Once a year, the village square stops smelling like itself. Tonight it smells like charcoal, fried dough, a hundred different conversations mixed into the same warm air. The summer fair only comes once, and all of Seabreeze Bay feels it in its paws before even arriving: everyone walks differently, faster, ears already tuned to the music you can hear from three streets away.
We arrived when the sky still hadn't quite decided whether it was day or fully night, that half hour when the stall lights are already on but still competing with what's left of the daylight. By the time the sun finished setting, the whole square glowed differently: colored lanterns, a stage where someone was tuning a guitar, and rows of wooden stalls with food that makes any dog in the village lose their mind a little.
Among all the stalls, there's one Rocco isn't allowed near. The sausage stand. And it's not because nobody ever explained it to him — the whole village knows the story, retold every summer as if it were new.
It happened two fairs ago. Rocco had about half the common sense he has now, which is already saying little, and decided that the string of sausages hanging off the counter was, basically, a gift from destiny placed at his exact height. He jumped, grabbed the whole thing, knocked over the napkin bucket, two chairs, and a man carrying a plate of fries, and took off running with half a dozen sausages dangling from his mouth like a war trophy. Ever since, the stand owner spots him from far away and is already shaking his head before Rocco gets within ten meters.
This year, Rocco kept his distance. Sitting by the stage, wearing the face of someone pretending not to care about anything happening fifteen meters away, while the smell of grilled sausage reached him anyway, because a nose doesn't understand punishment.
Max was the first to notice. It's always Max. He walked up to the counter, made his most effective puppy face — the one he saves for important occasions — got a whole sausage as a treat, and instead of eating it right there, carried it in his mouth across the entire square to where Rocco sat, pretending not to be waiting for anything.
They didn't say anything. They didn't need to. Rocco ate the sausage in two bites, and for the first time in two fairs, he stopped looking at the counter with that half-apologetic face.
The stand owner saw the whole thing from a distance. He didn't say anything either. But as we were leaving, at the end of the night, he let — as if by accident — a whole sausage drop to the ground near Rocco, and looked away before anyone could thank him.
Some things in this village get forgiven slowly, with sausages that fall to the ground by accident, without anyone ever having to say out loud that it's already forgiven.
— Linda 🐾
🐾 Saturday, Max narrates: what he discovers in the highest branches of the Ancient Oak the first time he approaches it at night.