Red was a well-mannered dog.
He didn’t bark at streetlights, he didn’t chase leaves, and he wasn’t afraid of much — except when his bowl was empty and no one noticed.
That evening, though, something strange happened.
Outside the window came a bang.
Then another.
And then another one still, as if someone were knocking on the sky with a drum.
Red lifted one ear.
Then the other, because with just one he never quite understood everything.
He wasn’t scared.
He had an idea.
Each bang sounded different.
One was short, one was long, one simply went boom.
Red thought they sounded a bit like the notes his human whistled while making coffee.
So Red did something new.
He began to answer the noises.
When he heard a sharp bang, he made a short sound.
When the noise was long, he stretched his voice too.
When there was a pause outside, Red waited.
From inside his doghouse, Red was composing a melody.
He used the sky as a drum and his voice as a song.
The bangs continued, but they didn’t feel chaotic anymore.
At least, not in Red’s head.
Red understood something important, even if he didn’t have words for it:
sometimes the most beautiful things aren’t born from order,
but when someone makes room for the disorder,
listens to it,
and gently tries to put it together.
Every sound found its place.
Every pause became important.
And while the world made a mess of things, Red arranged the noises one by one, the way you do with thoughts when you don’t want to argue with the new year.
At last, silence arrived.
The real kind, the kind that lasts only a moment.
Red yawned, satisfied.
He curled up in his doghouse and thought that if the new year had arrived out of tune, at least someone had tried to tune it.
He fell asleep with his nose resting on the blanket.
And the new year, perhaps out of good manners, came in quietly.