Alice tried to remember who had given her the brooch. She'd had it since she arrived as a young bride on this desolate and windswept patch of land, somewhat laughingly referred to as a farm, thirty years ago. She was sure that at the time it was given her it had some significance, but she couldn't remember now, what that was.

The outback dust had made its way into her heart and soul in those long and difficult years, and she no longer cared much for sentimentality. She'd come with such hopes, such bright-eyed dreams of youth. Those dreams had withered and died here, in this unforgiving place.

The years had not been kind. The baby had come not long after her own arrival, but he had sickened and died… dried out and worn down, even before he had taken his first step on the red-dust plains of this land without water.

There had been a dog once, as well, but it had faded with the grass and was nothing more than a memory. Alice clutched the brooch in her trembling hand and stared out across a vista of red and blue that dazzled her eyes.

Her husband was gone.

She didn't know how, or where. He'd ridden out to shoot dingos three weeks ago and never come home.

There was no one she could call. The horse went with him and the nearest neighbour was more than a day's walk away. She would never make it in the dry summer heat.

She sat now in her chair on the veranda, clutching a brooch that had no voice and a heart that held no hope.

She couldn't remember who had given her the brooch, but it was the one thing she had that was not swallowed up by dust and sorrow, so she held on to it and waited.

© Margaret Leigh 2007