PINK FRISBEE

It had been a silly mistake to throw the frisbee for the friendly little pooch. A brown kelpie who appeared to be almost smiling as he stood there with his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth looking alternately at the frisbee and then  back at me. Applying pressure. Begging me to throw that thing for the one thousandth time.

I was nervous sitting with the sun-tanned girls on that long stretch of hot white sand.

The dog dipped its head looking impatiently at me with quick glances at the frisbee in between penetrating periods of staring the way only an animal can. As if it knew exactly what was going on in my head.

Of course I threw the frisbee again. He’d worn me down. Of course it didn't matter where I threw it either. He’d always retrieve it.

In a few moments he was back with a little bit of the saliva slipping off the black serrated edge of his lip as he bent from the shoulder and placed the pink thing again at my feet. The pattern was possibly regenerating a bad memory, a nightmare perhaps, or even a sad and secret event once buried but unexpectedly dug up.

The sun glittered on the humble sea, gulls screeched from behind me somewhere, the hairs on my toes had gone blonde, the marks in the sand were a lost civilisation seen from space.

“How long will she talk for?” I wondered. “Is she just doing this to make me mad?”

I resisted but eventually cast the thing away half-heartedly so the dog retrieved it effortlessly and almost instantly came trotting back warmly with its tail gently wagging presenting another frisbee-enforced smile. A narrowing stripe ran from his moist nose all the way to the crease between his eyes. The eyebrows flickered. Very yellow irises looked like the sacred flames in the temple of all sudden insurrections and the hand holding the flaming torch was probably mine. I turned to glance back at myself and realised I was seeing out of that dog’s eyes, watching myself being confused; blonde hair and uncertainty, looking everywhere at once.
He picked up the frisbee and threw it again. I sprang to my paws, leapt three times as was my want and snapped it flying through the air. That's  what was happening. I was the drunken pilot in an empty plane.

The jagged plastic-to-teeth sound relocated me as I landed back on the sand from where I jindled back, dropped the pink disc at his feet and stepped well away to focus my gaze.
The next time he threw it almost straight away, without the usual build up, but he threw it like I had seen so many times before that I knew it had only been a matter of time before he would throw it into the sea. Into that huge wet thing which pulsed on the edge but slept on its own dream elsewhere.

The pathetic little waves were enough to hold me back, not really, but I knew that’s how it would appear to any of the humans interested in a dog’s welfare. Sure enough, the life-saver waiting for his friend on the big board flicked the floating disc  close enough for me to snap and carry back. Even if he’d moved. Trying to hide. A new wave had risen since that last throw and this time I was on it. Hounding him to take a good long look at himself.

What was he but a fool pushed and pulled and spun like mobiles. To reach and grasp, pull back, cry, laugh, wait, live or wonder. He knew, always had, but didn’t want to find the progression from alienation to madness. Nobody mentioned it. A mintie wrapper blew past. One of the girls pointed at a ship on the horizon. I scratched the edge of the frisbee with a paw and sat back like the sphinx examining his state of mind, looking into those holes in his head where the inside and the outside blend. It was true! He wanted rid of me. I'd seen it coming. 
There was no longer time for consideration, the frisbee had been thrown, it was up to me to catch it. To retreive it. But as I flew through the air they were already packing. They were leaving. Leaving me to find another thrower. Every catcher needs a thrower. We all know without it there can be no game.