Dear Diary,
I’m addressing you in this manner because apparently, they act like books are people here. Dogs, too, if you can call them that. One of them is the size of my foot—the size of my dog’s foot, even—and is wearing a sweater as if his companion thinks he is a tiny man. This dog does not show the intelligence I would expect. Rather, he seems empty of all but shortness of breath, likely due to his lack of a protruding nose. What life is this? What misery? And yet his companion smiles at him like he is a perfect life form, like his joints don’t crave death. I commend her for her love. I detest her for her ignorance. I know I shouldn’t. There is no doubt in my mind that it took hundreds, maybe even thousands, of years for such a sickly thing to be made. I should detest the long-dead earthlings who looked at wolves and thought, “Let us suppress this creature. Let him fit in the palm of my hand. Let me crush his capacity of life, of breathing in the sweet air.” But the air is no longer sweet. They changed that, too. It is now full of the gasses we stopped emitting thousands of years ago, when the plants and the other animals unanimously told us to. Most of them don’t listen to each other here.
At least some of the other dogs are still tall and strong. I’m sitting in a park that seems to have been made for them, a square field enclosed by a tall fence. The dogs’ companions keep looking at me with narrow eyes. I’m guessing it’s because none of the dogs are mine. I know it’s not the tattoos; a woman in town had taken one look at me before smiling the way you would at a loved one. You, Diary, I am sure have never smiled at a loved one, but I hope as a tree you felt the interconnected love of the forest. This hope is empty, though, because I am also sure that you were planted to be felled, and that the trees surrounding you from birth were also planted to be felled. Looking at the earthlings who look at me, I wonder if they know that they were born to live a half-life, not in terms of length but of quality. I wonder if the old woman sitting next to me, calling out to her snub-nosed abomination, knows that she brought her children into a world on the path to destruction, a world full of people who don’t respect their home or themselves enough to not drive off a cliff. I wonder if any of them know that the air isn’t right.
For this planet, it is much too hot for this high in the mountains at this time of year. In fact, it is the hottest day on record. There’s been a lot of those lately. Warning signs. We see them. It’s why we’re here, after all. They see them too, but instead of joining hands and doing something about it, they put on shorts and go to the dog park. Their skin sweats and burns in the middle of January as they decide what they want to be upset about: the presence of a friendly non-earthling who misses his dog. Every day I am here, I question whether they deserve to be saved by us. But then I see a baby or child, and I think to myself that we can’t let them kill each other. Human intervention must be intervened.
I must leave now, Diary. The sun is setting, and I must not let them see what happens to my skin in the dark. As the earthlings say, until next time.
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