"Impossible things are happening every day!

It's Possible!"

(Cinderella, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II)

"Lola! Stop that!" Pete was scared. He thought his sister was trying to spook him but it seemed all strange. It was not her voice he heard before.

"Who's there?" Lola sounded angry and frightened at the same time. "Grandpa? Is that you?" She tried to see behind the sitting dog. There was no sign of a presence. Who was playing with them?

The two children stayed quiet for a moment, surveying their surroundings. No one was coming. No one hiding under the cover of the trees. Only the dog was with them.

Cookie sat, few steps away from the children. He looked at them, his bright eyes following each of their movement. A lopsided grin started to form on his face. It was a strange picture, a dog grinning.

"Cookie?" Lola looked at the dog, hesitating. "Are you the one talking?"

"What is so special about that?" Cookie asked.

They had their answer. The dog, by a miracle, was talking to them.

"But..." Pete had some issue believing what he was hearing. "It's not possible..." He looked at his sister for confirmation. "Is it?"

At ten years of age, the boy had acquired some certitude about life. He knew about what could be and what could not. The fairy tales were only stories. Monsters under the bed nothing but grown-ups trying to spook children. And a talking dog could only be seen on TV. It was not possible. Simply.

"What is so unbelievable?" Cookie questioned. "I am talking all the time. To you. To the old man..."

"No," Lola countered him. "You don't speak. You bark!"

"What difference is there?" The dog added with a puzzled expression. "I bark. I talk. It's all the same. I am not the one not talking. You are the ones not listening."

"But," Pete tried to make sense of what was said, "we don't understand your barking. And now, you are using words. You are talking like a person..."

The boy knew something was not normal, but he had some difficulties to explain. "You are NOT a person. How can you be talking?"

Cookie just stared at the boy for a moment. He moved his head a time or two, as if he was agreeing with something only he could hear.

"I understand it is a bit difficult for you to believe," the dog conceded. "But," he added, "you have to accept it is a possibility, now that we are having this discussion."

The children said nothing but nodded. They had to admit the dog was talking. What to make of this, this was the problem they had now to solve. Adults did not believe in impossibilities. Adults never would acknowledge they did not know about something as crazy as a talking dog. They just discarded everything they did not understand. Some things for them were simply not possible.

Cookie was the proof that things were not always as simple as they appeared to be.

~~

"Do other animals talk like you?" Pete asked the dog.

They were on their way back home. It would be soon time for teatime, and Grandma would be looking all over the garden for them. They did not tell her they were going into the woods to walk Cookie before they left.

"If you listen well, you will hear the other talking. But don't bother with the birds, they just like the sound of their voice too much. They never stop once they start talking about their life and whatever happens to them." The dog was warming to his subject.

The children were listening to him explain things he knew about other animals.

Cookie had a lot of things to say about Grandpa and Grandma. He liked the woods behind the house but he complained that Grandpa did not walk him as much as he would like to.

"There are so many things here," he added, "a lot of friends of mine live in these trees. But the old man does not bother much to take me out of the garden. Sometimes, I can see some of my friends on the other side of the fence, but it's not the same as playing with them in the woods." The dog paused and looked in the distance. "Perhaps the old man is really getting old..."

"Why do you call Grandpa "old man"?" Pete asked. The boy would never dare calling his grandfather like that.

"Why? He is old! Older than me," Cookie said. "I remember when he was your age, we played so much together..."

Lola listened to her brother and the dog's joyful banter. She was simply amazed by the fact that she heard a dog talking. And this dog had many things to share with them. Something he said, however, startled her.

"How old are you, Cookie?" She asked the dog.

"Hum... Old... I guess. There is a thing with dogs, you know," he explained, "we don't really follow the passage of time..."

"What does it mean?" Pete wanted to know. "You don't know how to count?"

"It's not that," replied the dog, "it is just that time is relative to us, animals. We enjoy the time playing with our friends, but we do not remember the time spent alone, waiting for something fun to happen..."

"You really don't know how old you are?" Lola asked Cookie one more time.

"Does it really matter?" The dog replied with a smile.

The grin on the canine was a startling feature for the girl. It made him look almost human, though he was still just a dog. The weird face of their four legged friend almost made her forget about the strange thing he had said earlier.

Cookie had mentioned Grandpa's age and told Pete how he played with him when he was a kid himself.

"It does matter when you imply that you are almost as old as Grandpa," Lola stated. "How can a dog live as long as that?"

"So...," Cookie's gaze was set firmly on the girl, "are we back to what's possible and not?"

~~

"How was the walk?" Grandpa was in the garden when the children came out of the woods. He smiled at them, happy to see the excitement and to hear their lively chatter.

"Did you know this plant was good for health?" Pete talked about everything he saw, everywhere they went. "Cookie told me so!" He punctuated his affirmation with a firm nod.

Grandpa did not seem to realise what the boy just said. Lola looked at him, searching for a sign of understanding.

"So you had a lot of fun? I am happy you took Cookie out into the woods. It is a long time he went," Grandpa continued, petting the dog. "Did you have fun, Cookie?" He asked the dog.

Holding her breath, Lola was waiting for the dog's answer. He happily obliged.

"Woof! Woof!"

