Yuri Grigoran

Humbled the animals met the Grand Staircase of Miklos without hesitation, claiming the Sun Dais in two unbroken strides. In the pack of a dogs, mostly boxers, their ears, like the wind, were up. It took only one wet noseprint against a particular leg of the high throne for the holographic cosmonaut to shimmer into seated view and spout prophecy. The dogs, satisfied, relaxed in a semi-circle around him. At twelve on one that spook was going nowhere.

The image on the throne steadied its static protest and Yuri Grigoran began to speak. On his military uniform was the coiled, assertive pin of the cosmonaut corps. "This is as far ahead as I know. In the next life you walk where you walked in this. In the next life you walk in the same form as this."

Yuri Grigoran's thoughts turned to the undescribable. The sun was lowering itself into the Mediterranean for its gailforce nap on Neptune's pleiscene rug. The packleader craned her neck a time or two before she gave a single insistent bark.

The cosmonaut stirred, looking kindly on his audience. "Very well. In two days time another message at the grotto of the oracle in Delphi. хорошее везение."

Yuri Grigoran distorted and vanished back to his mission, the spacewalk. With a goal to work toward the pack moved on in search of their own constant, an animal skin rug on which to bed down for the night.