Januariad

A tree. Sticks. A path, a puddle, sticks. Legs, shoes, paper cups. Lolly is taking inventory of the street. Her head swings up from the footpath at odd moments, her eyes refocus, surveying the route ahead, the upper bodies passing by, the cooing strangers. The memories she is already losing. And down again, her nose goes back into the soupy firmament that demands the fullest part of her attention.

She stands a little under six hands high. Her spine stretches four feet from her crown to tail—a tight mass of sinewy muscle that boils as she moves. This brawn sits bunched in the back, the shoulders, the thighs, while her flanks show clearly the regular bars of her ribs. Her hair is an even bristled blond, white at the mouth.

Lolly doesn’t like the lead. She is young, hasn’t given in just yet. She likes the wrong side of poles, the wrong side of oncomers. She takes chaotic diversions into garden sumps to smell the bins and the winter crud that collects under walls. Everything is carefully examined. Lolly is evenhanded, showing no disappointment nor particular favour towards any particular piece of crap.

In the open she is unleashed, and bolts before minds are changed. She recedes into the distance, accompanied by a fading thrum on the soil. Two hundred metres in ten seconds. The speck of her veers left and she returns in a great circle, mouth open, tongue hanging, laughing soundlessly into the wind. Her legs are willow rods, barely tipping the ground as she goes.