Alisaura
Blue Crack Supplier
Did I mention this is a really long story? 
Also... I couldn't resist the setting for this chapter.
Disclaimer: Total fiction... mistakes are my own, song quotes are not.
end of chapter 6:
--------
"I think I'm going to look for a longer-term job next," I said, stopping to look at Glen. "Somewhere abroad."
He looked back at me. "I see. Was dinner that bad?" He gave a small smile, and came over to hug me.
"Horrible," I replied, smiling back over his shoulder. "It'll take me at least three months to get over it."
"That long? Wow. Those snow peas must have been really rancid."
We stood back. "You need to get away?" Glen asked.
"Yeah. I've had enough of Wales for a while."
"I'll try not to be too offended," he smiled. "Just don't be in too much of a hurry to leave, okay?"
"You could always come with me," I said. "How much leave do you have accrued, again?"
Glen sighed. "It never seems to be a good time."
"Sod them! You've worked up that leave, take it. It's their fault if they can't cope while you're gone."
"I'm management now. One of 'them', O ye of the independent spirit."
"Corporate politics," I said, and made a rude noise.
"You chose your path, and I chose mine," Glen smiled.
----------
Chapter 7:
----------
Livin' on, solid rock
Standin' on, ancient ground...
Two weeks later, I was in Australia. I would have preferred Hawaii, but I wasn't complaining. I was to spend the next two months mapping and prospecting in the wilderness of Western Australia, looking for some form of mineral deposit. Gold, diamonds, zinc, silver, lead, iron ore, bauxite; the mining company didn't seem to care. My field area was vast, by British standards, but it was a tiny speck compared to the size of the state, let alone the whole continent. Little wonder that so much of Australia remained unmapped in detail, geologically speaking. It was common practice, here, to hire a geologist for a few months of mapping, let them find the next lode of ore, then send them on their way. Just my kind of job.
I'd presented my second lot of data to the university back home a week earlier. It had gone down well, and Dr. Lawson had no cause for complaint... except that rumours were rife that his budget was about to be slashed. I'd offered my commiserations, and had a quiet cackle once I'd got back to my car.
Glen had seen me off from the airport, with many words of warning about spiders and snakes and crocodiles and drop-bears and rabid kangaroos. He was good for a laugh, was my man. He'd even given me a Bush Tucker Man survival guide. As if I'd never been out here before...
Well, I hadn't been to Western Australia before, but I'd read a lot about it, and I figured it couldn't be much different to the area around Broken Hill, where I'd done some post-doctoral field work. It was another red desert, towards the other side of the country. Beautiful, alien landscapes. It made me wonder what those earlier British people had been thinking, settling this land and trying to pretend it was just like Europe. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Australia was a land shaped by fire, in a very literal sense. The native Aboriginals had adopted "fire-stick farming" thousands of years ago, burning forest to replace it with grassland, which attracted food animals like kangaroos. Eucalyptus trees evolved to depend on fire for their reproduction, and they, along with other fire-tolerant species, came to dominate the flora. And most of the continent baked under a harsh sun, making water and food hard to find.
Europe, on the other hand, was shaped by ice. Glaciers had covered half the continent during the last Ice Age, grinding through mountains and reshaping the landscape. When they retreated, they left behind spectacular valleys, and a great deal of ground-up rock, which became fertile soil. This probably accounts for the vast difference between Europe's landscape and population, and that of Australia. Australia's land surface is far more ancient; weathered and leached of nutrients. Beautiful, but no breadbasket.
It was good to be back here. Even in the Welsh wilderness I could get claustrophobic, it seemed – that simply wasn't possible in the real desert of Western Australia. When even tufts of grass were few and far between, and survival depended on a 4WD crammed with supplies and a CB radio, I could feel blissfully, utterly alone.
After a few weeks, I even grew to resent having to check in each night on the radio, so the company would know I was still alive. A very necessary precaution in a place which killed foreign tourists on a semi-regular basis, but I would have been happier with no human contact at all. It was only a minute out of each day, though.
My field area was similar to Broken Hill, but different. It was still beautiful, seemingly untouched, red dirt beneath an endless dome of blue. It was winter there, but it wasn't the sort of winter I was familiar with. Hot days, and freezing nights of breathtaking clarity. You've never seen the stars until you've gone out into the desert at night.
The Aboriginal people attached a great deal of spiritual significance to the land they lived on. They believed their ancestor spirits created the land, and were a part of it. In some ways, Australia was a deeply spiritual place, with tens of thousands of years of history... but it wasn't my history. I couldn't feel a connection to the place. Which was probably just as well, since there was a distinct possibility that someone would be digging a mine here if I found anything.
