“Returning” by Toledo the Horse

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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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“Returning” by friend-of-the-fireplace Toledo the Horse,

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whose furry literary exploits mostly follow an Argentine toucan

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working through anxiety,

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alienation, and acceptance.

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Oh, and also basketball sometimes.

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You can find more of his stories on FurAffinity.

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“Returning”

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by Toledo the Horse

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The city of Eldorado resembled from above the skeleton of a giant anaconda.

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Seba had thought so ever since,

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heady on the stories of Horacio Quiroga,

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he first saw a map of the place.

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The anaconda, he had explained to a friend once

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while they both bent over a map,

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had its head dipped in the Paraná River,

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its tail vanishing 15 kilometers into the jungle,

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and its narrow midsection bisected by Ruta 12.

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The anaconda had been roadkill, he explained.

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Development had scoured away the canopy

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—its scaled skin—and revealed the brilliant,

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blood-colored soil

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that ran in the hilly streets during summer rains.

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All cities, Seba later learned,

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were built at intersections of some sort or another.

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But here, in this place,

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were his intersections:

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Europe and the Americas,

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his parents, himself

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and basketball. And he was here again for the first time in eight years.

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After an early bus ride from Posadas, he had stopped by the local athletic club

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to meet the sprightly young athletes there.

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Many of them had watched the Draft Combine Challenge the previous week

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in large part because he

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—probably the city’s most famous former resident

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—had been on the television.

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In his presence they were transfixed,

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and Seba did his best to reassure them that he had no mystical powers,

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that he was just like them,

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that they could do what he did

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if they wanted. And, he added,

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that whatever they decided to do,

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it was great; after all,

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he himself had prepared to go to medical school had basketball not worked out.

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After a couple pictures

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and a Club Eldorado jersey as a gift,

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he waved farewell, watching as their awestruck eyes followed him out the door.

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He had one more place to go.

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And were he frank with himself,

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he would have realized that this was, perhaps, the primary reason to stop by Eldorado,

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especially since he no longer had family there.

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It was no Itatí or Luján or —God have mercy—

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Mercedes, but it was a shadow of a pilgrimage.

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Coincidentally, though,

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Seba chuckled to himself,

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it was to a church. Leaving his cousin Danny at a café downtown,

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Seba boarded a bus that took him kilometers west, toward the river.

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One disadvantage of being an uncommon species with an undisguisable feature

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—toucan beaks were impossible to hide

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—was that despite pulling his purple Alado hoodie over his head,

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he could not escape the attention of the public.

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Over his college career he had grown accustomed to strangers recognizing him,

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but since declaring for the 2014 Furry Basketball Association Draft

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the number of strangers who knew who he was had exploded.

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Subconsciously he had suspected

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greater anonymity in Argentina,

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but the opposite turned out to be true.

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Had he reflected for more than a second,

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he would have recalled the general enthusiasm whenever a local son attained international attention.

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The basketball now wedged under his arm only made identification inevitable.

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Wanting a modicum of privacy,

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he simply turned away from the prying eyes

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and watched the scenery pass by.

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Gradually, the buildings of centro gave way to homes,

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which diminished in size and density until, Seba knew,

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they were approaching Avenida Bertoni.

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Rising from his seat,

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Seba pressed the button to signal a stop and descended from the back of the bus.

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He had been a tall child,

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but even so the neighborhood looked smaller than he remembered it.

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The kiosko on the corner had a new paint job and,

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he remembered with some bemusement,

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had provided his first nickname among the neighborhood children.

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Ah, the joys of a Polish surname:

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confused furs had rendered it Kiosko.

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An announcer had recently rendered it as “Couscous,”

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an instant hit among tongue-tied reporters.

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While he purchased a chocolate

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-and-dulce de leche alfajor [al-fa-HOR] from the kiosko’s attendant—a nostalgic splurge

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—he decided he preferred Couscous.

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In no rush, he walked down the street chewing on the thick confection.

