Something Magnificent

"Dogs don't carry yesterday into today. They just smell something interesting and commit to it completely. I'm not sure if that's wisdom or just luck."

The kindling had finally caught.

Dad crouched beside the fire pit, coaxing the flames with the patient attention he brought to everything mechanical or combustible. The pyramid of sticks we'd stacked earlier — lopsided and optimistic, more art project than engineering — was beginning to glow from within, orange light bleeding through the gaps between branches.

I stood back, arms folded against the evening chill, watching the fire take hold. My injured arm ached dully beneath the bandage, the kind of low-grade throb that had become background noise over the course of the day. I'd learned to work around it — favouring my left hand, adjusting my grip, moving more carefully than usual. The body adapted. It always did.

The sky had deepened to that particular shade of winter blue-black that arrived early in July, the last traces of daylight bleeding away behind the neighbouring rooflines. The air smelled of eucalyptus smoke and cold earth, and somewhere in the distance a magpie was offering its evening warble — that liquid, questioning sound that always made me think of water moving over stones.

"That should hold now," Dad said, straightening with the careful movements of a man whose knees had started complaining about crouching. He wiped his hands on his jeans and surveyed the fire with quiet satisfaction. "Give it another few minutes and we can add the larger pieces."

I nodded, not trusting myself to offer anything more substantial. Dinner had been quieter than usual — Mum moving through the kitchen distractedly, Dad filling the silences with small talk about work, Charles shovelling food with the single-minded focus of a teenager who had places to be and screens to watch. Nobody had mentioned the phone call. Nobody had mentioned Paul or Luke or the police officer whose name I'd overheard but couldn't quite remember.

The not-mentioning felt louder than anything that had actually been said.

Millie had positioned herself at a safe distance from the fire pit, her small body pressed against the back fence as though she suspected we were summoning something unnatural. Her ears were pinned back, her tail stiff with disapproval. She'd been like this since we'd started stacking kindling — deeply suspicious of the entire enterprise, unwilling to approach but equally unwilling to retreat inside and miss whatever was happening.

"She's not a fan," I said, gesturing toward her with my chin.

Dad glanced over and huffed a small laugh. "She's never been comfortable with fire. Remember the time Charles tried to toast marshmallows in the backyard?"

I did remember. Millie had barked for twenty minutes straight, then hidden under my bed blankets for the rest of the evening. Charles had eaten all the marshmallows anyway, most of them barely warmed, and declared the whole experiment a success despite the distinct lack of actual toasting.

The sliding door scraped open behind us, and Mum appeared in the doorway. She stood there for a moment, arms wrapped around herself against the chill, her gaze moving from the fire to Dad to me with the particular assessment of someone making sure everything was proceeding as expected.

"The fire's looking good," she said. "I was worried it wouldn't take with this wind."

"Jerome helped," Dad said, which was generous. I'd mostly stood nearby offering suggestions while he did the actual work.

Mum smiled, but it didn't quite reach her eyes. She looked tired in the firelight — not exhausted exactly, but worn, like something had been rubbing against her all day and leaving marks she couldn't quite smooth away. I thought about the phone call, the way her voice had strained around certain words, but I didn't ask. Some questions were easier to leave unspoken.

Millie had crept closer now, her suspicion apparently outweighed by her need to supervise. She stationed herself near my feet, still maintaining a careful distance from the flames but close enough to observe. Her dark eyes reflected the fire, watchful and alert.

I crouched down beside her, ignoring the twinge in my arm as I reached to scratch behind her ears.

"Do you think she has a complex emotional palette?" I asked, the question forming before I'd fully considered whether it was worth asking. "Or does she just bark for attention like any normal dog?"

Mum's expression shifted from distant preoccupation to something closer to bemused. "A complex emotional palette?"

"I've been thinking about it," I said, which was true. I'd been thinking about a lot of things — about Ghost and his learned helplessness, about the way animals adapted to circumstances they couldn't control, about whether contentment and happiness were the same thing or just looked similar from the outside. "Whether dogs actually feel things the way we assume they do. Or whether we're just projecting."

Mum considered this for a moment, her head tilting slightly in that way she had when she was actually engaging with a question rather than just waiting for it to pass.

"I think," she said slowly, "that you should ask your father."

She disappeared back inside before Dad could object, the sliding door scraping shut behind her. Through the glass, I could see her moving toward the kitchen, already absorbed in whatever domestic task was next on her list.

Dad looked up from the fire, clearly having missed the context of whatever he was being volunteered for. "Ask me what?"

"Whether Millie has a complex emotional palette."

He blinked. "I have absolutely no idea what that means."

"Neither did Mum, apparently."

Dad shook his head with the particular bemusement of a man who had long ago accepted that his children would say things he couldn't parse. He turned his attention back to the fire, adjusting a log that had begun to slip.

Millie chose that moment to stand abruptly, her body going rigid with the particular alertness that meant she'd detected something requiring immediate investigation. Her nose twitched. Her ears swivelled. And then she was off, bolting toward the back corner of the garden with the focused intensity of a creature on a mission.

"Millie," I called, but she ignored me completely. She'd reached the compost bin now, disappearing into the shadowed space behind it where the fence met the garden shed.

I sighed and pushed myself upright, the movement pulling at muscles that had stiffened in the cold. "I'll get her."

The garden was darker away from the fire's glow, the shapes of plants and structures reduced to outlines and suggestions. I picked my way carefully across the uneven ground, navigating by memory as much as sight. The compost bin loomed ahead, its plastic bulk barely visible against the fence.

I found Millie behind it, and the smell hit me before I could process what I was seeing.

She was rolling. Enthusiastically. Her body writhing against the ground with the ecstatic abandon of an animal who had discovered something truly magnificent and was determined to make it part of her identity. The something in question appeared to be dead, decomposing, and absolutely foul.

"Millie. No."

She ignored me, completing another full rotation before pausing to sniff appreciatively at whatever remained of what I suspected had once been a bird. Or possibly a mouse. It was hard to tell in the darkness, and I wasn't particularly keen to investigate further.

"Millie. Come."

Nothing. She was lost in whatever primal satisfaction the dead thing was providing, her entire being focused on absorbing as much of its essence as possible.

I grabbed for her collar, my fingers closing around the leather just as she attempted another roll. She twisted against the grip, her body low and resistant, but I held firm and pulled her upright. The smell intensified as I dragged her away from her prize — that thick, organic rot catching in the back of my throat.

"You," I said, hauling her toward the house as she braced her legs and leaned back against the collar, "are getting a bath."

She looked up at me with an expression of profound betrayal, but she came. She didn't have much choice.