There was an unofficial, undocumented, and entirely serious debate among the historians of the World of Naicity regarding what the strangest thing in the Empire of Mahallem actually was.
Some argued it was the law that made it legally impossible for the Emperor to lose an argument.
Others pointed toward the Armed Force for the Classification of Reality-Destroying and Complex-Existence-Annihilating Phenomena and Any Being That Calls Itself a God and Also Any Entity Superior to Superiority, whose very name already qualified as an event.
Others still mentioned the baker Spreichem and the bald man who protected him as a phenomenon that defied categorization.
None of them mentioned the poodle.
Not because the poodle was not strange.
But because, in Mahallem, the poodle had become normal.
And that normalization was, by far, the strangest thing of all.
The coastal district of the Island City hosted a market that operated on mornings with good weather, which meant most mornings, because the weather on the Island possessed the courtesy to cooperate with the local commercial schedule.
Stalls of colored cloth, fruits and spices and objects of varied origin.
The smell of salt and fried food and coffee processed somewhere close enough for the aroma to arrive but far enough that the source remained mysterious.
Through the streets of that district, that morning, walked Liou.
Beach clothes.
Not imperial robes, not formal attire, not anything that said this is the Emperor of Mahallem, number one of the Island, the man who destroyed primordial entities.
Just light-colored clothes of the kind that simply say it’s hot and I would prefer to be comfortable.
His hair was tied back in the little bun again, reconstructed after the plaza incident with the same inevitability with which the sun rises.
His expression was his expression: that careful absence of expression the world had learned to read as presence.
At his side, on a leash: the poodle.
White.
Medium-sized.
Fur maintained with the level of care animals belonging to extremely powerful people receive.
Not excessive.
Not ridiculous.
Just impeccable in the way impeccable things become impeccable when the standard is established by someone who does not accept half-measures.
The poodle walked beside Liou with the posture of someone who knew where he was and considered it the correct place to be.
No one at the market was surprised.
No one turned their head in shock.
No one stopped what they were doing.
One or two glances of recognition, some respectful nods, the natural redistribution of space that happens when someone with significant aura passes through a narrow corridor.
But surprise?
No.
Seeing the Emperor of Mahallem walking through the coastal district in beachwear with a poodle belonged, in Mahallem, to the category of things that happened.
There was a local expression for it.
It had no exact translation in other languages.
Liou stopped in front of a fruit stand.
The vendor, a man in his fifties wearing a work apron, with the rough hands of someone who had handled wooden crates since the age of fifteen, looked at Liou with the calm recognition of a citizen who had, over years, developed an entirely normalized relationship with imperial presence in his daily life.
“Your Majesty,” he said with a nod.
Then he looked at the poodle.
“And you, sir.”
A second nod.
Equally respectful.
The poodle looked at the man.
“Bruno introduces himself,” said Liou.
The man smiled with the expression of someone who did not know exactly what was about to happen but was willing to find out.
The poodle released the leash.
Or rather, the leash simply ceased to be relevant to him, which was a different thing entirely.
And he stood up.
Not on four legs.
On two.
With the upright, steady posture of someone who had done this enough times that balance was no longer a concern.
The poodle straightened his body, took two steps toward the man with the specific gait of someone carrying out a social protocol he had fully internalized, and extended a front paw.
The man shook it.
Because when someone extends a hand in greeting, the automatic response is to shake it, and the vendor’s brain had processed limb extending toward my hand before processing this is a poodle.
The poodle then hugged the man.
Arms.
Front paws.
Around the vendor’s torso, head resting against his chest with the naturalness of genuine and entirely unsolicited affection.
The hug lasted exactly as long as a sincere welcoming hug lasts.
No more.
No less.
Then the poodle stepped back, returned to all fours, and walked back to Liou with the stride of someone who had completed a task satisfactorily.
Liou picked up the leash.
“Good morning,” he told the vendor with the tone of someone concluding an interaction that had unfolded entirely within expectations.
And they continued walking.
The vendor remained still.
His hands still positioned from where he had shaken the paw.
His torso still slightly bent from the embrace.
His eyes fixed on the spot where the poodle had been, then the spot where Liou and the poodle now were, then back to the original spot, as if the visual trajectory might help his brain construct a coherent narrative of what had occurred over the last fifteen seconds.
Two seconds earlier: normal life.
Market.
Fruit.
Pleasant morning.
Now: trauma of an origin impossible to explain to anyone who had not been present, and which anyone who had been present would also struggle to explain, because the problem was not the description of the events but their texture.
The specific quality of having been hugged with completely genuine affection by an imperial poodle while the Emperor of Mahallem watched with the expression of someone who considered the entire situation perfectly normal.
The vendor remained standing there.
For a long time.