Callistemon

• Jessica Tran, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2019

They rummaged through the Queensland soil, digging up the logs and flinging dirt right into the window as she tapped her fingers against the glass.

She turned her back from the window and remembered a time where the only noise she heard was the deafening silence of the world resting on her shoulders. Looking out, a memory so fond to her trickled back into her mind and she smiled and rested.

Upon the fields where the sun glowed an iridescent orange, golden wattle trees lifted their warm scent of wonder into the earth. Amongst the cozy hearth of a cheerful fire, her delicate hands rubbed in circular motions whilst blowing soft air into her palms. Sitting in a magnificent coat of crimson red lay the endemic bottle brush tree, scientifically referred to as, Callistemon, from which her name was derived.

The path was her guidance, leading from the steps of her home to the surround fullness of complete shrubbery and wild growth. She felt alive amongst the day but lived throughout the night, where darkness brought a compelling side of an uncovered feeling of independence. On a log, she carved her name, ‘Callista’, and whispered to the earth so that it’d never forget her existence. On the hill in which her home lay proud and sturdy, fields and fields of rich, velvety grass to the southern region of her place spread across with sparse plants painting its blotches, covering myriads of unforsaken hills pass her line of sight. She wasn’t on top of the world but it felt like it.

This was a place she called her home, a place where she encompassed night and day and heard nothing but the stillness yet dynamic courses of nature take its toll. She valued equilibrium, symmetry in all things radiant and rayless. When the morning birds disappear and the woods allure in its mystery, she’ll sit back and take in all the bright lights of the sky.

Sensing her compassion, her child-like wonder and aloofness into the wild, reality brought her back into its depths.


At this stage, the drills rummaged through the stone and excavated the land sitting directly in front of her sight

She wondered how there once used to be more to a window than light. More than just light.

Earth, presence, spirit.