Hunting and Collecting

an excerpt

Patience came easily after centuries of sweeping beaches for empty shells and souls. When Julia first saw Ian, alone at sunset, she didn’t pounce. She backed along the footpath he’d eventually take through the trees. She framed a shot of a bird’s nest on a branch above her head and she stayed there, posed for the next scene, until a distant horn sounded the arrival of the last ferry home.

Ian wrapped his pencils and collapsed his easel. He stuffed them in a pack with his disappointing sunsets.

They met on the dimly lit path. Immersed in her camera screen, she backed right into him – long dark hair caressing his arm, short flowery skirt brushing his shorts. He jolted at the contact and she gasped.

She turned on him with eyes wide, a striking blue, so clear and deep you could see anything you wanted in them.

Ian was no idiot. He read the news. He knew that predators lurked at the edges of every woman’s life. He held up his hands in surrender, fingertips coated in chalk pastel, blues and greys flecked with yellow like a tribe of eyes. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

She looked around for her purse – hanging just beside him on a broken branch – and almost grazed him as she snatched it up. “It’s fine,” she said, forcing a smile.

He followed her to the dock, but not too closely.