The clock had just struck 12 midnight, and an owl hooted. This time, not a distress call of a spell or announcing a dark cloud hanging over them, but a merry tooting in the midnight forest.
A lion’s roar warned the snapping grasshoppers that his menu didn’t change. A snake came out of the burrow, hissing, shshshshshshsh. “What’s that?”, a squeaking mouse queried. “It’s a new year, I’m after fresh mice or toads,” the snake whispered.
Inside the hut, nanny jingled her necklaces of beads together. Then, her wrinkled hands somehow touched a pee-pot. She tapped the nighty pot, and her guitarist skills stirred her great grand baby out of deep sleep. Instead of crying as usual, the baby drummed the milk bottle against the beeping toy car brought by mammy on Christmas.
Outside, grandpa took a tyre bar and hit the rusted rim of his old Bedford, smiling over the years it had stood on the bricks. His actions spurred the chickens out of the chickens’ coop, the old Bedford. They too cackled as to why the old man would disturb them; not that they were sleeping with both eyes shut.
The white and black dog barks, only pausing to the loud barking reply coming from nearby homesteads. The barking party had just begun.
The tanked-up clergyman had overnighted at the Marula tree; he too banged the church’s bell, dangling and swinging from the tree. He had prayed for this day.
Afterwards, Tate Kristmus, the only man with a Nissan 1400, pressed the hooter on the car for as long as he could pinch his ears to make known of the crossover to 2024. He thought of spanning and revving the car, but the diesel tank was empty. He knew the community’s water pump runs on diesel, but he snubbed the idea.
Life had come to a standstill, and one could tell apart the braying donkeys from the mooing cows. The crying bell hinted the animals to look forward to greenery offshoots that sprawl after such noise.
A teen who had overslept grabbed her homework book and ripped pages. She kindled the loose papers one by one and tossed them flickering in the air, as the twinkling papers formed streaks of light mid-air.
It was a new day, but more so, a new year. Grandpa smacked kisses on the children’s cheeks.