Wicket lay belly up in the fresh cut grass in the back corner of the lawn. She basked in fat morning rays and watched insects float above her. She snapped at them, occasionally and lazily. Her eyelids began to droop when the meter reader came by.
Her lids remained low but her ears fell forward. The gate clicked. The reader walked across the cement path to the house. He hummed and clicked a pen. Plastic was unholstered from a leather belt. Tapping of keys. A digital beep. More shuffling of leather against plastic. Footsteps across cement. The gate opened. The reader left. The gate swung closed, creaking. No click. No click!
Wicket sat up and sneezed. She peered across the lawn at the gate. It was hard to tell. She stood and slunk forward a few steps, then adopted a nonchalant trot. She sidled up to the fence and followed it to the gate. She looked at the back door to the house. Silent within. She looked up at the gate latch--it was not resting in its trough. No click! No click!
She shoved her nose between the gate and the fence and pulled on the gate. It swung open a few inches, reluctantly. Wicket shoved her head through, her wooly white hair catching on the dehydrated wood. She pushed through and broke into an instant run.
Wicket bolted up the driveway, pelting gravel out behind her. Her feet found sidewalk and she turned abruptly, resisting a centripetal urge to topple. She zoomed down the block, racing over slabs of cement and lines of weedy grass. Her back feet stretched up between her front feet, propulsed down and back and out. She leapt from the curb onto asphalt, and crossed in three arches of her back.
More blocks passed beneath Wicket's paws--she accelerated steadily. Houses blurred by. Cars passed within inches of her lithe wooly mass. Air and smells shoved themselves up her nostrils and into her brain--a heady stimulus that made her eyes water.
Wicket passed into the forest. The air was darker, thick, cooler. Pinier. The musks of animals curled up into her nose. Her eyes grew big, engorged with joy. The trees and leaves, and snuffly ground litter fused as her mass grew heavier. Her hair straightened and slicked itself back; she was an aerodynamic bullet. Her feet left the earth as she shot through air, no longer needed to push her forward.
Wicket rose into the sky, effortlessly escaping gravity. She pushed the atmosphere into great circular waves that crashed and boomed on the eardrums of the living things left behind. She aimed for the warmth of the sun.
In a minute she passed by the moon, arcing ever so slightly towards it. She was a ribbon of white light, with two dark brown stripes for eyes; her delicate nose dotted the lead of the ribbon. She breathed in the vacuum silence. The light from the sun became scent--it was every food, every plant, every being, all at once.
As Wicket's mass became infinite, she exploded into weightless particles, and passed through the barrier of time. She was everywhere, everywhen. Utter pleasure. All senses satisfied.
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