Thread by @TheMERL

Today it is my great pleasure to introduce you to a lovely, special dog from our collection who sits very close to my heart:

Firedog

🌟 a thread made from flames🌟

Firstly, what kind of dog is Firedog?

Firedog is a cast iron dog. Which is a rare breed, in a rare life, on a rare habitable world

If you visit the park today, i'm quite confident you won't find a dog quite like it

(but we'd encourage you to do so, all the same)

And it's an unusual name, too: Firedog

Maybe not in @Pokemon, which this isn't

(And don't worry: we're not a trainer, not here to battle.

Just to talk with you about a cast iron dog, called Firedog,

in the hope that maybe you'll then talk to it)

And this isn't a dog made of flame. At least no more than any other one

Although it was made with it: in a blast furnace, from iron, steel, limestone, coke

Firedog arrived in the world like the Big Bang

(and in your own way, so did you)

The reason why Firedog is called Firedog is because Firedog sat by the hearth, the fireplace, over the fire

Maybe it reminded it of something that it lost

(Maybe it reminded it of home)

Firedog sat by the flame and gave the people company, in a cottage in Telscombe, East Sussex, a century ago

(People who no longer are alive today)

Or maybe it sat there to protect the flame itself, keep it alive, keep it company, safe

like an aegis of the light

or both

And just like the people, that flame too has faded.

A firedog's also a technical term

It's the bracket that's used to hold the logs which make the fire light

And here's some i prepared earlier, a hundred years ago.

(Each unique, each the home of a different flame. Every single time)

But this isn't JUST a firedog

Not any old firedog. As if you could pluck it from the air

No. It's Firedog

who its owners loved

who sat by the hearth and watched the flame go out

(And what we hope to have shown is that no firedog is really just a firedog)