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The houses and pavement

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bore the red-ochre-stained facades characteristic of anything exposed to the Misiones weather

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and left unscrubbed,

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the same tint that colored his feet every day of his youth.

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There was his childhood home,

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now obviously occupied by others

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and painted a different color;

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stopping in might have been welcomed,

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but he wasn’t quite in the mood for company.

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Besides, it was no longer a part of his world.

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His family lived elsewhere,

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and he cared about them more than the real estate.

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No, what he came for was ahead:

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behind a tall black metal fence

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(gate, as always, locked)

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and beside a long, low, peak-roofed rectangle of a brick building

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sat an expanse of cracked,

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rust-tinted concrete.

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On either end of the concrete stood a black pole,

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a beaten backboard,

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and a netless hoop.

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There had never been nets,

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but there had never really been a need.

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In the years before he enrolled at Club Eldorado,

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Seba had only ever played with a handful of other furs here.

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Most of his peers just went for fútbol in the empty lot down the street.

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After peering at the small court

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through the church fence’s bars,

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Seba tossed his ball over the top and,

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not waiting for it to bounce to a halt,

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reached up and pulled himself over the fence.

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Being two meters tall made that quite a bit easier.

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Landing in the grass on the other side,

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he was about to run over to retrieve the runaway ball when a new memory,

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one in a flood, rushed back:

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he had never played on this court with shoes on.

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In fact, much of his young life had been spent barefoot,

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his only shoes preserved clean for use at school.

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Sitting down, he bent forward and unlaced his shoes,

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leaving them and his socks by the wall of the church.

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The grass and the soil were hardened by summer sun

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and scratched against his feet, but it was deeply familiar.

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The trouble with sight,

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he later thought,

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was that there was too much of it in one’s memory;

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it was hard for a sight to stand out.

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But something like touch

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had the potential to recall moods and emotions.

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For now Seba did not feel like the FBA draft candidate,

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brain stuffed with plays and muscles tuned by years of drills,

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but the ten-year-old with an oversized, overworn basketball

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shooting hoops in the afternoon heat.

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And that was what he did now.

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At first cringing from the heat of the concrete,

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he took his place in front of the hoop,

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aimed, and tossed the ball upward.

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His expert follow-through directed the ball into the metal ring.

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A couple paces gave him the rebound.

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So he continued, unaware of the world,

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landing nearly every basket he attempted

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—a feat that he knew

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would have left little Seba jealous.

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Then behind him he heard the unmistakable sound

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of bouncing rubber and,

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turning, saw a ball pass by and come to a halt at the edge of the court.

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It had not come from the fence,

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but the brick wall that ringed three-quarters of the church’s property.

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Picking up his own ball and standing,

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he glanced to the top of the wall.

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Surely enough, as he watched he saw a little hooved hand

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reach up and over

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to grip the brickwork.

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A second longer revealed the large-eyed face of a young deer

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clambering over. Another second and those eyes widened,

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having noticed Seba.

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The fawn froze, obviously trying to decide whether it would be better to

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abandon their ball and run

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or to finish scaling the wall in full view of someone who,

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for all they knew,

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could get him in trouble.

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Seba tried to defuse the tension with a smile and a wave,

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asking, “So, that is your ball?”

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The face above the wall nodded silently,

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eyes still wide. “Bien,

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come and get it! Maybe I could show you a few things.”

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Weighing the situation a moment more,

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the deer strained to lift himself over the edge but achieved it,

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spinning and deftly dropping onto the lawn below.

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Seba walked over to the youngster’s ball and tossed it over.

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“Catch!” A brief fumble later, the fawn caught the ball.

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Seba asked his name and with the reply

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—Luz—found she was a little doe,

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not a buck. Her family had recently moved here from San Vicente, she said,

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and she found the basketball court here.

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She didn’t know who owned it.

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After reassuring her that he was not there to report her,

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Seba began demonstrating to her the fundamentals of the game

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—dribbling, shooting,

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ball control—and having her practice them.

