[stirred]

[where the treacherous paddocks disappeared into the dark. It was just you and me and the dash lights, the headlights, the silent lightning blanketing the sky.

We didn't speak. 

We drove the winding road, slick still with a memory of recent rain. Sometimes the white line disappeared beneath the bullbar, and sometimes it was to our right. It didn't matter. We were all alone out there in the dark: not a sheep or steer broke the empty fields, not a hare stirred. Not even a kangaroo. 

Nothing.

It was as if that lonely country was ours, each skeleton tree, every bald slab of granite. Just us, side-by-side-silent, your eyes luminous beneath the lit clouds, lost beneath the]