On the afternoon the world slipped sideways, I was sitting on a grassy hill watching my dog chase something that may or may not have been there.
The ground was warm beneath me. Late-summer warmth, the kind that seeps slowly through your clothes and into your bones until you forget there was ever a difference between the earth and your body.
Settled.
The grass had gone a little yellow at the tips from weeks without rain, and the breeze gave the blades a dry whisper.
My dog, Smudge, zigzagged across the slope, stopping abruptly every few seconds to pounce at empty air. At least it looked empty to me.
He’d leap forward, land, sniff the ground, then dart three feet to the left as if whatever he was chasing had slipped away just in time.
I watched him with the patient curiosity you reserve for dogs and children, creatures who seem to perceive entire layers of the world the rest of us can’t access.
Eventually he lost interest.
Smudge circled twice before settling beside my leg. He lowered himself slowly, like an old man negotiating a chair, then let out a long, theatrical sigh. A sigh that suggested the universe had finally arranged itself to his satisfaction.
I scratched the back of his neck.
His tail thumped once against the grass.
Below the hill, a narrow road curved through the trees. Every few minutes a car passed along it, but the sound arrived softened by distance. The tires on pavement dissolved into something that barely resembled machinery.
More like wind moving through water. Or water moving through wind. Something distant and continuous.
My thoughts circled movement that day.
Not the obvious kind.
Cars.
Birds.
Clouds.
But the quieter motion underneath everything. The movement you never feel unless you stop long enough to remember it exists. The Earth spins at about a thousand miles an hour. That number had been rattling around my head since morning. A thousand miles an hour.
