It was cold outside.
But the large black dog barely noticed, loping along with an easy grace. There were tiny flakes of snow falling, melting just before they touched the frosty ground, and the trees lining the streets were almost bare, a couple of red-gold leaves still clinging to the branches.
It was tiring, this endless running and hiding and scrounging for food. But it was necessary, it was needed. It had been too long since the dog had been to this particular place in this particular town.
And even though an age had passed, it still looked oddly the same.
There were still children playing on the curbside, there were still songs echoing around from the radios on windowsills, there were still cars and motorcycles-oh, motorcycles- parked haphazardly across the street. But something was different. Something had changed.
The dog supposed it was the music; it had used to be sweet love songs, choruses of 'Hey Jude, don't make it bad' dancing across the neighborhood, and now it had all transformed to a heavier, louder cacophony that, as a dog, he hated, but as a man, he somewhat enjoyed.
An age ago, a man with hazel eyes and crooked glasses would have grinned at his choice in song, laughing that he, the rebel, would of course only enjoy that which everyone else disliked.
But that thought was irrelevant, a postscript to a letter unsent, and the dog shook the memory out his mind, his large gray eyes darkening.
The dog barked at a couple of cats, whined happily at a few of the children who ran up to pet his glossy black fur, and blinked away the snow that caught on his unusually long lashes and kept going, kept moving, only stopping when a familiar house rose out of the shadows.
He had expected much when he saw this house.
He had expected tears, pain, sadness, and loss.
He had expected to feel the wound ripping and tearing all over again, the edges still as raw and bloody as they had been twelve years ago.
What he hadn't expected was to feel nothing.
To feel numb.
To look up at the house of so many memories and realize that things had changed.
And it was that realization, that thought that he would never again throw open that door and be welcomed in by a man with grinning hazel eyes and crooked glasses, never be pushed into the kitchen to greet that woman with an infectious smile and wild red hair, never lean into the baby-pen and pick up that child with an innocent face and trusting arms, that broke him.
That shattered him.
There would never again be the glow of a fire in that hearth, never again be a light in that window near the orchids, never again be people popping in and out of that door with grins and laughs and smiles and stories to tell.
And yet, the dog moved forward.
One small, tentative, padding step forward, until he reached the gate, nosing it open and ignoring the creaking cry of the rusted iron.
The dog with gray eyes seemed to sigh, a breath of air ballooning upwards, out of his cold body and into the sky, creating a tiny cloud of stars that dusted the whole world silver.
He gently lay down on the yellowed grass, the scratchy soil beneath him almost unnoticeable in his quest for remembrance.
He closed his eyes.
Hahaha. Yeah. I love Sirius. I think that's all I can say. (:
Pleeeeeeeaseee read and review! (:
~Fanta-Faerie