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Dougal sees many things from his perch inside the strange Man’s box. Most of these things are inconsequential. After all, what does it matter whether or not the Man will trip over the bucket he placed next to the bowtruckle tree? He’ll be fine and moving to deliver his box of insects to the occamy nest soon after so it doesn’t matter whether or not Dougal knows it will happen in advance.
Of course, there were occasionally some things that were noteworthy. The day that Dougal met the dark haired Woman was important. No matter how often Dougal perused the most probable outcomes of the Man’s life, that Woman was always there somehow. The way she appeared was often different but she was always there at some point. Sometimes he would see her and the Man embracing before the Man attempts to get on the giant rumbling thing sitting in the water before apparently thinking better of it and returning to her waiting arms. Sometimes he sees the Man going back to the Woman many sunrises later, one of those small squares with the thin, flimsy insides clutched in his paw to give to her. Occasionally he even sees the Woman appearing in front of the man from seemingly out of nowhere moons after they left each other.
If he tries, Dougal sometimes even sees the man when he’s old and gray. Still with the Woman but now accompanied by what Dougal assumes to be their young. The younger looking man with the same nose as the Man. That same young man holding an even younger creature, which Dougal can only assume is it’s young because it is beyond his scope of imagination to believe that anyone would hold anything that loud, smelly, and wrinkly unless it was related to the continuation of their species. Sometimes if he stretches his sight, Dougal can see that wrinkly creature when it is older meeting a young woman with fair hair and some sort of root vegetable hanging from her head.
But that doesn’t matter much to Dougal. He knows the Man is going to be around for a long time. Long enough to see the occamy fully grown and starting nests of their own. Long enough to find an appropriate settling ground for the graphorn and their newly grown young. Long enough for even Dougal’s existence to come to an end, although that particular instance appears to happen at a comfortably distant time. No, none of these potential futures matter much to Dougal. He’s quite satisfied with his den overlooking the rest of the creatures inside the Man’s box.
It doesn’t matter much to Dougal what happens to the Man in the future. He already knows how it’s going to happen and none of it is particularly life-ending. Life-threatening, sure. But life-ending, not so much. Either way, Dougal takes a small amount of pleasure in seeing his visions come to pass and this will be no different.
He’s glad that he knows he’ll live long enough to see the young fair haired woman accompanying one of the young of the Man’s young venture into the box to meet the creatures living there. His impression of her future seems to be one of the most interesting ones he’s seen in quite a long time. It doesn’t hurt that she will still be wearing those root vegetables suspended from her ears and they look like they would be quite delicious. Dougal hasn’t quite decided whether he’ll attempt to nibble on them when she first greets him or later when she has let her guard down. His sight does have its limitations and even he can't see which option will be the most profitable yet. Until then he’ll just have to make due with tending to the occamy when the Man is away and watching the Woman try to keep the Man from tripping over his own limbs whenever he comes down into the box.