------
One night, I dreamed. I saw the stone circle back in Wales, but through different eyes than mine. The owner of the eyes I was looking through felt awe, reverence, and something like sorrow... There was some sort of effort to push aside unpleasant memories. The stones were glowing in the light of a sunrise behind me, and I was moving slowly towards them. There was something in my arms, and I sensed more than heard people following behind me.
As I, or we, got closer, the sense of reverence grew deeper, even as some detached corner of myself noticed that there was no lichen on the stones, and all of them were upright, the carved lines sharp and clear. Words were flowing through my head – the language was not English, but inside this person's head, I almost understood the meaning behind them. A dedication, an offering, a prayer of thankfulness, all being silently rehearsed.
I paused just short of the stones, and glanced around, to one side and just behind me. A bearded man looked back at me, dark-haired and hazel-eyed, his expression unreadable. Something hard burned in his eyes. The feeling of sorrow, streaked with anger, surged and threatened to overwhelm my purpose there, but was ruthlessly repressed. As was the brief memory of flickering darkness and screams. I turned back, re-focussing my thoughts on the offering to Earth, in thanks for the life we drew from it.
I stepped into the circle, and woke up. Instead of damp grass and gold-lit stones, I was staring up at ten million brilliant points of light, scattered across the cold black night. I'd fallen asleep beside the fire, which had now died down to glowing coals. I was cold, but I didn't move yet. I was still gripped by the strength of the dream, every detail was still clear. I almost felt that the person whose eyes I had seen through was still with me.
I squeezed my eyes shut, blotting out the starscape. Ridiculous. Just another dream, random neurons firing, dragging up old pictures in your brain. Or fabricating meaningless new ones. I opened my eyes again. The stars were still there, burning distant and eternal. They seemed to be looking down, thoroughly uninterested in the dreams of mortals.
See, that was ridiculous too, attributing thoughts and feelings to a collection of balls of burning gas, which had probably burned themselves out before the light even reached me. Not eternal.
I sat up, groaning with stiffness. I dumped a shovelful of dry red dirt onto the fire, and retreated to my tent.
That flash of memory, the flickering darkness and the scream... that had felt familiar. As had the face of that man.
No, stop it. It's just a dream, forget it, I told myself. All this wide, flat space and walking in the sun all day is turning you strange.
Still, I lay awake for a long time, unable to shake off the dream.
As the following days went by, it seemed that I noticed more and more how flat and dry and dusty everything was; how harsh and inhospitable and unfriendly. How violent the change in temperature between day and night. I caught myself thinking longingly of home, of rolling green hills – well, anything green at all. The sparse vegetation in the outback wasn't proper green. Thinking of rain, of misty mornings and chequered fields vanishing into a closer, hazy distance.
I did find a large spider in one of my boots, one morning. British spiders don't bother me, most of the time, but this thing looked like it could take my hand off. After that, every slither I heard in a clump of dusty plants, every movement I saw out of the corner of my eye, took on ominous new meanings. I recalled that one of the most dangerous snakes here didn't run away (figuratively speaking) like most, but was aggressive towards intruders.
I had begun to feel like an intruder, all right.
More superstitious rubbish. Definitely too much sun.
Nevertheless, I thought more than once that at least in the Welsh "desert", it had been closer to my own country, my home. I hadn't been plagued by a sense of being unwelcome; I recalled the feeling of possessiveness I'd had about the area around the stone circle. Maybe there were some Welsh people in my family history.
And yes, after that strange dream, that ring of standing stones surfaced often in my thoughts. Not for long, because I always pushed it away, but it kept popping up again.
I'd never really experienced much homesickness before, until this trip. Another of those dark, forgotten nightmares struck me one night, the first since I'd gone away. I don't know how long I thrashed around for, but I finally woke up, sweaty and shaking, and reached unthinking for Glen. But he wasn't there. I wanted him so badly to be there, but instead he was nearly ten thousand miles away. I'd never felt the distance aching between us like that before. I curled up into a ball around my little camp pillow, and cried until I fell asleep again.
The next morning, I saw that I'd apparently managed to collide with everything inside the tent, presumably while the nightmare had gripped me. There wasn't much in there, most of my gear being in the car, but there was still a fair bit to tidy up and pack away again. I made a late start that day, having also lingered over the instant porridge I was thoroughly sick of.
