squirmelia | Hailstones and the Moon (Reply)

Woolston, Southampton

Down at the docks, children play on slides that start high up in the hills. The sea stirs with the shadows of boats that occupy the bay, but most of the people in the park (the dog-walkers, the lovers, the wanderers) drift around, looking only at each other and worriedly peering up at the sky.

A red-haired girl hesitates as to whether to buy a cone of lemon meringue ice-cream from the van at the edge of the park. A little boy behind her is told that it isn't the weather for ice-cream, but she knows that it is. Her favourite time to eat ice-cream is outside, during a thunderstorm. There is no thunder, but soon after she makes her purchase, hailstones bounce off her arms as she licks the sweet melting ice.

When the torrents of rain come, the scattered trees, muddy fields and playgrounds are frantically deserted. The Maritime Museum's popularity increases- people run across roads to look at fragments from the Titanic, the remains of oxen, and model boats. To escape the rain, the girl with the red hair dresses as a sailor, in velvet and lace, amongst Japanese tourists doing the same.

When the rain stops again, she walks across to Woolston, past the city walls and the roaring cars, then past where the Floating Bridge once was, until she reaches Vancouver (Wharf). There's a rainbow in the sky and a tiny beach between the wharfs. Trees bloom with fragrant white blossoms beside roads dappled with puddles that sparkle with colourful swirls of oil.

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And then that night, the moon turned red.

She was wearing a blue wizard's cloak, left over from her childhood, as she sat in a car with her friends, hurtling through lanes full of mist and gnarled trees. Herds of deer suddenly appeared, so they waited there, in the dark, for them to disperse.

In Pig Bush, they stopped for a while, when the moon began to glow strangely, as if it was on fire. Then at an inclosure in Dibden, they parked to gaze at the moon for longer.

She draped herself around a tree, crooking her neck to look at the sky, the beautiful sky, as the full moon changed colour to become a stunning red. All was silent in the forest, but the moon continued to glow eerily and she could not stop staring at it, amazed by the way it had changed.