The last of the autumn light bled through the clouds over the Yarra Valley, a bruised purple and gold that made you forget the morning’s frost. May in Victoria was a quiet thief, Liam thought. It stole the heat of March, the long evenings of January, and replaced them with something sharper—a cold that smelled of woodsmoke and wet eucalyptus.
He stood on the porch of the old farmhouse, a mug of over-steeped tea warming his palms. Three weeks ago, the garden had been a riot of late dahlias. Now, it was a carpet of russet and ochre. The Japanese maple by the fence was nearly bare, its last few leaves like crimson coins trembling in a southerly wind. season in may australia
He sipped his tea. It was his favourite time. Not because it was beautiful—though it was, in a melancholy way—but because it was honest. The land stopped pretending. No blossoms, no glossy green leaves, no sweating tourists in hire cars. Just the raw bones of the earth, a low sun that never climbed high, and the promise of a deep, restorative sleep. The last of the autumn light bled through
Liam grunted. He wasn’t listening to the weather. He was listening to the silence. In summer, the valley hummed with cicadas and the distant drone of harvesters. Now, the only sound was the occasional thump of a fallen apple from the old, neglected tree near the shed—fruit too sour to eat, but which the cockatoos would strip bare by the weekend. He stood on the porch of the old