Lily is a little beagle who must not have freedom, it’s for her own good. At all times, she must be leashed or incarcerated because she will always find a way to abuse her freedom.
Lily is a few years old. She spent her puppy days at a nursing home among the elderly where she learned how to steal. She can read any situation and know when the food will be vulnerable. Her signature move is to ninja onto a table when no one is looking and drink the cream out of a cup of coffee. Whenever the dishwasher door comes down, she’s in there licking the plates and bowls and cutlery - you can’t put dishes in and hold her back at the same time. When there’s food on a countertop, she stands up and walks around on two feet to scope out how to snatch it away. She became heavily overweight at the nursing home, so when she got new guardians they put her on a weight-loss diet, driving up the intensity of her food obsession.
Lily is on her third or fourth guardians, having spent most of her life wearing a harness and a leash. Maybe she received too much attention in her youth or maybe she wasn’t able to escape mistreatment, but when she achieves the level of freedom she fights for, she tends to cause suffering to herself and others. She now wears a location-tracker on her collar because when guests come to visit and open the front door, she’s always poised to escape. When Lily escapes, her guardians get to play “catch the beagle”, using the location tracker and a car to track her down, box her in, and grab her. The game usually lasts a few hours, and the longer it goes, the more willing Lily is to be caught. She’s especially tame when the game stretches long enough to eat into dinnertime.
She’s allowed free roam on small islands around the size of a typical suburban property, but not on the boat rides there. She’s so used to the leash that when she doesn’t wear it, she falls in the water and has to be rescued. The last few times she wasn’t wearing a leash on the motorboat, she slipped off the front and was nearly run over, chopped into little Lily pieces.
Sam doesn’t have to wear a leash. He’s almost three times as big as Lily and he’s usually anxious about being left behind, but sometimes he likes to play “catch the beagle” too. Once he went for a walk on a big island, an acre of dense trees, and he was gone for six-and-a-half hours before he came back to give himself up. Those six-and-a-half hours ended close to midnight, so Lily stayed at home while the game was going on. She spent the whole time crying by the door, waiting for everyone to come back.
Once her guardians got back, she was back to her usual self, and when they found out that she had been crying, they said,
“Really? I didn’t know she cared about us at all.”
She gives the appearance of being cold and independent, but it’s just her outer layer. She’s never vicious about the escapes or thievery, she’s honourable and well-behaved about it all. She plays by the rules, and the rules of the game are evolving. Just recently she was let out to roam free and within an hour she came back all by herself! It was dinnertime, but it was still a first. After dinner, she ran out to play another hour of “catch the beagle” before bedtime.
After God created Adam, who was alone, He said, “It is not good for man to be alone.” He then created a woman for Adam, from the earth, as He had created Adam himself, and called her Lilith. Adam and Lilith immediately began to fight. She said, “I will not lie below,” and he said, “I will not lie beneath you, but only on top. For you are fit only to be in the bottom position, while I am to be the superior one.” Lilith responded, “We are equal to each other inasmuch as we were both created from the earth.” But they would not listen to one another. When Lilith saw this, she pronounced the Ineffable Name and flew away into the air.
- Alphabet of Ben Sira, Alphabet 5