Return of the Dogg

The pulque runs free under the moon. 

Reed music playing loud enough that even the dead can hear it. 

Instead of their heartbeats, the dead can only sway to the beat of drums. 

The coyotes sing their boastful stories, to anyone that will listen. 

The flowers dance the night away devoid of feet, they sway on their roots guided by winds. 

The merriment in their souls can never be extinguished. 

Even the fish jump out of lakes to offer themselves up on this night of joyful eternity. 

Xólotl smiled.

The hound god of reversal, rhythm, and return watched the small seed shimmer in the dark earth. 

And though his mask betrayed no emotion, his grin held hope.

Then he turned his gaze upward.

The canopy of the memory-tree kept growing—stretching toward a dormant sun that had not yet stirred, 

chasing the arc of crimson light that glided across the sky like a song waiting for its crescendo.

Cenotlatlacatl and Kamelotl danced still, even as their bodies shook and their bones begged for rest. 

Their laughter was wild—part joy, part madness, the sacred rhythm of those who endure pain and still choose to sing.

Their sigils blazed brighter. 

Their blood steamed from their skin. 

And their claws and soles pounded bark until they were just below the arc.

Then—

Cenotlatlacatl looked at Kamelotl. 

No words—only that look: a gaze full of yearning, full of ache, full of need.

Kamelotl met his eyes and nodded. 

A simple nod. 

A brother's vow.

He raised his hands toward the arc—and roots burst forth from his arms, 

stretching like longing itself, embedding into the glowing arc above.

"Let's go, brother," Kamelotl whispered. "To our destinies."

They climbed. 

Hand over claw. 

Pain over purpose. 

They scaled the arc like it was a rib of the universe.

As they reached its side, the roots exploded with life—twisting, coiling, then curling inward—forming a sacred seedpod around them, pulling them inside.

And below…

The tree groaned. 

A deep, sorrowful moan—as if mourning its short lived moment of glory.

It reached one last time. 

One final stretch toward the heavens.

But rot had begun at its base—the price of birthing something divine.

It cracked. 

It crumbled. 

It fell.

And as it collapsed—so did their blood.

Twin streams of crimson trailed from the arc, falling in slow spirals.

And alongside them, a single drop of dew—silver, crescent-shaped.

It fell gently. 

Purposefully.

And when it landed—it touched the seedling.

The small seed beneath the riverbank shuddered. And for the first time, it smiled.

From within the arc—suspended in the sacred seed, wrapped in dancing roots and ancestral heat—they could still see.

Through the gaps between bark and bloom, Cenotlatlacatl and Kamelotl gazed downward. 

The branches had not sealed them off completely. Not yet.

Below them, the world had changed. 

A memory-tree fallen. 

A river reborn. 

A seed awakened.

And there, at the very center of it all—Xólotl.

"Xólotl!" they shouted in unison, their voices sharp as claws, bright as tears. 

"We will never forget!"

At the sound of his name, the hound on the riverbank howled.

It was not a bark. 

Not a war cry. 

It was a laughing scream of joy—a song that had waited through centuries of silence.

And then—like the world had turned inside out—it was gone.

Silence.

But not the silence of absence. 

The silence before something sacred is reborn.

Xólotl shined.

The flames around his paws flared. 

Lightning coiled around his spine like ribbons of memory. 

The mask he wore—the one carved from bone and shadow—fell.

And beneath it… 

he changed.

First into an axolotl—his skin smooth and glassy, gills feathered with fire, tail flicking with the rhythm of rivers past.

Then the form twisted again—bones realigned, limbs strengthened, ears sharpened.

He stood. 

He became.

Not a god who fled. 

Not a dog who guided. 

But the Dogg reborn.

Xólotl, the beatwalker. 

Xólotl, the one who remembers. 

Xólotl, whose howl was a bridge between sacrifice and song.

And the Xoloitzcuintli gathered around him, emerging from flame and ash, 

specters of bone and smoke now bearing petals, each one carrying a rhythm.

And at their center, life began.

A layer of Mictlan—once rigid, silent, cruel—shifted.

Roots pushed up through its stone. 

Flames danced with blossoms. 

Lightning arched across bones. 

The dead stirred—not to rise, but to remember.

The ninth realm had heard the song of return.

The mask that had once been on Xolotl's face had been tossed around in the upheaval of his transformation. It ended up in the swirling river settling down on the riverbank. Where it landed was where the skeletons of ancient times were still resting. It started to merge with the pile of bones. Soon, in the light of the new level of mictlan, where the Xoloitzcuintli roamed and the flames danced, a Xoloitzcuintli popped its head out of the river. Yet its face was like a decorated a skull. He seemed ethereal and not of the plane of the living.

In response to his budding existence, voices started singing. A song of remembrance, a song of restlessness. Almost as if to welcome a new kin to their pack. The flames around him started to dance unto his skin. Like snakes slithering up his fur , they didn't scorch or even singe the fur. They simply became part of him. 

Then came the others.

The river trembled. Skeletons emerged laughing, dancing as if the afterlife had always waited for music. Flowers bloomed from their ribs. Hummingbirds flitted from their mouths.

The xoloitzcuintli wasn't done, Antlers burst from its crown, arching backward like time folding in on itself. Condor wings stretched wide from its shoulders. It bowed reverently toward Xólotl.

From the mist they appeared. 

Jaguars and snakes. Condors and ocelots. Skeletal figures and hummingbirds. Butterflies, Axolotls. Wolves, frogs and coyotes. All with different traits, they all had one thing in common though. They all had colorful patterns to mark them as spirits not of this world. 

The macabre dance continued— bones clacking, petals swirling, drums pounding from below and resonating on the rib cages of the dancers. The birds' song were haunting and the howls of the xoloitzcuintli added a longing stitched from memory for something just out of reach— Life. 

Looking around Xolotl only had one thing to say. 

"Welcome, my children. Let's enjoy this eternal dance!"

Just as mictlan hosted its first surreal dance, with a shimmer like a mirage on the horizon, lay the sight of a bone dry desert. A similar scene of wonderous creatures took its place. Amongst the maguey, a coyote, a smoky mirror and a child of flowers enjoyed pulque to the beat of drums. Under a moonlit sky with a vast starry expanse, even the nocturnal animals joined by the fires to dance. There were even some humans dancing with wolves and owls. A strange sight to behold. 

Huehuecoyotl laughed drunkenly with his arms wrapped around a human man and woman. 

"We drink till we're blind tonight. For it's the birth of something new." 

He howled at the moon with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes, attempting to drown himself with pulque. 

A new dawn had risen, yet the sun was still asleep on his Arc.