Treasure

The old primary school sat half-swallowed by tea trees, the oval gone to spear grass and rabbit holes with no one to tend it. The groundsmen left it to ruin without an apology, but then, the virus moved so fast that no one had a chance to ask for forgiveness, whatever the travesty. Wind pushed through broken classroom windows instead, with the sigh of someone who'd given up correcting grammar well before lungs stopped coughing.

Nina lived there alone, but for the magpies, who were particularly annoying when the moon was full, carolling outside the window. There was also a fat blue-tongue lizard in the rocks outside the library. Neither brought solace.

In the principal's office, arranged with almost religious precision, sat her collection.

Three cowrie shells. Twenty-seven buttons, three made of pearl and two of wood. A marble the colour of a storm. A silver teaspoon made into a ring. Five feathers - one of a black-tailed cockatoo, and four of unknown birds. Two keys that opened nothing.

Nina could not undissolve governments or reopen hospitals, or turn the power back on, but she could arrange these precious things neatly on the desk and control a tiny, tiny part of her world.

Marbles did not summon her dead mother and buttons were forlorn as they waited for shirts that would never return, but they could be worried in the hands, over and over.

Occasionally, Nina walked to the cliffs and looked out to sea, hoping for someone to appear on the horizon. The sea had not cared about the virus. It still arrived. It still left. Nothing had changed about it at all.

Nina collected shells because they reminded her that the world could still make beautiful things. She was sometimes glad there were no people to beachcomb for evidence of themselves, because the treasures were all hers: a child's gumboot, a tangled piece of fishing line, a blue spaceman missing one arm, perhaps from a cereal box or a Kinder Surprise. The faded skeleton of a beach umbrella she propped up and made a tent of, draping it in beach towels.

Once, during a storm, a green Woolworths shopping trolley had rolled its way down to the sea.

Perhaps it was sick of waiting for the fishmonger.

She laughed at the thought. It startled her. Apart from the kookaburras, she had forgotten the sound of laughter.

The virus hadn't killed everyone. That was almost worse. It had simply left enough, so that Nina could hear generators humming in distant valleys or glimpse smoke on some mornings and miss people at the same time she feared them. People travelled suspiciously now, and she was suspicious of them.

One man tugging at her skirt was enough.

She had hidden for a week before he moved on.

Every stranger carried the possibility of another threat. The first virus had taught the country many things: wash your hands, keep your distance, trust no one. By the second and third waves, trust was extinct. Her father had choked out many warnings before he left: eat the fresh food first, and be alert were two.

She found the boy in the Bunnings car park. Not the building - that had burnt down the summer before. The wide, expansive, hot car park, perched under the thin shade of a tree planted amongst the yellow lines. Australians, it seemed, still knew where to meet.

He was younger, and thinner. Sunburnt, as if he had never been taught to wear a hat. He was holding a biscuit tin, the kind that came out at Christmas. He raised one hand.

"I won't come closer."

"I won't let you," she said.

They regarded each other across the lines.

"What've you got?" she called.

He held up the tin and rattled it.

"Treasures."

She almost laughed again. It seemed silly coming from someone else's mouth. She knew that her own collection were not real treasures, though she treasured them dearly. She didn't laugh, meeting him with the same seriousness.

"Show me."

Slowly, carefully, he tipped it onto the asphalt. There was a plastic dinosaur, just like her little brother once played with. She had been too scared to go back into her old house to retrieve it. There were bottle tops, green and red and blue. At least fifteen marbles, two dominoes, a coin with a hole in it, a tattered feather, some polished stones.

A single pink button.

He looked embarrassed and rolled it over to her. It spun in a wide arc, hit a piece of gravel, and careened to a halt. She picked it up and quickly put it in her pocket.

"I know they're useless."

"They're not. I collect things too."

His shoulders lowered a fraction. He set up six marbles and tossed her the largest one, which she rolled to hit each in turn. After a while, she edged closer, wanting to see what else was in the tin.

Old habits outlived old diseases.

The next week, they traded. He gave her the pink marble and she gave him a whole reel of fishing line and an unopened pack of hooks. A pen with glitter inside for a brass button with a coat of arms on it.

They never spent more than ten minutes on this serious exchange, cautiously distant. She brought her own tin and shook it in greeting. They barely spoke. They had forgotten how, or perhaps had never known. She was only 12 years old, and was not practiced in the art of conversation, assuming that he was alone, because she was.

Once, he asked if she lived by the sea. She did not answer, because of the man tugging at her skirt. Feeling ungracious, she brought him two pieces of sea glass, one blue, one green. He held them to his lips as if to taste the salt there.

One day, the car park was empty.

She eyed the car park cautiously. Perhaps he was late. She stood clinging tightly to her tin. She had found two Matchbox cars on the beach that week and was longing to see if he had something for her. She had hoped for a needle and thread. Buttons could not stay on desks or in tins when there were things to mend.

There was a newcomer to the carpark, and Nina's heart beat fast in her chest. She would run like hell this time. Experience made you wired and ready.

'Are you her?' the woman said, her face dark under a wide-brimmed hat. She had his broad nose and green eyes.

"I'm his friend," she said cautiously. "I'm waiting for him."

The woman held out the boy's tin.

"He won't be needing this," she said, sniffing. "I'm sorry."

She coughed twice, and Nina moved away instinctively from the offered tin, knowing it might be dangerous to touch. Careful, she heard her father say. He never did apologise for leaving.

The woman shrugged and placed the tin gently on the ground. Nina watched her move slowly across the car park and out of sight.

The wind moved through the leaves of the lone tree. In the distance, the sea did its work on the shore, bringing in new treasures. Still arriving, still leaving. Still polishing broken things so that they could be held without cutting your hands.

This post was written in response to The Inkwell's theme this week 'sorry'. Photos are words are my own.

On a side note, I just went looking for something to read in the community, and was shocked to find that nearly every single one had an Ai image. I struggled to find two to read that didn't. If I see an Ai image in a creative writing community I worry that the content isn't original either! I'm so fed up with Ai everywhere - what are your thoughts on this?