I have but a second to process the strangeness before a light fills my vision so bright, I’m unable to see anything. Not the strangeness. Not the usual ochre dirt breaking my fall.
Not my red blood spilling against the soil.
My ears ring. The piercing brightness fades around the edges, narrowing into blackness. The darkness is the only familiar sensation in the changing landscape.
I welcome it.
I don’t knowhow much time has passed since I was knocked out. All I know for sure is, the back of my head throbs, my coccyx is screaming bloody murder, and it’s possible I have a concussion. The latter is the only explanation for the still-green sky above me.
It’s a possibility, I suppose, that I’m in a coma. It’s a valid reason for the world above me seeming like it’s been dipped in the North Queensland rainforest and appearing as a vividly bright canvas textured with varying shades of green.
“Shit me.” My fingertips come away damp when I shift my head and touch the tender bump at the back. Red stains my fingers. It’s still wet. So either I’m still bleeding or I didn’t black out for too long.
I test my limbs. Everything aches, but agony doesn’t send sharp stabs of alarm, so that’s something. I circle my ankles left, then right, and I release a shaky exhale. Not broken.
It’s time to sit up and take real stock. The weird sky above me is a problem I’ll solve once I know I can stand without falling on my arse.
I manage to lift myself up and stay upright on my butt, then pick up my worn, dusty Akubra off the ground by my side. The aches are very real, but I think that’s all they are: sore bones and muscles. From this position, my childhood home looks untouched from the blast that took me down.
The windows are intact, and the tin roof has the same number of dents from previous hailstorms. It’s a relief. Whatever put me on my arse felt like it had the power to demolish the whole building. It’s a miracle the old place is still standing—a Queenslander my grandpop built eighty years back.
The panicked braying from the barn has me moving.
I need to check on Geralt and Gertie. That I can hear them is a good sign. Sure, they’re distressed—a given considering the storm.
The storm.
The thought makes me slam on the brakes a few metres shy of the closed barn doors.
Where the fuck has the storm gone?
I do a slow 360, then a fast one, which sends a thud of pain through my head. But I don’t have the brain space to worry about that.
The dirt beneath my feet remains a familiar deep ochre. The kilometres of barbed-wire fencing—most I rigged up with my dad over the years—are laid out before me, spanning my inherited six-hundred-acre property.
From my property, beyond my cattle, the fences, and the yards, all there usually is to see is the main road, only visible on a still day, about three kilometres away in the south, and my sister and brother-in-law’s neighbouring property about four kilometres down the road in the east. Beyond that, there’s usually just flat land, red dirt, endless blue skies, and, during the wet season, glorious grass.
Fast, shallow breaths have my shoulders vibrating and my head spinning.
I shake my head, struggling to comprehend what I can see. What’s gone.
What the fuck’s happened?
The three-kilometre gravel road leading from my property via a two-hundred-metre dirt-track road to the bitumen of the A7 remains intact. Several kilometres out to the left of it, the usual flat plains are gone.
Literally fucking gone.
The ground, where the long grass usually dances in the breeze, hasn’t been burnt by the storm—a possibility from the lightning display I witnessed.
I shake my head, struggling to process what I see.
A mountain crouches in the distance. Its peak—impossible to tell how high it is from the ground—is covered in snow.Snow. Legit, the first and last time I ever saw snow was on a school trip almost thirty years ago when we visited Canberra. It had been cold—obviously—but disappointingly icy. None of the fluffy stuff good for making snowmen like you see in movies.
It’s not just the mountain that is nearly exploding my mind.
To the west, there are buildings. They’re too far away for me to tell what kind or how many. All I know is, they shouldn’t be there.
“The fuck is happening?” My words catch on a slight breeze that appears. It’s warm and surprisingly humid, not carrying the usual dry heat of the outback.
