Sinking through time (#Wattys2014)

Chapter 13 - Lucy's journey

Lucy had been awake for a few minutes and was lying on her back, looking at the ceiling of the cave admiring some aboriginal hand paintings. The aboriginal hand paintings were various shades of red, yellow, ochre and brown.

Lucy remembered John and herself as children playing on the rocks, trying to replicate the aboriginal art. They would find different coloured bits of cliff rock that had fallen down onto the rock shelf below. Once they had collected the coloured rocks they would find a small pool full of ocean water that had other little indents in the rock close by, to act as small bowls. They would use a solid hand sized rock as a hammer to smash the other rocks into a powder in the rock bowls, one bowl for each colour. They would then add ocean water from the water pool and mix the crushed rock into a sort of paint. After that it was just a matter of placing your hand on a flat rock and smearing the paint around your fingers. The paint would also eventually end up all over their faces. John and Lucy’s art would always get washed away with the next tide but Lucy had happy memories of the hours spent making the art with John.

Lucy’s attention was brought back from her memories by loud and strange noises outside the cave. They were weird trilling sounds. She listened for a few minutes to decide if the cacophony sounded threatening. Although it was quite loud, Lucy decided that she didn’t think the noise posed a danger, so she got up off the floor of the cave and slowly made her way to its opening.

She peered down onto the rock shelf below and what she saw made her beam with happiness. She saw hundreds of tiny little penguins that were no more than 35 centimetres tall and looked like they were wearing mini tuxedos. They were fairy penguins. Lucy remembered seeing a couple of them as a small child and being as excited about it then as she was now. The ones she had seen as a child had been mauled by dogs. It had made the papers because no more penguins returned after that. Lucy was thrilled to see that back in this time there was a healthy population of them. She figured they must have been off in the ocean fishing for food when she first made her way into the cave. She felt saddened that ancestors of these lovely little birds would be torn away from their habitat in the future because people were irresponsible and let their animals roam around the neighbourhood.

She continued to watch as some of them slid on their stomachs down the rocks and into the water. Others were paired off and preening each other and some more were huddled in groups having a penguin chat, which Lucy fancied was equivalent to a mother’s meeting. She could imagine what they were saying; “Did you hear about Pete?” “Oh yes, he caught an abundance of fish today." “What a handsome fellow he is”. She laughed out loud. Some of the little penguins stopped chatting and looked up towards her. “It’s okay” she shouted down at them. “I won’t hurt you”. “Please, continue your conversation”.

Lucy realized that it must be getting late in the afternoon as the penguins had come into shore to settle down for the night. Her stomach rumbled and reminded her she was hungry. She took the little sack of food she had taken from the Pickett’s place and rummaged through to find her dinner. She had missed lunch.

Lucy picked out a piece of bread, some beef jerky and an orange. She sat, watching the penguins and the sky as she ate. The sun was sinking lower in the sky and would soon set. Lucy knew she had to get moving. She couldn’t find her way out of the bush at night but she would be able to follow the dirt road into town.

She finished up her dinner, collected the sack of food and her dress and made her way down the cliff face, over the rocks and sand, and back to the bush track.

It was harder walking back along the track as it was getting dark quite quickly. Lucy also had a full stomach of food and she soon developed a stitch in her side. She stopped for a moment to let it ease. She realized she was thirsty.