Chapter 12: Solstice (for Ross)
Something crashed through my hair, though I could not think that a Martian had landed, not with slush and Osip snuffling at our feet, and your face as a folk song, so gold and delicious, and the branches so bare, so dappled in sunlight.
‘There’s no Martian here,’ I say, ‘though something crashed through my hair.’
A car sloshes passed. The sky swarms with new snow. I call him to heel and we make our way home, crackling through puddles, laughing at fairy lights in windows and the drop of needles we’ll get from a pine.
‘December,’ you say. ‘Are you up for a round of Auld Lang Syne?’