I Won't Be Home For Christmas

Seabirds swooped and called, as the sun prepared to sink below the horizon, bathing everything in a pinkish glow.

She looked out at the dark night, watched the stars twinkling over a landscape that held no history for her and was a long, long way from home.

Vivienne and Ellen stared into the space they left behind, standing in silence as the squawks of the seabirds below rose in what sounded like a chorus of farewell to Emma, who had lived among them for a short time.

‘Maybe the world feels a little less ordinary when you’ve got glorious sunshine for half the year and good New Zealand air to breathe.’

They each bring such different things to the table that they fill in each other’s gaps and it makes things interesting, keeps it fresh.’

The night was still. The darkness was punctuated by the buzz and flutter of bugs attracted to the subtle lighting that surrounded them.

In the far distance, the lights of the boats moored along the jetty of the marina bobbed against the darkness like captured stars.

She pressed against the window, a little reluctant to snap away with her camera, preferring to commit the views to memory instead of seeing it all through the veil of a lens.

She walked up onto the deck and closed her eyes, letting the sun kiss her face and the warm South Pacific breeze dance over her.

Vivienne inhaled the scent of her; no longer a disembodied voice on the end of a line, she was real, a solid thing beneath her trembling hands.