Beauregard padded through the cracked streets of the nameless city, his many eyes scanning every shadow. He needed his owner. He needed a thread to follow. But the wind had scrubbed the world clean of her, and his tongue twisted around words that came out as riddles instead of pleas. He stopped at the weathered hall where she was last seen. Peeling paint. Broken windows. The doors hung crooked, whispering of better days. Inside, dust lay thick on every surface. "She walked here," he murmured, "but the walking has unwalked itself." Nothing held her smell. Nothing held her shape. Then he saw it, half-buried near an overturned skateboard with a faded purple paw. A crimson scarf, crumpled in the dirt. Beauregard lowered his strange head and breathed deep. Her. Faint, but her. His chest heaved with something close to a sob. He took the scarf gently in his teeth. The thread was found. Now he had to follow it, wherever it pulled him next.

Beauregard carried the scarf in his teeth and let the scent lead him. The trail pulled him past broken storefronts and weed-choked curbs. Her smell was thin, but it held. He walked for what felt like hours, his many eyes fixed on the ground, his strange limbs moving in the wrong rhythm for a dog. The trail sharpened at a set of stone steps. Beauregard lifted his head. He had expected a house. He had expected her door. Instead he faced a crumbling church, its bell tower half-fallen, ivy chewing through the walls. The doors hung open. Her scent went inside. He did not understand. She had never taken him here. He set one paw on the step, then another. His chest tightened around the small hope he had carried since the hall. Inside, candles burned in neat rows. Someone had swept the floor. A skeleton in a nun's habit stood at the front pew, straightening a hymnal with careful finger bones. She turned when she heard him. She did not flinch. Beauregard knew her. Sister Agnes had spoken kindly to him once, back when his tongue still worked like a tongue. "Oh, you've come in from the cold, that's fine, that's perfectly fine," she said. Her voice tumbled out fast. "The four o'clock candles are lit, and the pews are dusted, and we're expecting a lovely turnout this evening, very sensible of you to arrive early." Beauregard laid the scarf on the floor between them. "She walked here," he said. "The thread pulls to your door. Why does the thread pull to your door?" Sister Agnes looked at the scarf. Her jaw did not move for a moment. Then she bent and picked it up with both hands, gentle as if it might tear. "Oh," she said. "Oh, yes. She left this on the back pew. Weeks ago, or — well. Recently. She sat right there during the evening service. Very sensible, very sensible woman. She said she would come back for it. I've been keeping it safe for her, you see, that's what we do here, we keep things safe until people come back —" Her voice thinned. She smoothed the scarf against her sleeve. "She was here," Beauregard said. Not a question. "She was here," Sister Agnes agreed. Then, quickly: "She'll be back for the seven o'clock. I'll put fresh water in the basin. She always liked the basin." Beauregard's chest heaved. The scent ended in this room. There was no trail leaving. He had followed the thread to its last knot, and the knot was a woman who did not know she was dead, holding his owner's scarf and promising a service that would never fill its pews. His owner had come here. His owner had not come here for God. She had come here for something else. And whatever it was, she had not walked back out.