[It is one of those late, cold winter afternoons when solitude slips toward loneliness. The ferns drip in the glens and across the grim paddocks he can hear a cow lowing.
He is sharpening the axe.
There is a paved area beside the door, and here his breath forms small clouds in the chill air. All is silent; even the hens have housed themselves. The dying light seeps, luminous, over the dark green hillside to his right. The sun is retreating, an opalescent band barely visible above the hill. Still the sky is light; the house stands in a hollow. He has a good hour left.
He spots a movement on the gloomy hillside, in his small crook of valley, not one hundred meters away. He blinks, thinking it’s an apparition. But, no: he discerns legs flickering back and forth, resolute shoulders and a rifle. His axe is forgotten. The face is pinched, frowning, and -- despite the short hair -- not a man’s.
She is a shadow, a wraith green on darker green. Only the straight black line of the rifle is definite, discernible even in the hollow's dusk.]
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