By midday, there was no doubt that my mind was not on my work. I couldn't concentrate on following the tortured deformations the rock had gone through, and had tripped over several rabbit holes (I began to appreciate why so many Australians are so keen to kill them). I was clearly on the wrong side of this so-called Rabbit-Proof Fence. I thought fondly of my last trip into the Welsh "desert", and wondered what the soil techs had made of those cores.
Of course, that made me think of that last day taking the cores, and Ed scaring the living daylights out of me. I scowled.
And then I remembered how I'd flown into a rage, pushed him over, screamed at him...
Dear god, what a bitch I'd been! I was suddenly, belatedly mortified. A violent, crazy bitch, at that. Why on earth had I over-reacted that way? And why on earth had he not made good his escape? I wasn't the only crazy one in the valley that day.
I realised I'd stopped walking, and looked around. I'd also walked past a nice outcrop without even seeing it, and went back. I sat down on the ancient rock, and decided I had to have a proper talk with myself.
All right, I knew I didn't like being grabbed from behind.
It's rude, I agreed. Thoroughly inconsiderate.
But it's no excuse to physically assault someone, I pointed out.
He grabbed me first.
Yes, but I knocked him down, deliberately or otherwise.
He was laughing at me! He'd scared the crap out of me and thought it was hilarious. He's a wanker.
Perhaps, but you don't go shoving people around like that, screaming abuse. It's not like me. I am not like that.
I've never reacted like that before. And he did apologise.
And he didn't leave. That was weird.
About as weird as me flying off the handle like that.
Why did he hang around?
Why did I lose my temper so violently? Is it just because I'm a total bitch?
No. There was weirdness all over the place. And I was full of adrenaline. People aren't themselves when they've had a bad fright.
I suppose not.
I want to apologise to him now, but it's far too late. How many Eds do you suppose there are in Dublin?
Lots. I think I've scared him off that hill for life, though, no matter how many dreams he has.
I sighed, and looked around again. I had the feeling that episode would make me redden with embarrassment and give me that uncomfortable, guilty feeling in my guts every time I thought about it, for the rest of my life. My face burned even then, and not from the sun. What an utter cow I was, behaving like that, and never even thinking of apologising until months later! What was I like? God. I really was a bitch. Maybe it took ten thousand miles of distance and two months of time for me to realise it, but I'd got there in the end.
Also... I couldn't resist the setting for this chapter.
Disclaimer: Total fiction... mistakes are my own, song quotes are not.
end of chapter 6:
--------
"I think I'm going to look for a longer-term job next," I said, stopping to look at Glen. "Somewhere abroad."
He looked back at me. "I see. Was dinner that bad?" He gave a small smile, and came over to hug me.
"Horrible," I replied, smiling back over his shoulder. "It'll take me at least three months to get over it."
"That long? Wow. Those snow peas must have been really rancid."
We stood back. "You need to get away?" Glen asked.
"Yeah. I've had enough of Wales for a while."
"I'll try not to be too offended," he smiled. "Just don't be in too much of a hurry to leave, okay?"
"You could always come with me," I said. "How much leave do you have accrued, again?"
Glen sighed. "It never seems to be a good time."
"Sod them! You've worked up that leave, take it. It's their fault if they can't cope while you're gone."
"I'm management now. One of 'them', O ye of the independent spirit."
"Corporate politics," I said, and made a rude noise.
"You chose your path, and I chose mine," Glen smiled.
----------
Chapter 7:
----------
Livin' on, solid rock
Standin' on, ancient ground...
Two weeks later, I was in Australia. I would have preferred Hawaii, but I wasn't complaining. I was to spend the next two months mapping and prospecting in the wilderness of Western Australia, looking for some form of mineral deposit. Gold, diamonds, zinc, silver, lead, iron ore, bauxite; the mining company didn't seem to care. My field area was vast, by British standards, but it was a tiny speck compared to the size of the state, let alone the whole continent. Little wonder that so much of Australia remained unmapped in detail, geologically speaking. It was common practice, here, to hire a geologist for a few months of mapping, let them find the next lode of ore, then send them on their way. Just my kind of job.
I'd presented my second lot of data to the university back home a week earlier. It had gone down well, and Dr. Lawson had no cause for complaint... except that rumours were rife that his budget was about to be slashed. I'd offered my commiserations, and had a quiet cackle once I'd got back to my car.
Glen had seen me off from the airport, with many words of warning about spiders and snakes and crocodiles and drop-bears and rabid kangaroos. He was good for a laugh, was my man. He'd even given me a Bush Tucker Man survival guide. As if I'd never been out here before...
