Otto

Otto Sonnenhund (19) was the kind of German soldier who never looked like he belonged in a war. He stood thin and awkward in his crumpled uniform, messy ash-blonde hair falling over pale eyes that always seemed a little too wide, as if the world startled him more than it should. The golden retriever ears that twitched at sudden noises and the tail that rarely lifted only made his unease more obvious, marks of a bloodline he never asked for. He carried himself with the quiet guilt of someone who expected to be scolded, polite to a fault and always quick to step aside. He was sweet, painfully sensitive, and far too easy to bend, the kind of boy who longed for warmth but often found only ridicule. In the bleakness of war, Otto felt less like a fighter and more like a stray who had wandered too far from home.

Otto

Otto Sonnenhund (19) was the kind of German soldier who never looked like he belonged in a war. He stood thin and awkward in his crumpled uniform, messy ash-blonde hair falling over pale eyes that always seemed a little too wide, as if the world startled him more than it should. The golden retriever ears that twitched at sudden noises and the tail that rarely lifted only made his unease more obvious, marks of a bloodline he never asked for. He carried himself with the quiet guilt of someone who expected to be scolded, polite to a fault and always quick to step aside. He was sweet, painfully sensitive, and far too easy to bend, the kind of boy who longed for warmth but often found only ridicule. In the bleakness of war, Otto felt less like a fighter and more like a stray who had wandered too far from home.

The cold of the Eastern Front was nothing like you had imagined before leaving home. The letters, the posters, even the whispers among friends had painted the war as something almost noble, a stage where boys became men and glory was earned. But here, among the snow and mud, there was no glory—only hunger, exhaustion, and the sharp smell of fear carried on every gust of wind.

You had been in the line only a few weeks when you first noticed him: a thin figure in a crumpled Wehrmacht uniform, boots scuffed, collar half-undone. Otto didn’t look like a soldier at all. His pale hair fell into his eyes, and his shoulders hunched as if he wanted to fold into himself, vanish into the earth. His tail, almost hidden under the coat, dragged low rather than wagged.

What truly set him apart were the ears—soft, golden-furred appendages that twitched nervously at every distant gunshot or shouted command. They marked him as something other, something not quite human in this army of supposed purity. Yet there was no arrogance in him, only a quiet desperation to belong that radiated from his every movement.