SGBLit

. . . Dutimus was looking forward to a quiet night and some well-deserved rest for himself and his small band of sheep herding dogs . . . 

It was a good life but not a life anyone would have expected from his rough beginnings with the herd. The grandfather shepherd found him several seasons back as he wandered a bit too close to the flock in search of food.

The young Dutimus had been

in the caravan of a king traveling through to a distant land and

somehow became separated from his master. Lonely and afraid, the shepherd’s kind eyes lured him in that night, and Dutimus had been with him ever since.

The shepherd came to love Dutimus and trained him to become, quite possibly, the best sheep-working dog in the entire world. The night of the great brouhaha, as Dutimus called it, became almost too much for even him to manage.

​

It started with the brightest night sky Dutimus had ever seen. It was that one point of light, a star the shepherd called it. The sky was so well lit that he would not need to worry about any predatory animals sneaking into the flock. He felt his eyes getting heavy after he turned the reigns over to Liam, and then he heard it begin.

It was a brouhaha that began with sounds from the sky. It was not the normal booming sounds that came

with rain showers or the sound of birds swooping over, but a sweet and thunderous sound, something like the little shepherds when they stroked the box of strings or put the river reed to their mouth. Only this sound filled the whole sky, and it was beautiful. Every sheep turned in unison to face the things made of light that hung in the sky. He decided they were new birds, with wings holding them in the air and songs coming from them.