A Sunny Day For Doing Nothing

“Sometimes the quietest days are the ones you remember forever—not because of what happened, but because nothing had to.”

I woke to birdsong—not the chaotic shrieks of home, not the lung-rattling screeches of sulphur-crested cockatoos flinging themselves across the sky like they were protesting their own existence, or the ceaseless bickering of noisy miners that used to dominate the mornings at Grandma Dawn’s place like they owned the air itself. No, these birds were... considerate. Their voices came in measured, melodic bursts—chirps, not cries. Like they’d been taught to speak in whispers and intervals, in the pauses between alarms and kettles boiling, in the early hush that hangs over cities just before they stir fully to life.

Even half-asleep, I noticed the difference. This wasn’t the wild language of survival. This was something else. Something gentler.

I lay still, eyes closed, letting the sound wash over me. For the first time in what felt like weeks, I didn’t feel the immediate urge to brace myself before opening my eyes. There was no rumble of tyres on gravel, no creak of a cabin door or rustle of someone repacking a bag in the dim pre-dawn. Just birds and the faintest breeze slipping in through the cracked-open window—air that was already warm and soft, scented faintly with something unfamiliar but comforting.

It didn’t smell like scrub or sweat or engine oil.

It smelled like... civilisation. Bread, maybe, baking somewhere below us in one of those early-morning cafés with clinking cups and gentle music. And green things—lawns and hedges trimmed into shapes by people with the time and energy to care about that sort of thing. Trees that had been planted with intention. It was air that had passed through a thousand domestic moments before reaching me.

I sat up slowly, careful not to jostle Ribbons. She was curled beneath my arm like she’d grown there overnight, soft and warm and sleepy, her fur creased from where my hand had rested on her side. She blinked once and settled again with a sigh so human I almost whispered sorry.

The light in the room had changed. Last night, everything had seemed either too stark or too dim—edges too sharp, shadows too deep, like the flat had been trying too hard to be something it wasn’t. But now, in the soft glow of morning, it looked... different. Not inviting, exactly, but neutral. Like it was finally admitting what it was: a stopgap. A liminal space designed for people in transit.

The kind of place you forget once you leave it. And maybe that was the point.

The curtains stirred in the breeze—light blue with a faint threadbare pattern that looked like it had once tried to be floral. They moved just enough to let strips of sunlight fall across the wall and ripple over the foot of my bed like someone brushing a torch across the floor of a dark room, searching.

I listened.

Somewhere below, a bin lid clanged, followed by the low whir of a truck manoeuvring through narrow lanes. A bell jingled as a shop door opened. Buses sighed and hissed at traffic lights. The kind of sounds that didn’t demand attention but were there if you were listening—the background hum of lives being lived.

Normal lives.

And that’s when it hit me—how very abnormal my life had become. How the sound of a stranger mowing their tiny patch of grass two blocks away could make me ache with envy. That someone out there could wake up and think only of coffee and laundry and errands. That their whole world could fit inside one postcode without imploding.

I stood, pushing the covers aside and placing my bare feet on the chilly lino tiles. The floor felt smooth and indifferent beneath me. The flat was quiet. Mack was still asleep on the sofa bed, one arm flung over his eyes, his chest rising and falling in steady rhythm. Mum’s door was closed. No sounds came from behind it.

I stared at the closed door for a long moment, trying to decide if I hoped she was sleeping peacefully or sitting on the other side of it, wide awake with the same thoughts tangling themselves around her.

I wrapped the new jumper around my shoulders—DREAMER glowing faintly silver in the morning light—and sat back on the edge of the bed. The jumper still smelled faintly of plastic and shop air, but underneath that, something else was beginning to cling to it: me. My skin, my warmth, my hope that maybe it wasn’t just a souvenir from a moment of kindness, but a beginning.

Because this flat wasn’t home. It wasn’t sanctuary. It wasn’t the end of the journey. But it was something. A pause.

