All our hero myths follow the same outline: the foretelling, the birth, the rise from obscurity, the breaking of chains, the naming, the journey, the lesser battles, the great battle, the miracle(s), the loss, the betrayal, the fall, the question, and finally - the ultimate triumph over death itself.
Echo was a hero: a feral black dog that we must all aspire to be like in this age of fools and tyrants.
Echo did not die.
She rose.
I chose to listen to Tiffany. I observed her immense care for animals and knew what to do when Echo crawled away to be alone, because I had stopped treating her as myself and was ready to treat her as herself: a dog, falling into deep shock.
She was hiding from other predators, but without someone to care for her, to hydrate her, to warm her, to stanch the bleeding, and interrupt the downward spiral, Echo would have faced the scavengers alone.
This is why we care for one another, not because we are heroes, but because we recognize the hero in the other.
I still carry a basic lifesaving kit on my person because of Echo’s fall. People laugh, (they do) but now Chris is also alive, because there was gauze to pack into the hole in his back after the knife fight. Is Chris now a hero? Did my crew give him that chance? I have not bothered to check, because it is his story, not mine.
If I ever forgot why Brooks chose Shannon, the smiling dog, from all the others, it would be then that Echo and I would rip at each other. It was when I chose to listen to Tiffany, to invest the time, and finally see outside of myself, only then would I find the hero of the story: Echo, my best friend.
Echo crossed the rainbow bridge when Brooks, the woman who knew her name, kept our forever promise of a warm bed, food, and family, by understanding that the pain of age was becoming a cage, and, sobbing, opened that door, and set her best friend free.
Echo was seventeen.
Echo, at 16.