devotions, gany

[fox]

❀

Daisy is three when she finds Ganymede.

In dog years, it feels like a very long time.

The tomatoes ripen in early summer, warmed from the sun, sweet and refreshing. They're the first thing she eats in the season, sliced with glossy, rich basil, fresh cucumbers, and soft cheese. She harvests the last of the strawberries as the sun softens them and makes jam on the stove, the house smelling sticky and sweet in the humidity. Daisy loves strawberries, and Gany lets her have a handful.

She watches the colours of her home deepen and change in the warm weather, peach to sunset orange, green to jade. The flowers grow tall and stately, the little bells coming in shades of lavender and cream and rose, and Gany cuts the stalks back, collecting baskets of flowers she stores away from the house, in the old shed by the forest. Daisy knows not to go near it. She can feel the strange murmur of the electric fence.

Deep into June, the earth is glazed with dandelions. Daisy splashes through the cool stream by their house, and Gany watches from the bank. Her happiness echoes through the trees, the reverberation of her barks humming pleasantly in Gany's bones. The air's muggy and green in the forest, faintly bitter in its aftertaste. There's the glimmer of thin, silver fish in the waters, flowing with the current between islands of mossy rocks. She makes a crown for her dog, twisting the stems absently, as if it was something that she'd always known how to do.

Daisy wears her wreath for all of five seconds before she tries to eat the yellow flowers.

They sleep on the floor as the heat lingers into the darkness. The fan hums on, day and night, curtains drawn in shadowy coolness. In July, the transporter brings a rare box of ice, and Gany feeds Daisy a few cubes in bone broth. She makes summer squash soup from the garden, silky and brightened with a lemon, deep yellow, chilled with the ice. It tastes like cream and earth. The days feel so drowsy in sunlight. Daisy watches the birds on the feeder lazily, and it's even too hot for her to chase them. She looks on as rust-bellied robins and little brown sparrows eat in peace.

In the middle of summer, Gany harvests the garlic plants, ties them with twine, and hangs them high up in the house to cure, away from Daisy's reach. She has a way of licking everything she finds fascinating, and Gany's spent months trying to break the habit without much success. Life is an endless struggle of getting Daisy to spit something out.

These days, the sun sets when it's already deep into the evening. She'll turn sixteen soon. Gany wonders what sixteen feels like to Daisy. An eternity maybe. A whole life. Her dog sleeps noisily beside her on the porch, snoring and dreaming of some great chase. She doesn't live like it's been an eternity.

She supposes dogs don't understand getting older the same way people do. But Daisy notices how the seasons change, and how they change with it. There are no speculations on what it means to be fifteen or sixteen. She watched the trees melt their silver and felt her coat shed with it – and that was time. And that was all.

In the morning, the transporter delivers them fresh eggs and dairy in exchange for a tin full of packaged pills. Gany works on baking a cake, the oven torturously hot in the summer, but she fusses over the recipe for hours. The first cake is too crumbly for the strawberry syrup. It melts on the plate and turns into mush, and strangely she feels like bursting into tears. No one had ever taught her how to make a cake. She tries not to cry. She remembers she was told she was someone sensitive in her childhood. That exact word.

By evening, the sponge cools, sweet and barely tart from the berries, the exterior whipped and soft and slightly melty from the heat outside. Daisy licks dollops of cream from a bowl.

She cleans up the kitchen, and goes to bed.

Gany does not wake up for a long time. And Daisy touches her cheek gently with her nose, her large dark eyes watching inquisitively. She only gets up to open the door for her and gives her food, and then drifts back into bed. Sometimes, she is like this, smelling of sleep, like a summer cold, dust and cherry. She is there and then not there. And the cake grows spotted with mold. Daisy dutifully watches over her.

She lies in bed for three days, and then gets up one afternoon and throws the cake in the trash.

The beginning of August brings storms. The lacey, soft faces of the clouds darken, rolling into each other and becoming towering shapes. She listens to the rain pelt the trees, like the sound of a waterfall, the sky splitting with light. Daisy hides under the table, and Gany goes to sit with her there as the lights blink from the generator.

Her ears are flattened, and she pants lightly. Gany wraps her arms around her dog, and buries her face in her fur. They stay there for awhile, the booms of thunder deep and heavy over the crisp sound of rain hitting the roof, and Gany can feel the light tremor of her fear at the intervals of noise.

I know it's scary, she says.

I'm scared of a lot of things too.

The storm ends in the evening. That night, she makes knife cut noodles with zucchini and carrots. The soup is light enough for summer. It tastes faintly of the dried fish from the broth, salty and lightly sweetened from the vegetables. She gives Daisy all the chicken jerky she wants with her meal, and they eat.

One night after dinner, Gany works on the squares of the blanket she's been knitting until Daisy tries to sit in her lap. She laughs and pets her between her ears and strangely, remembers a song she heard long ago.

Daisy, Daisy,
Give me your answer - do!
I'm half crazy,
All for the love of you!

Sometimes, it is enough to want to live for your dog. There doesn't have to be another reason. She thinks of Daisy's verdant joy, bounding through the forest, and her fear, small but tangible and worthy. It is late summer, the air is heavy and thick with rain. The flower seeds need to be sowed soon. She'll boil and peel and jar the last of the tomato harvest with salt. She is sixteen, and she almost wasn't.

I love you, she says. And Daisy licks her face.