weddy

The Clock's Drift
By E Franklin

The afternoon sky is pale, almost blinding when considered. The air around you is dark; as if the molecules themselves were tinted. The waters of the dam would normally reflect the sky but today they appear to you as a great sheet of some heavy stone you think you've heard the name of but can't quite pass it across your tongue. Sporadically, weak ripples set forth from the dam's irregularly scalloped limits, but these are soon to die into the same heavy flatness of the surrounding water. You notice now the absence of the usual bevy of wading birds that frequent the water's shallow regions to pick off the silvery fingerlings and mosquito fish that prefer those warmer spots.
He would usually be there beside you; the Clock always knew when it was time to switch the pump on to water the nursery. You had often claimed he knew down to the very second what time the two of you should be commencing the walk down to the dam. Even during winter when the atmosphere was painfully frigid in comparison to the warmth of your house, the Clock would be there - a great damp nose pressed against the door, breathing a halo of vapour onto the glass - and you would curse him. Visitors witnessing this phenomenon would suggest that he simply remembered the position of the sun in the sky, but as the seasons change and the daylight decreases the Clock's timing is the constant - not the quantity of light.
You go to slap away a mosquito, before realising that for once you are not being bitten. The air has a stillness to it that makes you wonder if the Earth itself has ceased its revolutions. The air is crisp and cool where it touches your skin - a welcome change from the oppressive humidity of earlier in the day. Near your feet an untidy streak of ants moves across the gravel. A storm is fermenting; the ants and spiders always knew too soon, the Clock too.
The Clock knew the timings for more than just the excursion to the pump-house. He knew his meal times - most dogs do but not to his exacting standards; he knew the time to get up in the morning, the time for the kids to travel to and from school and the time to shut the chooks away in their shed. Whenever the precise time for any of these things rolled around the Clock would be there: warping the fly-screens to the shape of his body and thumping a broad white-tipped tail against the exposed timber of the verandah. The others object to these constant and accusing reminders, and you also tend to resent his impatient company and have on more than one occasion aimed an ill-tempered kick at his furry flank.
The dark lump is floating on the far side of the dam, where the water is deeper and the edges garrotted with kangaroo-grass and the ghostly thirsting roots of melaleucas. There is no breeze to urge it through the water, so there is barely a ripple from where it lies semi-submerged. You can see from where you stand that the lump is something that was once living but now is no longer. You need go no closer to determine that the waterlogged body is covered in a coarse brown fur.
The rain begins and the wind picks up, blowing into your face and bending back your eyelashes. From across the dam the Clock drifts slowly towards you.