"I knew you would have!" Grandpa exclaimed, laughing at the dog's barking and lolling tongue.

"Let's go inside, kids, Grandma has prepared some snacks for you."

Lola let Grandpa enter the house first, catching her brother's hand.

"I don't think we shall tell Grandpa and Grandma about Cookie's talking," she explained. "They won't believe us and treat us like kids."

Pete agreed with his sister, but he would have liked to ask his grandparents if they talked with animals. The boy knew that grown-ups did not understand everything sometimes.

"Is it okay, Cookie, if we don't tell Grandpa and Grandma?" Pete asked the dog.

"Woof!"

"Why are you barking, Cookie? You can talk, it's just us."

"Woof!"

The boy tried to get some words from the dog, but the later had stopped talking as soon as they left the woods.

Strange things had happened this day and Pete did not know what to believe anymore.

~~

The next day, Lola and Pete woke up early in the morning.

After the short exchange they had the previous evening, they decided to walk Cookie one more time. They still did not understand why the dog stopped talking when they arrived home. It was like they almost dreamt the whole thing.

To be sure of what had happened in the woods, they needed to go back.

Lola took her phone to record any conversation with the canine if it would happen again. She could use the phone only in case of an emergency, Mom had told her. But when discussing it with her brother, they decided this was a sort of emergency.

This time, they told Grandpa and Grandma they were going out and that they would be back for lunch time. They had all the morning to explore the woods and to get Cookie to talk to them again.

Cookie was running around them, impatient to go for his walk. He barked playfully as if he was asking them to get going, to be faster.

"Where are we going today?" The voice they had heard the day before was back.

Pete stopped in his tracks and looked at the dog. "So, you decided to talk to us again?" He said showing some frustration. The boy complained that the dog had played games with them, making them believe all had been in their imagination.

"I did not intend to make you look silly, Pete," Cookie explained. "For some reason when I talked to you you could hear only my barking. How peculiar," he thought aloud.

"In any cases, we can talk now. So, what do you want to do this morning?" The dog asked.

The children and their canine friend had a blast. They went through the forest, going one way or another, playing hide and seek. Cookie showed Lola the best place to find blackberries and wild strawberries. He told also told Pete about his friendship with many animals in the woods.

"So, Cookie, how come yesterday we could only hear you bark, when we were back home?" Lola had pondered all day night about the fact that they could talk with the dog in the woods, but they did not understand him once back at Grandma and Grandpa's place.

"Is it really important?" Cookie asked. "Perhaps because other people were around, you couldn't hear me properly?" He added. "Or perhaps, it's the forest..."

"Why would it be different in the trees?" Pete questioned. "It's still you and us. We ask questions, you talk to us... we discuss together... Same thing as what we did back at home."

"Perhaps it's because of the presence of adult around us?" Cookie proposed.

"How about we just accept that, in the woods, we can talk, at home, I will bark?" He concluded with his no-nonsense way of seeing things around him.

The question of possible or impossible things did not last long between Cookie and Pete. The dog soon started chasing a butterfly, running around the trees. The boy, on his side, did not want to sort through the logic of a seemingly illogical matter. The day was too bright and too warm to brood about difficult life concepts.

Lola kept silent most of the time. She seemed happy to observed the nature around her, but was still trying to make sense with the situation. The dog was talking, but only when they were in the woods. At their grandparents' place, Cookie was just a dog. He barked.

Then, there was the fact that said dog suggested he was as old as Grandpa. How could this be? Dogs did not live as long as human. The girl was yet to figure out whether Cookie was pulling her leg when he mentioned a younger Grandpa the day before or not. Was he just playing with the children mind?

But then, again, he was talking, she thought. How to reconcile all those crazy facts together, Lola was still trying to figure out the logic in it.

"... the rabbit. You can believe me, really!" The girl had tuned off the banter between the dog and her brother. Cookie seemed to be explaining something to Pete, trying to convince him.

"Don't you think so, Lola?" He asked her.

"What are you talking about?" She could not really take side in their discussion, not knowing what it was about.

"Really, Lola!" Pete exclaimed, "it's simple. Cookie was saying that his friend the Rabbit was more frightening than the Monster. Like, who would believe in monsters, anyway..."

"What is it about this rabbit that makes him frightening," Lola asked Cookie.

"He is so annoying," the dog answered her, "he knows everything about everyone... The monster is easier to understand. He just tries to frighten you, but, at least, he does not talk you to your death."

Lola felt like Alice following the rabbit, for some reason. The conversation between her brother and Cookie sounded quite illogical, and futile. What had brought it up, she did not even want know.

What she wanted to know, however, was about the monster.

"What is it about this monster, Cookie? Is he your friend? What does he look like? Is he dangerous or friendly..." She asked the canine as many questions as she could think of.

The dog was happy to talk about his friends in the forest. They had met some of them during this morning walk, but did not stay long enough to try and talk to them. There had been the butterfly who fluttered away chasing the sun rays, the squirrel who jumped from one branch to another, and the quail, running under the cover of a thick bush, frightened by the two children.

"So, there is a monster... Any chance we can meet him?" Lola asked. "And do you have any other fancy friend? How about a Unicorn?