Well, I hadn't been to Western Australia before, but I'd read a lot about it, and I figured it couldn't be much different to the area around Broken Hill, where I'd done some post-doctoral field work. It was another red desert, towards the other side of the country. Beautiful, alien landscapes. It made me wonder what those earlier British people had been thinking, settling this land and trying to pretend it was just like Europe. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Australia was a land shaped by fire, in a very literal sense. The native Aboriginals had adopted "fire-stick farming" thousands of years ago, burning forest to replace it with grassland, which attracted food animals like kangaroos. Eucalyptus trees evolved to depend on fire for their reproduction, and they, along with other fire-tolerant species, came to dominate the flora. And most of the continent baked under a harsh sun, making water and food hard to find.
Europe, on the other hand, was shaped by ice. Glaciers had covered half the continent during the last Ice Age, grinding through mountains and reshaping the landscape. When they retreated, they left behind spectacular valleys, and a great deal of ground-up rock, which became fertile soil. This probably accounts for the vast difference between Europe's landscape and population, and that of Australia. Australia's land surface is far more ancient; weathered and leached of nutrients. Beautiful, but no breadbasket.
It was good to be back here. Even in the Welsh wilderness I could get claustrophobic, it seemed – that simply wasn't possible in the real desert of Western Australia. When even tufts of grass were few and far between, and survival depended on a 4WD crammed with supplies and a CB radio, I could feel blissfully, utterly alone.
After a few weeks, I even grew to resent having to check in each night on the radio, so the company would know I was still alive. A very necessary precaution in a place which killed foreign tourists on a semi-regular basis, but I would have been happier with no human contact at all. It was only a minute out of each day, though.
My field area was similar to Broken Hill, but different. It was still beautiful, seemingly untouched, red dirt beneath an endless dome of blue. It was winter there, but it wasn't the sort of winter I was familiar with. Hot days, and freezing nights of breathtaking clarity. You've never seen the stars until you've gone out into the desert at night.
The Aboriginal people attached a great deal of spiritual significance to the land they lived on. They believed their ancestor spirits created the land, and were a part of it. In some ways, Australia was a deeply spiritual place, with tens of thousands of years of history... but it wasn't my history. I couldn't feel a connection to the place. Which was probably just as well, since there was a distinct possibility that someone would be digging a mine here if I found anything.
------
One night, I dreamed. I saw the stone circle back in Wales, but through different eyes than mine. The owner of the eyes I was looking through felt awe, reverence, and something like sorrow... There was some sort of effort to push aside unpleasant memories. The stones were glowing in the light of a sunrise behind me, and I was moving slowly towards them. There was something in my arms, and I sensed more than heard people following behind me.
As I, or we, got closer, the sense of reverence grew deeper, even as some detached corner of myself noticed that there was no lichen on the stones, and all of them were upright, the carved lines sharp and clear. Words were flowing through my head – the language was not English, but inside this person's head, I almost understood the meaning behind them. A dedication, an offering, a prayer of thankfulness, all being silently rehearsed.
I paused just short of the stones, and glanced around, to one side and just behind me. A bearded man looked back at me, dark-haired and hazel-eyed, his expression unreadable. Something hard burned in his eyes. The feeling of sorrow, streaked with anger, surged and threatened to overwhelm my purpose there, but was ruthlessly repressed. As was the brief memory of flickering darkness and screams. I turned back, re-focussing my thoughts on the offering to Earth, in thanks for the life we drew from it.
I stepped into the circle, and woke up. Instead of damp grass and gold-lit stones, I was staring up at ten million brilliant points of light, scattered across the cold black night. I'd fallen asleep beside the fire, which had now died down to glowing coals. I was cold, but I didn't move yet. I was still gripped by the strength of the dream, every detail was still clear. I almost felt that the person whose eyes I had seen through was still with me.
I squeezed my eyes shut, blotting out the starscape. Ridiculous. Just another dream, random neurons firing, dragging up old pictures in your brain. Or fabricating meaningless new ones. I opened my eyes again. The stars were still there, burning distant and eternal. They seemed to be looking down, thoroughly uninterested in the dreams of mortals.
See, that was ridiculous too, attributing thoughts and feelings to a collection of balls of burning gas, which had probably burned themselves out before the light even reached me. Not eternal.
I sat up, groaning with stiffness. I dumped a shovelful of dry red dirt onto the fire, and retreated to my tent.
That flash of memory, the flickering darkness and the scream... that had felt familiar. As had the face of that man.
No, stop it. It's just a dream, forget it, I told myself. All this wide, flat space and walking in the sun all day is turning you strange.
Still, I lay awake for a long time, unable to shake off the dream.
