Written with the prompts:  dreams don’t come easy, blended spirits, can I kiss you, change your name, Gloria quacked, not a nice person, new guy in class, on our bellies one inch at a time, or what?, shared an unspoken awareness

Allison dreamed she was on her belly, crawling over the wet lawn one inch at a time, pressing on nut grass and dandelions.  She lifted her head.  Venus was racing the sun to rise over the levee before dawn.  She rolled onto her back to watch the planet shimmering on the lilac horizon, dancing with the blended spirits of every wild animal that had ever visited her along the levee trails.  “Can I kiss you?” a coyote whispered, and Allison leaned forward.  “Yes, but only if you allow me to change your name.”

The coyote laughed and Allison startled awake at the sound of her husband snoring.  It was almost time so she pulled on her sweats and slid into the kitchen.  

Jim followed a few minutes later and she handed him a mug of coffee and milk the way he liked it.  He laid a quick peck on the corner of her lip, missing her mouth.  “If you had to name a coyote,” she asked him, “what would you call him?”

“What now?” he mumbled.

“A coyote,” she replied.  “What would you name a coyote?”

“Jimmy Kimmel.”

“Be serious.”

“Or what?”  He squeezed her arm and pulled her in for a second chance, this time hitting the mark with a more affectionate buss.  Their four-year-old Gloria wandered in, quacking.  This was new.

“There are ducks in my room,” Gloria announced.

“And what are their names?” Jim asked his daughter.

“I dunno,” Gloria said.  “You should ask them.”

Allison was beating eggs.  “Are there really ducks or did you dream of ducks?”

“Maybe,” Gloria conceded.  Allison gave her toast and bid her to sit.

“What would you name a coyote?” Allison asked Gloria.

“What’s a coyote?”

“You know, like a dog?” Jim said helpfully.

“Can we get a dog?” Allison asked.

“No,” Jim said quickly.

“Why not?” Gloria asked, and Jim rolled his eyes at his wife.  Allison served up scrambled eggs and wandered out the back door, nursing her black coffee.  

She stared at the levee stretching across the back of their yard, wondering why she found it necessary to change a coyote’s name in the first place.  “Dreams don’t come easy,” she said aloud.  

For some unknown reason she thought of the new guy in her dystopian literature class, just a boy really, he reminded her of her first, a guy who’d gaslit her, not a nice person.  This new kid was like so many young men his age, with his pointed comments and sassy questions, looking to prove something.  She closed her eyes and breathed deeply.  It was not her job to fight with him, nor was it her job to tame him.

The V-shaped crevice between their orange tree and the neighbor’s pine was filling with sunlight, and a soft wooden whistle was trilling in the distance.  Allison nearly spit out her coffee as she abruptly lifted her chin to scan the sky.  She knew that sound, she waited every fall for that soft annunciation, and there they were:  a small flock of sandhill cranes, so high up in the pale sky that they were barely visible, but–there!  There they were, circling above the river, seemingly indecisive, trading places, forming an arrow, then a circle, then an arrow again, finally edging off toward the south.  Their chortling so soothing, almost like a cat’s purr.  “I could listen to it all day,” Allison whispered to herself.

She lowered her face to sip her coffee, and she saw atop the levee a canine.  A coyote?  No, they seldom come so close to the house.  It was her neighbor’s German Shepherd mix, a handsome dog with a stubbed tail and a high-pitched bark.  

Now there’s a name she would change:  Zeus.  Who names their dog Zeus?  She and the dog exchanged glances, an unspoken awareness.  Certainly the name embarrassed the poor dog too, she thought.  “I would name you Nelson Mandela or Barack Obama or Francis of Assisi,” she called to the dog.  She paused.  “Or James,” she said decisively.  After he husband.  She’d chosen well.  He was a nice person.  Any coyote would be proud.

Photo by Chris Briggs on Unsplash