Father’s Day was not yet, but was minutes nigh. All of the emotions, all of the terror. Nothing about anything was good about the day to come, and nothing about anything was good about these last minutes in the day prior to the day to come.

There were stars in the sky, the clouds having opted to show respect by rolling back for the evening leading into the fated day. A bit of trivia: K-Roo’s father— a man of the world with prismatic interests— when younger wished to understand the far away spaces beyond this world, wished to be an astronomeroo.

When Kangaroo was but a joey, there were so many nights when his father would take him out into the fields, telescope in one paw & little K-Roo’s little roo paw in the other, to look up at the stars. The stars impossible, the stars sure. Glowing spheres of gases & energy, they were the very embodiment of illumination; and what they essentially were— light— travelled headlong to the Earth at the fastest speed known to roomankind. It was strange to know this speed, and how that by which one saw was a measurable thing in motion, coming from outer space.

And now, turning around the sun, it’s Father’s Day.

And MC K-Roo reached into his pouch & extracted a small book by a beloved authoroo who had also not long ago recently passed: Small Memories, by José Saramagoroo— specifically the hardcover & dust-jacketed English edition, priced in British pounds. On the lower half of the cover: an illustration of a father & his son, the father’s arm around his son, they’re sitting up against a tree, looking up at stars, constellations. It caused The Furry Fury to tear.