As the following days went by, it seemed that I noticed more and more how flat and dry and dusty everything was; how harsh and inhospitable and unfriendly. How violent the change in temperature between day and night. I caught myself thinking longingly of home, of rolling green hills – well, anything green at all. The sparse vegetation in the outback wasn't proper green. Thinking of rain, of misty mornings and chequered fields vanishing into a closer, hazy distance.
I did find a large spider in one of my boots, one morning. British spiders don't bother me, most of the time, but this thing looked like it could take my hand off. After that, every slither I heard in a clump of dusty plants, every movement I saw out of the corner of my eye, took on ominous new meanings. I recalled that one of the most dangerous snakes here didn't run away (figuratively speaking) like most, but was aggressive towards intruders.
I had begun to feel like an intruder, all right.
More superstitious rubbish. Definitely too much sun.
Nevertheless, I thought more than once that at least in the Welsh "desert", it had been closer to my own country, my home. I hadn't been plagued by a sense of being unwelcome; I recalled the feeling of possessiveness I'd had about the area around the stone circle. Maybe there were some Welsh people in my family history.
And yes, after that strange dream, that ring of standing stones surfaced often in my thoughts. Not for long, because I always pushed it away, but it kept popping up again.
I'd never really experienced much homesickness before, until this trip. Another of those dark, forgotten nightmares struck me one night, the first since I'd gone away. I don't know how long I thrashed around for, but I finally woke up, sweaty and shaking, and reached unthinking for Glen. But he wasn't there. I wanted him so badly to be there, but instead he was nearly ten thousand miles away. I'd never felt the distance aching between us like that before. I curled up into a ball around my little camp pillow, and cried until I fell asleep again.
The next morning, I saw that I'd apparently managed to collide with everything inside the tent, presumably while the nightmare had gripped me. There wasn't much in there, most of my gear being in the car, but there was still a fair bit to tidy up and pack away again. I made a late start that day, having also lingered over the instant porridge I was thoroughly sick of.
By midday, there was no doubt that my mind was not on my work. I couldn't concentrate on following the tortured deformations the rock had gone through, and had tripped over several rabbit holes (I began to appreciate why so many Australians are so keen to kill them). I was clearly on the wrong side of this so-called Rabbit-Proof Fence. I thought fondly of my last trip into the Welsh "desert", and wondered what the soil techs had made of those cores.
Of course, that made me think of that last day taking the cores, and Ed scaring the living daylights out of me. I scowled.
And then I remembered how I'd flown into a rage, pushed him over, screamed at him...
Dear god, what a bitch I'd been! I was suddenly, belatedly mortified. A violent, crazy bitch, at that. Why on earth had I over-reacted that way? And why on earth had he not made good his escape? I wasn't the only crazy one in the valley that day.
I realised I'd stopped walking, and looked around. I'd also walked past a nice outcrop without even seeing it, and went back. I sat down on the ancient rock, and decided I had to have a proper talk with myself.
All right, I knew I didn't like being grabbed from behind.
It's rude, I agreed. Thoroughly inconsiderate.
But it's no excuse to physically assault someone, I pointed out.
He grabbed me first.
Yes, but I knocked him down, deliberately or otherwise.
He was laughing at me! He'd scared the crap out of me and thought it was hilarious. He's a wanker.
Perhaps, but you don't go shoving people around like that, screaming abuse. It's not like me. I am not like that.
I've never reacted like that before. And he did apologise.
And he didn't leave. That was weird.
About as weird as me flying off the handle like that.
Why did he hang around?
Why did I lose my temper so violently? Is it just because I'm a total bitch?
No. There was weirdness all over the place. And I was full of adrenaline. People aren't themselves when they've had a bad fright.
I suppose not.
I want to apologise to him now, but it's far too late. How many Eds do you suppose there are in Dublin?
Lots. I think I've scared him off that hill for life, though, no matter how many dreams he has.
I sighed, and looked around again. I had the feeling that episode would make me redden with embarrassment and give me that uncomfortable, guilty feeling in my guts every time I thought about it, for the rest of my life. My face burned even then, and not from the sun. What an utter cow I was, behaving like that, and never even thinking of apologising until months later! What was I like? God. I really was a bitch. Maybe it took ten thousand miles of distance and two months of time for me to realise it, but I'd got there in the end.
Last edited:
ohhh ali you describe everything so beautifully 
great work.
Another amazing chapter Ali! 
Looking forward to the next one.
i want to marry this story.
there's only one part about this I don't like Ali.... it lacks a certain little irish singer.... 
