Dead Straight Meanders

La Solitaria Caseta Verda shimmered in golden dusk when the party arrived back. From the highpoint of the road, buildings could hardly be seen in the glare and that familiar glimpse of Balearic Sea looked drawn onto its horizon with glittered silver ink. Cold and cloudless, except for a few streaks of pale pink, by morning mist would shroud the entire valley; anything low-lying, the ravine for instance, might not have existed until midday. Cicadas hummed in the carob trees, crickets trilled so loudly they seemed to be constantly underfoot. But whenever one tried to spot them, all they found were a few blades of quiet grass.

Soon a fire was stoked in the pit and Ingrid had lit the kitchen burners for her enormous tortilla, made with three dozen local eggs and half a potato sack. Matthias took up his guitar and started strumming Les Djinns.  Sweaty and salt-sprayed, the rest of the volunteers fanned out from the courtyard to put on fresh clothes. Dinner was to be served in forty-five minutes.

The quietening of birdlife seemed to lull the sun to sleep. For a while Bryan stayed by the main building and gazed dreamily at the sky, hardly cognisant of Matthias or Ingrid or the rest of the festive commotion going on around him. There was a little incense in the air. Alone, painstakingly alone, and the mermaid mosaic on his chair irritating him as any small disturbance does a person motivated and sustained by concerns utterly their own. After a mosquito bite, however, Bryan's thoughts turned chaotic and eventually settled on his hair. Losing that hair-tie today must have made him look like a wild man, as most of the younger volunteers did. For the first time in twenty-five years he thought of cutting it all off, before rising with a start and heading for his caravan.