A breath held in.

And I could feel the world on the other side of the curtain, just beyond reach, waiting to decide what kind of day it was going to be.

The smell came first—warm, rich, familiar. Not synthetic or oily or faintly metallic like servo food or something fished out of plastic wrap, but proper food. Real food. My stomach tightened in response before I’d even fully realised what it was. Scrambled eggs.

Opening the bedroom door, I stepped into the living space. There was Mum, standing barefoot at the tiny stove, stirring slowly with a wooden spoon, one hand curled around the pan’s handle like she was holding something delicate. Her hair was pulled into a messy bun that had started to unravel, strands clinging to the sides of her face, and there was a crease down the front of her shirt from having been folded too long in a suitcase. But still—there was something about the way she stood there, cooking eggs in a battered pan in this strange little flat, that made her look almost like the version of her I remembered. The one from before. Before all the detours and the silences and the locked doors and the lies.

I breathed in again, deeper this time, and the scent wrapped itself around me like a warm blanket: eggs cooked low and slow, real butter—not the tasteless, slippery kind but the proper stuff that left a golden sheen on the bottom of the pan. There was toast, too. I heard it pop up and saw her set it down gently beside the plates—perfectly browned, not burnt at the edges or half-frozen in the middle.

Across the room, Mack was already up and dressed, perched cross-legged on the fold-out bed with his chin resting on his knees, looking like he didn’t know whether to trust the morning or not. His eyes followed Mum’s movements with quiet scrutiny, like he was waiting for the crack in the performance, for the moment when the ordinary turned back into danger. I understood. We’d both started flinching from good things, not because we didn’t want them, but because we’d learned how often they came right before the bad.

“Come and eat,” Mum said, her voice soft but deliberate, as if even this invitation had to be coaxed into the world carefully. She turned and held up a plate, her smile stretched across her face like fabric pulled too tight—but it was a real effort. I could see that. She was trying. “I went shopping this morning. Bought us a few groceries.”

That made me smile. It wasn’t much, but it was something. I padded over to the table, Ribbons trailing behind me and settling by my feet like a soft shadow. Mum placed a plate in front of me, then one in front of Mack, then poured orange juice into mismatched glasses with chipped rims. I traced the floral pattern on mine with my finger. It didn’t match the plate or anything else on the table, but somehow that made it better—like we were cobbling something together from what was available, and it was still turning out okay.

The eggs were perfect. Soft and glossy, still steaming, flecked with black pepper and carrying just the right amount of salt. The toast crunched satisfyingly beneath my teeth, and the juice was cold enough to sting slightly on the way down. I hadn’t realised how hungry I was until that first bite. Real food made with care. It tasted like before.

“Let’s do something fun today,” Mum said after a few minutes, her voice light but careful. She sat opposite me, her tea cupped in both hands. “Something different. We could go for a walk. Find a park. Explore the neighbourhood properly.”

I blinked at her, caught off-guard by the idea of fun—like it was a word from another language I hadn’t heard in a while. But the spark of curiosity lit up in my chest almost immediately. “Like what kind of exploring?”

“I don’t know yet,” she said, and for once, her vagueness didn’t sound evasive. It sounded honest. “We’ll see what we find. Maybe a playground. Or a market. Nice streets. Just wander. Be tourists in a new city.”

She smiled again, and this time it looked more like a smile should—creased around the eyes, unforced. She looked like someone who wanted to believe in good days again.

But of course Mack had to ask, his voice cutting across the warmth like a breeze sneaking under a door.

“Are we going to see Aunty Amelia today?”

The clatter of cutlery stopped. Mum was rinsing the pan now, her back to us. I watched her shoulders rise, just slightly, then settle again. The moment stretched too long before she answered.

“We’ll see how the day goes,” she said, scrubbing harder than necessary, her words slightly too cheerful. “Let’s just take things as they come, shall we?”

