It was the height of August, when the sun baked the Earth. James could feel the waves of heat radiating off the air. Even Molly, who normally loved to lie outside and sunbathe, wouldn’t go out anymore.

James sighed as he petted Molly on the head. It had  been 14 years since Molly was first adopted. She’d been with James for so long, since  she was just a tiny pup. Stuck with him when he got laid off from his job, stuck with him through his divorce, and stuck with him even as his children chose their mother over him. 

She’d been a constant companion in James’s life. A Great Pyrenees, she was. Not the most popular breed, compared to others like Golden Retrievers and Border Collies, but one of the most loyal dogs ever to exist on the planet.

A constant companion. What other constants were there apart from Molly? When life’s a blur, always changing, always twisting, one gets a feel on what sticks with him throughout it all. 

The sun, for sure. It always rose up in the East, and set in the West. It’d always been a companion in James’s life, reminding him that, even as everything spun into chaos around him, when he looked into his son’s eyes and saw nothing but apathy, there was still a constant in life. Then there was time. Sure, time’s always changing, but that’s a constant in itself. James could see his transition from a cheerful young adult, to a mature adult with a loving family, to a balding middle-aged man whose life was falling apart, to a sad, white-beared old man, a former shell of himself. The fact that he was going to die, whether sooner or later, was the one goal James could still trust to happen. A constant in his life. Then what else? Right. The seasons. James could always count on Autumn to occur after Summer, and Winter after Autumn, then Spring again as it cycles back to the top, and the Summer again, completing the cycle. He knew he was going to need a change of clothes as the weather changed. Even during those days when he didn’t know whether or not he’d still have his house the next day, he always knew he was going to put more layers on, or vice versa.

James lit a cigar as he smiled, despite the circumstances. There were constants in his life. Constants he could trust, could count on. 

There were constants in his life, he repeated, as he carried Molly into the backseat, and set course for the animal hospital.