A curious problem once troubled King Truffle in the early days of Barksvale.
It began, as many strange things do, with hoomans leaving.
Each morning, without fail, they would gather their belongings, step beyond the Gates, and vanish into the unknown lands beyond the kingdom. Not in panic, not in fear, but with calm determination, as if this were the most sensible thing in the world.
Now, any well-adjusted dogkin knows a simple truth—comfort is not to be abandoned lightly.
Yet the hoomans did so daily.
From the Sacred Couch, His Majesty observed this ritual with growing concern. He had seen it many times before, but on this particular morning, something about it refused to sit right with him.
For the hoomans always returned.
And when they returned, they brought food.
This detail was well documented, frequently celebrated, and never questioned.
Until that day.
The King, deep in thought, raised a question that would echo quietly through the halls of Barkhold Castle.
If a hooman is hungry… why does it not simply eat?
Princess Pudding, who had little patience for unnecessary suffering, gave the matter brief consideration. From her understanding, hunger was a problem with a very straightforward solution.
Food existed. She had seen it. Smelled it. Fought for it.
Yet the hoomans chose delay.
They ventured into distant stone structures, performed a mysterious ritual known as work, and only then earned the right to eat.
To the dogkin, this made very little sense.
For in Barksvale, the order of life was clear. Hunger led to food, tiredness led to naps, boredom led to play, and urgency led to barking. No creature of sound mind complicated these matters.
Hoomans, however, appeared to do exactly that.
They introduced tokens called money into the process. Small, meaningless objects that held no scent, no taste, and yet somehow stood between them and their next meal.
They labored. They waited. They exchanged.
All for something that was already there.
It was, by all reasonable measures, an inefficient system.
Princess Pudding concluded, quite sensibly, that hoomans seemed to enjoy making life harder than it needed to be.
The King found no fault in this observation.
Thus, a quiet understanding took root within the royal court.
Hoomans were loyal creatures. Useful, certainly. But prone to overthinking.
And so the dogkin would continue to watch over them, with patience and mild concern, as one might observe a friend repeatedly walking into the same very avoidable problem.
Such was the nature of hoomankind.
And such, too, was the quiet duty of Barksvale.