It was gone.

The oatmeal and ground beef mix for the meatloaf kept getting stuck between his finger and the ring, so he'd taken it off, set it next to the bowl on the counter while he finished. And now it wasn't there.

Joshua could swear it had been there just a second ago, before he ran into the next room to grab his phone when Maria called. She'd be home any minute now, and would absolutely lose it if she caught him without his wedding ring.

"Goddammit," he muttered as he shifted through the detritus on the speckled marble countertop: old mail, utensils that didn't have a permanent home, the empty packaging from the meat. Nothing.

A sudden thought: Maybe it stuck to my finger when I took it off, got put back in the bowl. Joshua grabbed a cookie sheet from the cupboard and dumped the pre-meatloaf on it. He spread it flat with quick hits of his palm and dug his fingers into it, breaking the meat up into tiny pieces as he went, feeling for the round hardness of the ring. Nothing.

He grabbed a towel to wipe the gummy bits of meat off his hands, looking around as he did, along the counter, considering frantically where else it could have gone.

The floor.

He threw the towel on the counter and got down on all fours, searched under the soffits, running his hands along the baseboards. Of dust bunnies and bits of crumb there was much to be found, but his ring wasn't there, either.

Joshua lifted his head up, growling with frustration—

And came face-to-face with Max, their—Maria's—two-year-old black lab. Max cocked his head and wagged his tail.

There was a flake of oatmeal stuck to his lip.

#

Human SO mad! But just want some meat, eat little bit.

Human make drink bad water, taste like water from bad place, place where poke and put things inside but talk nice anyway. Place human take to when say go beach.

Then human put outside, make stay out, yell more "Bad dog! Damn stupid dog!" Then human go in, walk walk on other side of door while whimper and whine.

Go smell at fence, go smell at flowers, dig little bit by tree. Tree smell like raccoon. HATE raccoon. Piss on tree.

Then go back, whine at door. Human won't let back in. Just walk walk, yell more "Dumb dog!"

Stomach feel sick. So go eat grass. Crow feather on grass, so go eat other grass. HATE crow.

But before eat grass, sudden—

BIIIIG light in sky!

Then! Like bird, flying! Me! Up to light! Straight up!

#

Joshua paced anxiously between the living room—checking for Maria's car in the driveway—and the door to the backyard to see if Max had shat out his ring yet. He was half-way between his two lookouts when a wash of light came into the house. Maria was home. He froze, dreading the conversation he was about to have. He was already thinking through apologies when he realized that the light was coming from the back of the house, not the front.

He parted the mini-blinds on the kitchen window and squinted into the backyard, just in time to see Max's silhouette suspended in midair in a column of light. As Joshua watched, Max floated up into the open belly of a flying saucer, which disappeared at breakneck speed as soon as Max was inside.

Joshua scratched his head. "Now what am I gonna tell Maria?"

#

Then, inside! So scary, inside with strange things! Not my humans! Not human! Inside smell like mixed together: burning raccoon pee and wet crow feather and under sink and bad place. Walls empty, bent like trying to eat me!

Want hide under bed. But no bed!

Still want grass. But no grass!

So make mess.

#

"The quadruped has defecated on the deck," Mogorr flarthed, antennae drooping in the smell.

Gorrmog looked at her brood sister, exasperated. It was Mogorr's fault that they'd been sent on this worthless mission in the first place, ostensibly to make contact with the leaders of this world. But in reality, the mission was punishment for Mogorr wowpling half the Sire's brood and then telling anyone who would listen. If she'd had even a bit more discretion, they wouldn't have been forced to spend the last two-twelves rotations crawling across the galaxy to get to this backwater world—a world so unimportant that, even if they were successful, their careers were effectively falzed.

And now, while Gorrmog had been relieving herself, Mogorr had collected a specimen to begin the contact process, but a quadruped!

Gorrmog kluthed toward her brood sister, snarfled her on the pralt. "Why did you think that this creature might help us to establish ties with this world? It only has four legs! How smart can it be?" The smell finally reached Gorrmog and her antennae spornted. "Put it in the containment device. And disinfect the area."

Gorrmog snorgled at her brood sister's apologetic droop and turned to go back to the command frame, but there among the feces, the quick glint of metal caught her eye. She kluthed to the pile and settled herself down on all twelves, bringing her eye close to it. She reached in carefully with the thinnest of her tentacles—Mogorr made a disgusted flarth—and pulled out a tiny, perfect ring of metal. She held it up in the light briefly before she grabbed the tail of the specimen and lifted it—the quadruped whimpered weakly—comparing the size and shape of the ring to the animal's anus.

Mogorr knocked her brood sister aside and grabbed the quadruped by its collar, hoisting it up so she could look it in the eye. A tentacle shot out of the creature's mouth and hit Mogorr in the eye. She winced, dropping the creature. The quadruped whined.

Gorrmog turned the metal ring slowly, watching it twinkle in the light.

"Mogorr," Gorrmog said, "never mind making contact. We're going to be rich."