Inktober 2019 4: Freeze

Set in the Young Wizards universe by Diane Duane, inspired by the cat wizard books. At one point she mentions that dog wizards exist, but never, to my knowledge, do we get to meet any. If I'm wrong and canon completely contradicts these guys, then boy I'll be embarassed.

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Faro padded gingerly out onto the ice. It held her weight at first, but six body-lengths and it was starting to creak dangerously. “This is bad, Ilya,” she said. “It’s taking my weight for the moment, but I feel like it could crack any minute.” The ice was supposed to be solid and firm out a mile or more from shore.

“Be careful, Faro!” her partner, Ilya, shouted to her.

He was speaking his own language, which Faro referred to as Ruhhyi, and Faro was speaking her own – which Ilya’s kind called Kyonsky, or Kyonish when he was speaking with the Americans they worked with sometimes, but Faro just referred to it as what it was – Pack-speech. She often felt that she was one of the luckiest rawuu’uhff, Pack-people, on the planet; most Pack-people couldn’t make themselves understood to their huun packmates, and had to study and work incredibly hard just to make sense of a handful of commands in huun-speech. But Faro and Ilya were both wizards, both capable of the Speech – the language of magic, of the universe’s creation – and as such, could understand any other language spoken to them.

“I’m always careful!” Faro barked back. In her mind she assembled, and then whispered, a phrase to the ice, reminding it of when it had been solid and thick, easily able to hold a Pack-person’s weight. The ice, so reminded, obliged her by bearing her out as far as it existed. She jumped from floe to floe, digging thick claws into the ice when she landed to avoid skidding, until the ice layer that floated atop the seawater was so thin, it might as well be water and she’d have needed an entirely different spell to be able to walk on it.
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Inktober 2019 6: Husky

Notes: Yes, these are out of order. #4 and #6 were written at the same time because they feature the same characters.

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“Oh, she’s gorgeous!” the American scientist said to Ilya. Faro, who could understand huun speech and thus knew she was being complimented, wagged her tail fast enough that if she’d been more aerodynamic she could have propelled herself into flight with it. “What’s her name?”

“Faro,” Ilya said. “Thanks. She is beautiful.” He scratched her on the scruff, deep within her thick fur. “And you know it, don’t you girl?”

“I sure do,” Faro barked back. The American woman didn’t understand her, of course, because she was speaking Pack-speech, but Ilya understood her just fine.

“Faro? That’s an Egyptian name. Kind of a strange choice for a female husky, isn’t it?”

“It’s not Egyptian. It’s just her name. It means ‘duck’. She likes to go in water much more than average dog, let alone husky, so we call her ‘duck.’”

“What are you going to do if she asks you what language that’s in?” Faro asked, amused, knowing Ilya couldn’t answer her directly in front of a non-wizard human. He wasn’t going to be able to tell her it was Kyonsky, the Russian word for the language of dogs, after all.

“Shush, you,” Ilya said. “We get your treats soon enough.”

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