had given us the music for our words

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had become the father of her pups.

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I know but cannot bear to imagine what might happen

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if we fail to find somewhere for them to live.

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No housing would mean the pups would have no suitable habitation.

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No suitable housing,

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and the only legal course for the council would be to take the pups into care.

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Never mind that those statistics I studied

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say that children are very nearly always better off with stability.

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Something that the care system is pretty terrible at providing.

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Commonly they'd stay with three different families in two years, most often away from all of their friends, and they'll end up right back here, one at a time.

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Stuck in a system

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they've no way to understand

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and no way to use.

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A system designed by people like me, to force people like them to fail.

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Stuck in a maze without a guide.

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Except Clara does have one of those.

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Not that the council needs to know.

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"There's no way I can offer rehoming,"

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I say in the matter of fact voice

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the therapist had helped hide,

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and see her face fall.

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It is one of the worst things I've seen since,

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well, since that hug.

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I reach out with a wing and it's my turn to stroke her.

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A light brush of the edge of my sturdy flight feathers against her now droopy ears.

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"No, please don't. I'll do anything and everything I can.

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We'll have to work inside the rules,

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but I know how they're put together.

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We can sort you out.

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I'd put you up, but you guys can't live in the bottom of a roost." ***

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Excerpt from "Never Ever More (MusicCloud special EP

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mix)" by Clear Claws and Flappy Bastard feat. DJ Bluetooth,

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released 2018

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Clips from Carl Orff's Carmina Burana with added custom built drum loop 1:

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Yo, me and Clear Claws, come back to teach de truth. 2: Yo, me and Flappy Bee, we know for what to do. 1: Ya come rite up, rite up for to tell us where to go. 2: Ya come rite up, come tell us how to do. 1: Bastard me 2: Bastard you. 1: Claw ya ear. 2: Peck ya heart. 1: We come from way don loah. 2: We come from way pon high. 1+2: Yo,

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we never hide no moar. 1+2: No never. No moar. ***

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It was never going to be easy,

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I knew that before I started.

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Before I even suggested it.

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But with Clara, Harald and their pups in temporary accommodation, and their case conveniently lost in all the red tape I have been able to find to wrap it up in,

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at least they will not have to go anywhere for a few years.

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They're just one family,

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and the same way the council doesn't have the resources to rehome everybody that needs it,

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which it truly doesn't,

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the council also doesn't have the resources

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to dig their way through a case like that.

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Especially not when the person supposed to have been lumped with the clearly impossible case is just some silly pigeon.

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No, temporary housing like the shared domicile they're in isn't easy.

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It's a bunch of dormitories in something that used to be a warehouse,

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and they're sharing it with three other families.

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Rats are about as good as pigeons are

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with communal living, though, so it

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really is not that bad.

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The ravens and the others don't seem to understand this, so they just choose to believe that it cannot possibly be by choice,

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and then trust that I, at least, am trying.

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I really am trying, too.

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Between strapping on more strips of red tape, I keep my eyes peeled for new options for new homes for them.

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And, in the meantime, the rehoming timeout has passed.

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The deadline would have to be dug out by someone managing the case.

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I find myself reasonably certain

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that the officer in question is unlikely to do that kind of proactive searching.

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It is a massive lie, of course, and the whole thing is based

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on a pile of mottled grey feathers

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which really ought to know better than abuse her access for personal reasons like this.

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If any of my colleagues were to ever find out that those meetings I keep going to have nothing to do with rehousing,

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it will not be pretty.

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But at least... at least the music is back.

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This was “Flying Rat”

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by Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen,

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read for you by Khaki,

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your faithful fireside companion.

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You can find more stories on the web at thevoice.dog,

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or find the show

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wherever you get your podcasts.

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Thank you for listening

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to The Voice of Dog