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Her awkwardness reminds Seba

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of those first times he had come down here with a ball he had borrowed.

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He could not help but smile,

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and toucan smiles are large.

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But throughout the impromptu teaching session,

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Luz continued to look at Seba strangely,

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but only when she thought he was distracted.

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It registered marginally in Seba’s mind

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that she was doing this, but he attributed it to interaction between strangers

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and his own proven social stiffness.

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When he knelt down beside her to guide her in making a shot, however, she let it out:

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“You are Couscous, no?”

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The question caught Seba off-guard.

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His private reverie on the court had washed away all sense of celebrity that had accumulated over the past months,

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and to be reminded of his fame—especially with such a recent nickname—was jarring.

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“Yes, I suppose they call me that,”

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he responded. The shock was legible in her face,

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but quickly turned into a smile.

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“Ah! We watched you on TV last week!

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What are you doing here?

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Shouldn’t you be playing in the FBA now?”

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Seba laughed and explained that he wasn’t in the FBA yet,

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and that he was from here…

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and that he had begun playing basketball on this very court.

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“So, don’t underestimate yourself.

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Just keep playing!”

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Little Luz nodded vigorously,

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hugging her ball with arms that barely reached around its circumference.

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With that, Seba noticed the place of the sun in the sky and realized

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he should be heading back.

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He and Danny had a bus to catch that evening for Puerto Iguazú.

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He bade farewell to the little fawn

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but watched for half a minute

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while she missed basket after basket.

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Positioning herself right under the basket, she shot upward.

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Seeing where it was going,

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Seba leapt forward and, with one winged arm and a single flap,

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grabbed the ball

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and plunge it into the hoop.

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“They call that an alley-oop!”

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he told her with a smile,

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snatching the ball before it escaped and handing it

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back to her. On an impulse, he pulled out his own basketball.

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“Here. Have another one.

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You will wear out many in order to improve!”

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Luz seemed overjoyed and immediately set to shooting baskets again,

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this time with his ball.

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Seba said goodbye again and lifted himself over the fence.

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Halfway down the street

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he could still hear the telltale sound of ball on pavement,

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ball on backboard, and

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—once or twice—ball through hoopless rim.

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He boarded the bus

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and smiled all the way back to where he’d meet up with Danny again.

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There were a couple times when he heard his name spoken.

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Now, he waved in acknowledgement.

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When he got off the bus,

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Danny examined him quizzically.

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“Well, you look happy.” Seba sighed.

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“It was nice to get some time to myself, that’s all.

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Visit a couple places, shoot a couple hoops.”

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“Looks like whatever it was, it knocked your socks off.”

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Seba was confused until he followed Danny’s line of sight toward his own feet,

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where he saw blue scales and black talons.

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What was unusual about this struck Seba too late:

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he had forgotten his shoes back at the church’s court!

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He started for a moment,

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recalling how much those shoes had cost,

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but just as quickly realized that he and Danny had no time for him to return to Avenida Bertoni for a pair of shoes.

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They were lost, and they weren’t coming back.

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He sat down at the café table,

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worry written, ironically,

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across his rainbow-hued beak.

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Feelings of guilt began to well up within him.

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Replacing expensive things was always his nightmare.

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When you grow up with little,

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you don’t forget.

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But those pangs melted away in an instant

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when a thought dawned on him:

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why did he need shoes to play basketball?

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Plenty of fellow ballers played barefoot.

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Furthermore, as a child he never had worn them.

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To leave his basketball shoes on that court here in Eldorado

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would be a fitting tribute to his younger self.

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“Yeah,” he laughed at his cousin.

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“I suppose it did knock my socks off.

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For good. Now, let’s catch that bus.”

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This was “Returning”

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by Toledo the Horse,

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read for you by Khaki,

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your faithful fireside companion.

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Thank you for listening

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to The Voice of Dog