Roadkill Cafe, Part 10

Jack fell down and broke his crown, and Jill came tumbling after.

Well, that’s how the nursery rhyme goes.  Turns out when you combine two names in any form, it’s bound to be accurate.  That’s what I learned when I met Jack and Jill, a couple of dogs.  Jack came first, and he always moved first, and Jill was always sure to follow.  They were bad influences on each other, a couple of miscreants.  They were also incredibly lovable.

What they didn’t know and didn’t seem to care about was that they were always getting in each other’s way, and only noticed when they both wanted to play with the same toy.  They were leapers, always leaping, always excitable, always energized, except when they settled down for a snooze, and then they were perfect little angels.

They inhabited their own world.  That’s the only way to explain it.  Somehow they got around to a form of independence where they were happy to amuse themselves, and they always seemed to have some funny thought in their heads, except when someone came around and gave them what they wanted, and then they were jubilant about that, too, always so pleased with the world, even when it denied them their heart’s content.

(Pay attention to that, Ribsy told me.)

Some would say they were full of animal instincts, and were dominated by them even when it seemed were almost civilized, Jack with his crossed paws, Jill with all her beguiling tricks, even that creepy smile, using her eyes and her low-crawling ability and a lethal tongue to warm anyone over.  But Jill’s talents worked a little too well, the opposite of Hazel, an object lesson in extremes, so that she, too, disappeared.

But they were both back together at the Roadkill Café.  It was inconceivable to think of Jack without Jill, even though it’s happened once and it happened again and two can also be one just as much as two, a mystery of the universe.  This was a place where reality was folded in on itself, and only the most pure forms of nature existed, only truths, no more hiding.  Jack looked serious, Jill snuggled beside him, a couple of demure figures, the opposite and yet the same as they had always been.  Opposites are always equal, especially here.