As Cynthia crushed the fallen leaves under foot, she felt cold air swarm around her; the awkward, shuddering crumple of the leaves transforming into the crisp snap of ice on frozen earth.
And so she, too, froze: the sound passed, but the feeling (the cold, the wind, the satisfaction of this simple pleasure) remained. Her heart grasped it, held and pulled each second to near breaking point, then wound them up and tucked them away, knowing that even these warped and tired moments would be a sanctuary later.

How she missed the cold! Not the cool, but the sort of cold that saw no impediment in walls, clothes, or flesh; the cold that consumed all; that sank into your bones and your breath; that even the brightest sunlight couldn’t touch.

How trapped she felt in this heat! Every day, the mug and the steam pressing against her, physical yet immobile, oppressive and heavy as a corpse. Was it sweat or tears? Almost always both.

She felt its sweaty fingers teasing at her, pulling her from her icy reverie; felt it smirk at her sentimentalism, still frozen in her awkward half-step. The sweat and tears stung her eyes as shame’s hand deftly propelled her forward: each shattering leaf no longer conjuring joy, but grief. She stumbled forward, for the silent safety of the burning concrete, and fell to her knees.

She would die here, she knew: not in a quiet, cool cocoon, but in the scorch and rage and sweat. Her mind and body would wilt and curl, and they would be proven right: she should never have left.

And at this thought, she stopped, and she sat.

How had she ended up here, ruled by shame and truculence, persecuted by nostalgia and sweat? In the cold, she had felt corporal; in this heat, she had become a vapour, shaped and tossed by outside forces. Where had she gone?

She held herself and remembered her shape; she touched her face and remembered the skin beneath the tears and sweat.

She reached into her heart and pulled out the moments it had tucked away and, worn and stretched though they were, she strapped them around herself and defined her own form. The more she pulled, the more generous her heart became: so many moments, of all colours and sizes, stretched and shrunk, faded and vibrant, moulded her, clothed her.

She would die here, she knew; but, perhaps, she could also live.

 

He had felt the coldness enter him again; the rock walls rising up around him, not like a prison but a cocoon, a sanctuary. The darkness, so fearsome before, was comforting here; its vice, the familiar grasp of a not-so-long forgotten friend.

He felt the cords tying him back to the world tense, then slacken, as though cut from a distance. He bundled them around himself and, in the grasp of the cold darkness, wove them into a net; each knot, a connection half-remembered; the potential of a glance, a smile; the quiet echo of loss, not as a scream, but a fading whimper.

He clothed himself in half, and cast the other into the dark, but it caught only on the rocks around him, brought back only twigs and dirt. He repaired it, in earnest at first, tightening and expanding the weave in the hope his luck might turn; but eventually, he cast it out one last time and gave it up to the quiet.

Unfamiliar voices and thoughts echoed in, and then drifted past, their fading syllables plucking at his cloak. He gasped as it tightened around him, the memory of its original design tensing and twisting at the sound.

He wrenched it off but, weakened, could only cast it at his feet.

“At least there is peace here,” he said.

And the cloak replied, “In this hollow, there can be no peace, only silence.”

 

Pushed, as he was by the cacophony of life, he fell into the shrub; the scream of his breath and the scraping of his stumbling feet tearing into the silence. Further he stumbled, the trees growing higher around him, the gravity of the bush replacing the push of the world beyond, until he reached the creek: the pulling gently released him and he slowed into the water.

And there he sat, in the silence; his breath synchronising with the breeze as though, like the rustling leaves, it was also blowing through him: the screams silenced, his feet finally still.

Soon, though, he realised that the silence was not so quiet at all. He heard the bird calls (three, four, six…), the buzz of insects (but no tell of their sting); felt the water and air roll around him, alternating warm, cool, slow, fast… it rose around him as a symphony, his own sounds gone.

But, no, he was part of it; an instrument of his own, yes, but enmeshed in this orchestra.

He lay back into himself and felt the water and dirt enrobe him as he slowly sank down; felt the tree roots reach out to hold his hands and steady his feet; felt his heat become its warmth; its cold, his cool.

Together they lay: as the sun and moon cycled on; and they rose and fell with the rain and tide; breathing and sighing… together.

 

The pub had never been as full as it was on the night of the McKenzie fire. Whiskey and beer, drunk and spilled in equal measure, flowed freely to the patrons, drunk and riled in equal measure, but ever wary of the plank June kept under the premixes in case anyone got too unruly.

The first wisps of smoke barely ignited curiosity amongst the throng, as though even they were too distracted by the frivolity to bother the crowd with something so serious, but soon the wisps became a wall, pressing and pushing, as coughing and confusion spread through the patrons.

It was Dan Lewis (barely 46, the balloons hadn’t even made it to the outside bin) who first connected the pieces, through prescience (or a surreptitious headcount), and asked if anyone had seen the McKenzies; the mildly camouflaged panic amplified as it echoed from mouth to ear and off the plaster walls.

But soon the panic fell to silence, the path forward clear despite the thickening smoke. Neighbours (as they all were) avoided each other’s glances in tacit agreement: the McKenzies (neighbours in geography only) would manage, or not, as God saw fit. So windows were closed, cigarettes relighted, and drinks (despite June’s uncharacteristically unstable hand) refilled. And, as the fog of woodsmoke, tobacco and whiskey settled into the deepening night, the matter was forgotten.

June (née McKenzie) pulled up her coat as the bitter cold of near dawn settled, and she clicked the final lock on the pub’s back door. As expected, the old shed (had her father used it last, or her grandfather?) had been far enough off to allay suspicion. She wondered how long they’d burn and choke before it was too late.

The shed rasped a parched splinter into the breeze: it hit the wall and settled in the dry grass, its glow growing into a flame.

And as the murmurs of confusion turned into screams of terror, she turned away from the town that had been a neighbour only in geography and, family in arm, disappeared into the bush.