I still miss her. She’s been gone a long time now. I miss her silly grin, her soulful eyes, the way she looked at me, asking for approval, the – “Did I do that right, were you impressed?” – sort of look, while holding out her paw for confirmation, the way sheepdogs do.

We used to run and play together when I was a kid, chasing after the sheep and dodging the Alpacas until Mum called us in.

The day came when I had to leave the farm to study at Cambridge. While I was away, Jessie met a fox and they mated, resulting in four strangely-coloured sheep dogs with pointed ears and bushy tails. She presented them, grinning as usual, on my end of term return.

The years passed and a week after my twentieth-third birthday I came home late due to the storm, which came as a surprise in the afternoon. The thunder and lightning had scattered the sheep far and wide. After rounding up the last of the stragglers with Jessica, Johnny, Julio, and Jolie, Jessie’s and the fox’s offspring, we herded the sheep into the barn and I sent the dogs to their kennels, but I had to move on, as Mum had telephoned Jennifer and she came and told me before I could unsaddle my horse.

I rode over on Aries, and as soon as I entered the old farmhouse I knew why I had been summoned, and Dad confirmed it by saying, “She’s been waiting for you,” I saw by his expression it was about Jessie and as I entered the room I sensed her joy at seeing me.

I can still remember her lying there on her side on her tattered old blanket. I realized she had been awaiting my return. I knelt beside her, and she raised her head a little and looked at me. She held out her paw in her usual manner and I took it.

I sensed her pleasure at this then she laid her head down and closed her eyes for the last time.

We laid her to rest the next day in a pine box beneath the apple tree. Dad laid a stone over her grave; “Beloved Jessie” was inscribed there. He told me he had chiselled it out himself a while ago.

Her mate, the fox came the next evening, old and tired-looking, walking slowly past us as we sat on the veranda. He went straight to her grave and lay down beside it. I walked over to him and he turned his head towards me. I stroked his grey-flecked fur and scratched him gently behind the ears. Then he laid his head on his paws and like Jessie, closed his eyes for the last time.

Now there are two graves, one beside the other. The second one has a headstone too, “Beloved Ferdinand”, as we decided, after all that time, to name him.

***

William-Stephen Taylor,
Born in Manchester England on the 13.03.1944, I live in Germany and I love to write. I’ve had nothing published yet but I’m still trying.

Something Wicked is a nice guest story, have u read it?