Bales and Burdens

"Some weights you carry because you choose to. Others are shoved at you, dust and all, until you’re left wondering if stubbornness is a kind of gravity."

By late morning the air above Bixbus was already holding itself taut, the heat lying heavy over everything, pressing the horizon into a wavering line of pale mirage. It wasn’t the kind of heat that blazed with drama, but the suffocating, constant sort that seeped into skin and bone until you forgot what it felt like not to sweat. Dust had worked its way into every crease of my sneakers, my throat rasped like sandpaper with each swallow, and my shirt clung damply to my back in a way I refused to acknowledge. If you ignored it, maybe it wasn’t happening — that was the lie I tried to sell myself.

I told myself I was walking towards the Drop Zone to stretch my legs, to survey how things were shaping up out there — reasonable, routine motives. But the truth scratched under the surface, persistent as an itch I couldn’t reach. Maggie.

She had slipped away during our dramatic entry last night, moving with the silent inevitability only a snake could manage. I’d woken to her ongoing absence, and though logic insisted she would reappear when it suited her, logic didn’t knot itself into my stomach. Logic didn’t whisper worst-case scenarios — of her coiling away into the dunes, swallowed by the vastness, gone for good.

So yes, I was heading for the Drop Zone. My eyes combed the dust and scrub for the faintest suggestion of her shape, the glimmer of scales under sun. I told myself it was just to ease the gnawing thought, just a quick check, nothing more.

I’d nearly convinced myself it would be a clean sweep — in, scan, out again — when Paul’s voice sliced across the open ground, sharp and ragged.

“You left the bloody hay by the Portal.”

Not observation. Accusation.

I stopped, blinking against the glare until I found him. Up ahead, Paul was wrestling one of the bales I’d so proudly smuggled in, his hands locked white-knuckled around the rough twine. He dragged it in short, furious bursts, boots kicking up plumes of powder-dry dust with every lurching effort. His shirt was plastered flat to his spine, sweat running in pale rivulets down the dust-caked lines of his face. Every few steps he stopped, set the bale down with a grunt that shook his whole frame, and glared at it as if the straw had personally set out to ruin his life.

The sight was equal parts ridiculous and guilt-inducing — my stolen spoils, his sweat.

I sighed, long and theatrical, because really — what else was there to do? “Good morning to you too.”

“It’s not a good morning,” he shot back instantly, as though the words had been waiting on his tongue since dawn. He hunched over the twine again, muscles straining as he hooked the bale forward another grudging foot. The sound it made — that slow, tearing rasp across dirt — set my teeth on edge. “It’s hot. And I’m shifting what you couldn’t be bothered to.”

“The hay?” I asked, though the answer was written all over his sweat-slicked face.

“Yes, the hay.” His free hand stabbed a finger towards the Portal’s shimmering direction, still faintly pulsing like a secret I’d failed to clean up properly. “You dumped it right there. People need to get through.”

“People,” I echoed, voice flat, unimpressed. “Or just you, dragging bales like some tragic mule while the rest of civilisation looks on.”

His scowl deepened, cut deep lines into the dust crusted across his forehead, but he didn’t snap back. He was too winded for sparring. “You could’ve put it in the Drop Zone yourself. Would’ve saved me breaking my back.”

“I could have,” I admitted with the serenity of someone who absolutely had not. I let the words linger, lazy and smug. “But then you’d miss out on all this quality exercise. Think of your core strength, Paul. You’ll thank me later.”

“Think of my spine,” he muttered, stooping again. The bale lurched reluctantly across the dirt, kicking up another choking puff of dust that settled back onto his boots and into his collar. His arms trembled visibly around the coarse twine, knuckles bleaching white, jaw clenched tight as though he could drag it forward by sheer fury alone.

I angled my path wider, skirting the spectacle, dust stinging my throat. “Well, I won’t keep you from your workout.”

That earned me a glare so sharp it could have stripped the paint from every tin roof in Broken Hill. He straightened, shoulders heaving, breath dragging ragged from his chest. “What are you even doing out here anyway?”

“Taking in the view,” I said smoothly, the dryness in my tone soaking every syllable. “Dust is very in season.”

He didn’t buy it — his eyes narrowed, suspicion written there plain — but for once he let it drop. Instead, with a grunt that sounded like surrender dressed up as effort, he shoved the bale the last miserable stretch and collapsed against it, arms braced, chest heaving.

When he spoke again, his voice was low, almost an accusation, though the exhaustion softened it. “If hay’s too hard for you, maybe you could manage something else.”

I arched an eyebrow, letting the weight of his words hang a moment. “Such as?”

“Charlie,” he said simply. No embellishment, no explanation — just the name. But it landed with a force that made the dust-heavy air between us shift. He didn’t need to say more; it was challenge, plea, and accusation all at once. Then, almost as though he regretted the heaviness of it, he twisted his mouth into something resembling a smile. “Or if that’s also too hard, you could at least fetch the Prado.”

“The Prado?” I echoed, flat with disbelief.

“At Adelaide Airport.” He straightened a little, swiping sweat from his brow with the back of his wrist. “Luke said he’d record a Portal location there before his flight. If he wasn’t just talking, you should be able to step straight through. Car’s in the short-term carpark, black Prado. Luke’s got the keys.”

I let out a sharp snort, somewhere between derision and reluctant laughter. “Luke’s got the keys? I’ve not seen him all day.”

Paul gave me a look — one of those infuriatingly layered expressions of his. Weary around the edges, but still carrying that kernel of stubborn hope that refused to be stamped out. Amused, too, like he already knew I’d cave. “Please.”

I held his gaze, stretched the silence taut between us like twine. Then, inevitably, I let it snap with a sigh. “So that’s my to-do list now: rescue a dog from police custody and steal your car from Adelaide Airport.”

“You make it sound impossible.”

“I make it sound accurate,” I countered, dry as dust.

His mouth twitched, almost — almost — a grin. “Anyway, it’s not exactly stealing if it’s my car in the first place.”

I scoffed and turned away, brushing stray straw from my jacket as though that might end the conversation. “Hardly fun then, is it?”

And with that parting shot, I left him to his stubborn bale-dragging and the heat, my boots crunching towards the shimmer of the Portal. Already, the idea was knitting itself together inside me, threads pulling tight into something that looked disturbingly like a plan.