There was little movement in the valley except for the man and his dog. The man wore a mask and his dog did not…

The dog wore a harness fastened to a leash fastened loosely around the wrist of the man. They were to make their usual walk around the loop at the end of their street lined with homes dating back to the mid-century. The dog caught a scent and pulled the man to the side of the road and snorted the dust and urine of an unknown animal.

The man looked to the sun and saw it whole without a squint. It hanged in a gauze of orange the ball. He thought of a flashlight shining through several children’s bedsheets but these sheets were woven from the exhale of a wildfire half a state up. And then he saw. Tiny ash. White like ash fell and it fell like old snow. The man captured an image on his device of the redness in the east and shared it with those far away so they too could see the image. The man lamented that it would not be the same experience for the device did not capture his despair and realization that things could not be atoned for and he would witness the end. And perhaps this was for the best as the man had tired of living in the present. His wrist yanked and the dog looked up at him and they moved back to the loop.