I didn’t hear the thunder. I may have felt it, swelling in air and buffeting close to me. Saw skies, shades of grey and purple, colors of bruises healing. I lay on my back, seagrass wisping dryly over me. Waves broke behind where I lay, spray hazing over skin, numbing me with cold. I couldn’t pinpoint the pain.  It seemed centred on a hip as if I’d dislocated a bone. Scents of brine floated across me as if someone held smelling salts under my nose. I couldn’t move.

“Are you okay?” she said next to me. “Thought you were dead. My boyfriend’s calling an ambulance.” She bent down, gusting wind layering hair like bandages over her face.  

I’d noticed it coming. The freshly turned earth smells, odor of downpours on steaming ground, rain angling, swishing through leaves and across bitumen roads radiating the day’s heat. Watched people rolling up towels, hunching and dashing towards cars. But I walked on, light muting and clouds clumping by. Felt ions building in air, watched foaming darkness approaching. Later I recalled a crackle like breathing through bronchitis. She knelt next to me on sand, taking my hand.

“You’re going to be fine,” she said and I searched her eyes.

The interior of the hospital was like being trapped in a whiteout. Bleached walls, cream sheets and pale complexions of ill people.

“One in half a million,” the nurse said. “Those are the chances of being struck. About the same odds of my kids sleeping in on the weekend.”

They wheeled me outside. Felt the difference in air like changing into clothes already stretched to my shape. Oxygen now thin and weightless, not bending with humidity. We bumped over pavements cracking from tree roots. Cara hurried ahead of me, yanking open a car door. Hands gripped under my arms, hauling me up. Bodies strained and manoeuvred me into the car. The nurse hung in the opening.

“Couple of days rest and you should be fine. And let me know if you get any strange magical powers out of this,” she said.

We threaded through streets. At red lights the car engine tremored through seats. Said I was sorry for spoiling our holiday. No tang of white vinegar smells in our nostrils as we unwrapped fish and chips at the sea’s edge. No burnt orange sunsets as we reclined back in bars looking out over slate grey water. No barefoot walks through sand patterned by tides under the shade of costal trees. Cara concentrated on the road, asking how I was without looking at me. Told her a few aches and pains persisted like old football injuries.

We headed inland. Basalt plains crumbled and eroded behind fences. We drove roads, log trucks blustering past the opposite way. Nearing home grass tinged brown from early frosts. We fell silent before arriving.       

Cara touched my hip. Felt her fingers barely on me, soft as exhaling. She said she’d never seen anything like those marks before. I glanced at where she touched, nails broken and uneven from her work. Spindly lines fanned out on my skin. Like tree roots Cara said. She tilted her head, examining me. 

“I never knew lightning could do that,” she said.

“Let’s hope it’s true about not striking twice,” I replied.

I sat up, gazing outside. The window looked out to a plunging valley. At times winds came through like sirens, shearing through twisted trees. Moss furred their lengths of branches twitching in blizzards. I again told Cara I was sorry about the holidays. Shouldn’t have walked the beach before a storm. Was distracted. Stepping into someone’s footprints. Pretending to be a tracker. Seeing if the footprints led to a secret fishing spot or camping ground.

Cara switched on a laptop. I walked through the house. My joints ached, pain heavy and pooling. At the end of the hall I flicked on a light in the last room. One year ago we’d stood in there, mapping out where a crib could stand, discussing wallpaper Cara had seen with leaping baby lambs and vintage prams. She’d gestured along a wall that caught rare sunshine in winter. Said wallpaper would look cute there. Perhaps if we put it up the right design it’d will a baby into our lives. By summer we both wanted to board the room up. But now Cara’s specimen jars stood on a shelf. She’d built it herself, hammering early one morning. The blows broke in my chest like uneven heartbeats. One week later it came away from the wall, dangling loosely.

“Leave it!” she said when I peered closely at the damage.

“Might need some plastering, that’s all,” I said.

“If I want to fix it I will!” she said.

An overhead fluorescent light ticked on. In each jar lay a small yellow body. Some curled up, brittle looking, legs folded. Yellow bands circled abdomens. I picked up the first jar. “Female, October 2020. Near Mansfield.” Cara’s meticulous writing printed across a label. ‘Scientist’s writing,’ I’d said when we still smiled at each other’s jokes. I held the jar above me, staring up into small wings and segments.  

Winter had arrived abruptly. I’d heard it always did. Dinner Plains faced a particular direction, cool changes channelling in so snow dusted bush trails and car windscreens. My skin blemishes faded. But the aches worsened, serious enough for me to lie motionless, popped foil of painkillers strewn around. The one storm that came through set off agony in my hips and back, as if joints conducted its surging electricity. Cara came in briefly, her palm circling lightly on me where pain heaved. She watched me but distracted, as if observing something else. She said she’d read that people hit by lightning suffered severe joint pain. Cara explained as if she read from a medical manual.     

I later woke when rolling over, splaying over cold sheets. Morning light was grey, holding mist and exhaust from tourist buses idling in town whilst people queued for coffee. Through windows mist slunk close to ground as if it might be too heavy to inhale. I stood, stretching through where pain dulled. Called out to Cara, my voice humming along walls. The kitchen smelt of coffee grindings and burnt toast. I strode out into chilling air. Then circuited the house, slipping on frozen ground. Eventually I spotted her in that blue waterproof coat. I’d often seen Cara turning its pockets out onto a table, pebbles, lichen and leaves scattering. She’d stand back before fossicking through what she’d collected. I headed towards her.

“Discovered anything?” I called. “Don’t mean the remains of a woolly mammoth. More like how to save a marriage. Any fossils of that lying around?”

Cara looked around from a tree trunk. Faint green streaked down its column. Her breath misted, turning and fading.  

“The female wasps are becoming more conditioned to the cold,” she said. “More of them this year. Tucked in crevasses. Under bark. Found one that’d crawled through a crack into a discarded avocado seed. Imagine the ingenuity of that.”

“European wasps?” I said. “Latest in a long line of invasive species. After foxes, carp, thistle, rabbits and opera.” Cara glared at me before facing back to the tree. She gouged at it with a blade, bark shredding. She unscrewed a jar, picking up something with tweezers and dropping it inside. “Wish you were as forensic about you and I with your research,” I said.     

“Go inside,” Cara said.  “You know how quickly weather changes up here. You don’t want to be struck by lightning. Again.”

I returned to the house. Squalls of heat fanned from ducts. I strode the hallway to Cara’s room of jars, snapping on light switches as I went so glaring light burst through the house. Taking down the first jar I shook it violently so the wasp inside pinged against glass. The insect careered around, as if alive and desperately trying to find a way out.        

– Peter Farrar