Moon: Waxing crescent
1 "Wet tyres, on bright roads, hiss."
She walks in space between constituents of light. She is not the darkness, but she walks in darkness, and the light has no other word for her. If the bulk of an atom is emptiness, she is in that space; if most wavelengths of light are invisible, this is where she will live. She is the sound between the sounds when you speak your name, or your best friend's name, or when you cry for help.
A car passes. The shadow of a lamp-post wheels across her, rippling over her face: a perfect fit. The rain has ended and wet tyres, on bright roads, hiss.
Some say that each atom and every hot beast of the sea is a syllable of the Word of God, an instant in the brief thought that is creation. And inside lies the silence that precedes creation, the appalling hush which shuts to sound, and opens, like a black rose, when that sound is ended.
She turns left into a lit corridor. She can hardly bear her body's weight. To her, tonight, her flesh is thick and heavy and strange. She looks left and right. Finding a table, she sits in silence, allowing her eyes to fall slowly closed. Nothing is worth seeing.
Soon though, soon, she will see the light she has been searching for, and she will be mistaken - a mistake that she, but not only she, will come to regret.
2 "Her back to the street."
Jonathan squinted against the glare of a Legion Cab, his eyes sore from cigarette smoke, the flash of rock'n'roll lighting, and the shifting reflections on Darlinghurst Road, slick with dead rain. Walking on the footpath a few paces ahead, Christine raised her hand to touch the moisture clinging to the leaves of a council gum. As Jonathan passed beneath the gum tree a single drop slipped from the still-swaying limb to find its way down the back of his collar: "Shit!" and he bit back the word, not wanting her to hear. Direct hit.
