Kambarang

'Now that we are at least fifteen kilometres from your place and you won't walk that far,' I said to Flame as we hurtled towards the inlet, 'I need to tell you my plans for the evening,'
'Far out Woman,' she said, 'it's not like you are making me feel uncomfortable or anything. Can I get out now?'
'No. You know how I asked you to help me with Bobcat's ceremony?'
'Yeah.'
'Well, I don't want to bury her. I want to burn her.'
'Oh ... oh, I'm totally good with that,' Flame said immediately, shaking her head. 'Um, is this a spiritual thing? I mean ... you know, consigning her to the ashes.'
'Nah,' I said. 'Her body is so full of poison that she is completely toxic and I don't want anyone -' nodding to the dogs in the back - 'digging her up.'

Flame was quiet for a while. We got onto the Broke track and she opened a can of gin. 'Wonder how Bobcat will go on the fire?' She asked suddenly.
'She always liked it when I lit the fire,' I said and then, looking at Flame, broke into a weird kind of hysterical laughter. 'Wonder how Bobcat will go on the fire? Oh my God, that's so funny.'

On that hot Wednesday the peppermints suddenly bloomed and all the bugs in the country hatched; pouring out of the ground, out of rotten fence posts and leaf litter. I'd already that day received a postcard from a friend long dead and had Bobcat put down in the local community garden's shed. It was one of those odd days. A decent fire and the cremation of a dead cat wrapped in my favourite pashmina shawl was the least strange event.

(Note: I did discover that the pashmina was not made from a Tibetan goat's belly hairs but something quite synthetic.)