Liquid Gold

• Matilda Winnell, Grade 9, St Mary Of The Angels Secondary College
• Short Story
• 2012

1st in the 'Legendary 2012' competition

It was the middle of the night when Iris first heard it. The gentle pitter-patter, pitter-patter that brought a smile to her lips even in her half-conscious state, drifting between the realm of sleep and the reality of being awake. At first she slept through the indistinguishable sound, ignoring it as she would ignore a fly buzzing around the room, continuing on in her dreamless sleep until the irregular beat on the tin roof became too loud to simply ignore, until it half woke her, until she recognized it. Because when the switch in her mind flicked, when her eyes snapped open in realization, there was never a chance that she would miss it.

It was rain. Iris sat bolt upright in her bed, looking through a hazed vision at her small room, from the chipped bedside table to the tangled mess of sheets kicked to the ground on a hot night in the Australian plains. She could faintly make out the familiar shapes of the furniture in the corners thanks to the brilliant white moonlight streaming from between dusty white lace curtains, the open window bringing in a cool breeze and a wonderful sight for tired eyes. The scraggy trees bordering the fence line could only be foggily made out through the sheen obscuring them from view, the broken lines running diagonally across the star filled night sky. As she watched the dry, cracked land soaked up the water, drinking it up until it could not hold any more and pools built up in the little potholes and ruts of the bare earth, little rivulets running off the collection of red rocks in the sparse garden, gathering at the bottom to form puddles of brown water.

But what Iris considered the most beautiful was the scent. The refreshing smell of rain hitting the red dust of the plains, of dry earth meeting water, the smell described by a word derived from the word for the blood of the gods. Iris stood and walked to her window, pushing it up as far as it would go despite the protesting groans of unused hinges, the faded and cracked white paint coming away in her hands. She put her head out the window and breathed in the scent, the cool breeze on her face, the much missed sound of rain on a tin roof and the smell of petrichor bringing memories of the splashes of vibrant color, laughter and smiles, new shoots of green fighting their way through the dirt to the sun and life. Iris closed her eyes and drank in the scent, the feeling, the moment. Absorbing it, and living it.

And Later she lay in bed, watching the millions of droplets of perfectly pure water raining down around her home, watching rain and moonlight filtering through the trees, smiling quietly at what her slice of the country considered one of nature’s most precious miracles, until the steady beat on the roof sent her into peaceful sleep.