Submitted for a short story competition. 800 word limit; must include a stranger, ice, and an animal.

Not my usual style, but I rather like this one.

A Butterfly Kiss, Old Leather and Cicada Shells

“It’s alright, don’t worry about it.”

The man looked up. His face was creased by character and sun. The relaxed brim of his hat partly shadowed his hazel eyes, which were level with my breasts. He knelt on the lawn, hands cupping nuggets of ice as gently as eggs.

“I’m sorry,” his voice as robust as he was lean, “I didn’t see it.”

He’d tripped over the esky my son had abandoned in the middle of the picnic ground. Kids, you know what they’re like.

Together we scooped up drinks and ice seasoned with grass. I thunked the esky lid closed, and stood.

He rose, lanky as a sapling and almost as tall, with a movement that suggested dust and saltbush. He smelt of old leather and cicada shells.

I smiled up at him “Where are you from?”

“West.”

Almost the whole continent, and its dusty heart, lay west of the mown lawns and sculpted bay.

“What brings you to Sydney?” Might it be considered an impolite question elsewhere?

His eyes met mine. They reflected patient skies and rainless paddocks.

He pulled a pearled seashell from his pocket, and looked at it as though puzzled by its wave-rounded contours and frilled opening. He held it to his ear, and his mouth became thoughtful.

“You can hear the sea.” He seemed mildly surprised by that. “Listen.”

He held the shell to my ear. His finger brushed my ear lobe, and rested in my hair. The still depths of a wave sighed over me. He watched my eyes.

Perhaps he scried my trembling, for he smiled and withdrew the shell. I felt the loss of both his touch and the breath of the ocean.

“I’ve never seen the sea,” he said. “I’ve forgotten what rain tastes like. I’m thirsty for colour, grass, flowers.”

I looked over to the strip of grey sand fringing the small cove. Beyond it lay the silver-skinned harbour, boats, fish, all flowing into the great blue dreaming of the ocean.

In his eyes, fear and longing bled together.

I glanced at my husband and son kicking a ball around in flurries of laughter.

“It draws you, against your will,” he said. “And one day you just have to know what it’s like; taste the shallows with your feet, and gaze at all that water.”

I knew the longing, the wanting to be swept away, to drown in it. Once you saw the ocean, you could never be the same. You returned to the dusty heart, knowing that your small world was… small.

“Just once,” he said. “I wish to swim in the ocean.”

He kissed his fingers, reached out, and placed his dry fingertips just above my heart. I felt the pressure of his touch as soft as a butterfly.

When his hand fell away from me, so did his eyes. His gaze turned to the horizon. I watched him walk east, towards the sea, and for the first time I tasted drought.