Clarissa complained all the way home.

Emily blocked out the noise. After one short lesson on "Quiet" for the dog, perhaps she ought to repeat it. For the mistress.

Back home, she tied the little critter out on the porch, then opened up and pointed her great-niece to the telephone. "Start calling while I fix the dog a kennel."

"A what? He sleeps with me!"

"Call!" Emily took a flashlight out the back door.

Night wrapped the world. No glint of cat's eyes blinked back at her. No light except her own beam and the gossamer streamers that fool dog had etched during the last few days' roaming.

Which reminded her to watch her footing on her way to the shed. There she dusted off two old wooden apple boxes for the mutt's kennel.

On her way back to the house, Emily paused. A brilliant line of phosphorescence flared across one corner of the yard, then faded out.

The hair stood up on her nape, to see the same phenomenon that had changed her life not many months before. She stood and watched, but it did not reoccur.

A chill crept up her legs and down her neck. Winter's first breath. Emily shivered, and carried the apple boxes indoors. She put them in the laundry room, a pile of rags in the bottom one, and the other overturned on top. She threw an old blanket into the clothes drier for a few minutes to heat it up.

Then upstairs. She groaned. Emily had taken her bed!

She stripped the linens and replaced them, then gathered up all foreign objects and carted them downstairs.

Clarissa eyed her from her spot at the telephone, twisting the cord around her fingers and mumbling responses.

Emily deposited her collection near the front door, then made up the couch with the used sheets.

Clarissa's eyes widened. She put a hand over the mouthpiece, ready to protest, but Emily stalked into the kitchen and began another ordeal of cleaning. "I pity poor Carl," she muttered as she scraped and scrubbed Clarissa's leavings.

Last of all she washed the wooden trinket from the carnival. Like a paper plate bent in half but small enough to fit in the mouth -- which is how it was meant to be used, Officer Edwards had said. A shepherd's whistle.

When she deemed it clean enough, she popped it in her mouth and blew.

Nothing happened.

"Oh well, not like I have a sheepdog anyway." Emily hung up apron and towels, brought the dog in and bedded it down with the warm blanket, closed the laundry room door against its whimpers, then stood over Clarissa until she finished her last phone call.

"I've had a rough day. I'm going to bed. Leave the dog where it is. Sleep well." Emily headed upstairs, but got barely half a dozen steps up before she heard a clink and then a dial tone.

A glance over her shoulder showed Clarissa still slouching in the comfy chair beside the hall table, now dialing a series of numbers. Ten numbers. Long distance.

Emily stomped back down, pinched the wire out of the phone jack, slid the receiver from Clarissa's startled fingers, and took her telephone upstairs and out of reach of long distance charges.

.

prompt: before