We were sharing a twin room, two single beds separated by an inch or two. I was writing, she was reading. I paused, looked up, decided to watch her eyes moving across the page for a few moments. Eventually she noticed and looked back at me. We stared comfortably at one another for a while.

Then she explained, as if in mid-conversation, that the dogs here weren't necessarily the same as the ones we were used to back home. That's why I had to be careful. That's why they had to be muzzled.

I nodded. We returned to our stories.