It was one of her new phrases—those vague, soft-edged things she said instead of actual answers. It had the same weight as “just for a little while” and “we’ll talk later.” But this morning, Mack let it slide. He didn’t push. He didn’t cross his arms or roll his eyes. He just nodded slightly and picked up his juice.

Maybe he was as tired as I was. Or maybe, like me, he wanted to protect the fragile magic of this one quiet morning, even if we both knew it wouldn’t last.

I looked down at my plate again, at the buttery scraps and the empty glass and the faint warmth still rising from the eggs. And for a few minutes longer, I let myself believe we could do something ordinary today.

Just walk around. Just be a family. Just exist without running.

Maybe we really could. At least for a while.

After breakfast, we got dressed properly for the first time in what felt like forever. Not just pulling on whatever was cleanest or least wrinkled from the bottom of a duffel bag, not stuffing arms into yesterday’s jumper while already halfway out the door—but actually choosing clothes. Standing in front of our open bags like people with options and purpose and somewhere to be that wasn’t just the next hiding place.

Mum helped me brush my hair, kneeling behind me on the fold-out bed, her fingers careful and unhurried. She worked through the tangles with a patience I hadn’t felt from her in days, humming something tuneless and low under her breath. The brush moved steadily through my hair, the rhythm soothing, almost hypnotic. It felt like time had slowed down just for us.

“There we go,” she murmured, as she separated my hair into sections and began plaiting, her touch light but sure. “You’ve got such strong hair, Rose. Just like mine when I was your age.”

She tied the ends with elastic bands she’d unearthed from the depths of her purse, the kind of thing that always seemed to appear when she needed it, no matter how disorganised everything else was. The familiarity of the gesture—the tug of the braid, the soft snap of the band—felt like stepping back into a version of myself I thought I might have left behind somewhere near Broken Hill.

She let me wear my new purple jumper. The sleeves were a little long, and the inside felt soft against my skin, like a hug I could carry with me. I think she noticed how tightly I was holding onto the hem, but she didn’t say anything. I think she understood why I needed it—how the glittery letters spelling out DREAMER across my chest made me feel like I still had permission to believe in something bright and soft and magical. Like I was still the kind of girl who could be given presents and wear them proudly, instead of someone always holding her breath, waiting for the next change in plan.

Before we left, Mum packed a small backpack: a bottle of water, tissues, and the jelly snakes from the corner shop, still sealed in their crinkly wrapper. It wasn’t much, but it felt like preparation. It felt like a proper outing. The kind that might actually go ahead.

We walked out into streets that looked utterly changed by the daylight. The same pavements we’d shuffled along last night, heads down, had softened in the sun. The buildings were still tired around the edges—paint faded, bricks worn—but they didn’t look mean. They just looked lived in. Real. Like people here had long ago decided that being tidy and proud didn’t need to mean being fancy.

Mack was different too. He pointed things out as we walked, not because he was checking for danger, but because they were interesting. A second-hand shop with rows of old radios lined up like elderly men at a bus stop. A jacaranda tree with bark that peeled like sunburn, leaving shapes like Australia maps curling up at the edges. His voice was softer today, full of that quiet curiosity he used to have before he’d learned to hide it.

Mum held my hand, but not like she was afraid of me slipping away. Her grip was light, almost absent-minded, like we were two people who belonged beside each other.

The air moved like a lullaby. A crow called from the powerline overhead, low and rough but not jarring, just part of the symphony of a morning that wasn’t trying too hard. A tricycle wheel squeaked rhythmically in the distance. Someone’s dog barked exactly once.

No one asked why we were here. No one demanded names or explanations or proof of belonging. We weren’t out of place. We weren’t even noticeable. We were just another family, in just another city, on just another Saturday.

And I clung to that feeling. Stored it somewhere deep inside me like a secret snack hidden in a sock drawer—a comfort I could pull out later, when the sky went grey again or the road stretched too long or Mum locked the door with that hurried look in her eye.