Harlequin Among the Ruins

“There’s a certain honesty in things that don’t speak—beetles, stones, half-finished walls. They always tell you the truth.”

Wiping my hands along my thighs, I left a trail of mud across my already dirt-stained jeans—thick streaks darkening the worn denim like warpaint. Each mark told its own small story: the collapsed edge of the old retaining wall, the loose sandstone slab that had nearly taken out my ankle, the stubborn root I’d wrestled from the earth with a stubbornness to match. A series of quiet battles, won incrementally.

“That took a bit longer than I expected,” I admitted, rolling my shoulders back with a dull crackle of tired muscles. My voice carried that familiar blend of fatigue and faint triumph—earned, not exaggerated. The wall, with its crumbling defiance and passive-aggressive lean, had demanded more of us than we’d planned for. But it stood now, reinforced and solid, and that counted for something.

Chris huffed loudly beside me, the sound theatrical, underscored by the lopsided grin already tugging at the corner of his mouth. “We would have been finished half an hour ago if you hadn’t been so distracted by those bugs,” he said, eyes dancing as they met mine—blue, sun-touched, and very aware of the line he was treading.

I narrowed my eyes at him, but it was a reflex more than a warning. “They’re not bugs!” I shot back, the indignation flaring automatically, familiar as breath. “They’re—” I stopped myself just in time, teeth catching lightly on the edge of another impending lecture. I’d nearly launched into a whole explanation on morphology and the difference between Hemiptera and Coleoptera before I caught the tilt of his head, the slight quirk in his smile.

The warmth in his gaze was unmistakable. He wasn’t mocking me—he never really did. This was ritual, part of the way we folded around each other’s oddities. He poked, I bristled, and somewhere in the middle we found a rhythm. His teasing wasn’t derision—it was attention. And he knew exactly how much to give.

Still, I could feel the lingering pulse of passion under my skin. My curiosity, my instinct to observe and catalogue even in the middle of manual labour—it was stitched into me, as immovable as the soil we’d just shifted.

Chris’s chuckle pulled me gently back. It rolled out of him, deep and easy, scattering the remnants of my defensiveness like dry leaves. He reached down to flick a bit of bark off his knee, then glanced at his watch—a quick, habitual movement, but it said more than it meant to.

The day wasn’t over yet. Not by a long shot.

“So when is this friend of yours supposed to be coming around?” Chris asked, his voice still mellow from the early morning’s work, curiosity threading into the quiet like sunlight into water. The question marked a gentle shift—banter giving way to something more anchored. Luke’s visit, abruptly scheduled and faintly surreal, returned to the foreground like a reminder left too long on the windowsill.

“I told him to come at nine,” I replied, glancing down at my watch. The strap was streaked with dirt, the metal dulled by clay dust and the scuff of stones. Practical, functional—though in that moment, it looked like it belonged to someone else entirely. Time had slipped past unnoticed, tucked into the movement of stones, the thud of boots, the quiet mutter of shared effort.

“Well, it’s quarter past now,” Chris said, tone still light, but edged with a note of concern that he tried, not entirely successfully, to tuck away.

“You may as well get yourself cleaned up and start cooking breakfast,” I said, brushing stray grit from my palms, already half-shifting into the next rhythm of the day. Hosting didn’t mean linen napkins and polished cutlery here—just a warm plate, a clean-ish table, and the honest comfort of something cooked fresh.

“You’re not going to wait for him?” Chris’s head tilted slightly, surprise plain in his voice.

His instincts leaned more formal than mine—hospitality with rules and timing. I’d grown into something looser. Practical, yes, but never overly precious. In our mismatched approach, we’d found balance more often than not. He ironed out the excess, I softened the edges.

“A tasty duck egg omelette waits for nobody,” I said, folding a half-smile into the words.

There was truth beneath the joke. The eggs were from our own birds, collected in the soft grey light of early morning. Their yolks were the colour of mid winter sunsets, rich and unapologetic. They deserved to be eaten warm, straight from the pan, not left to congeal in the name of social niceties.

“Okay then,” Chris said, his brow easing, the corners of his mouth lifting into a small, knowing curve. He nodded once—a gesture of acquiescence, of understanding without further need for explanation. Then he turned and wandered off toward the outdoor washroom, movements easy, unhurried.

The breeze shifted slightly, bringing with it the scent of damp earth and rosemary from the patch near the path. The sound of his boots softened on the gravel. No rush. No fuss.

It was the pace of Collinsvale. The pace we’d chosen.

And the day, delayed or not, was beginning to unfold on its own terms.

I stood back for a moment, hands resting on my hips, my breath just starting to even out again. The retaining wall ran clean and straight along the edge of the garden now, its new slats aligned like quiet sentinels. We’d torn out the old rotten timber—splintered, warped, and long past its use—and replaced it with fresh hardwood that still carried the scent of sawdust and sun-warmed resin. It sat flush against the earth, crisp-edged and purposeful, a silent boundary drawn with care and sweat.

Rain had always been its undoing. Every winter, water pooled along the back edge of the slope, softening the ground until the wall bowed under the weight of it. The soil would slump, the timber would give, and Chris would mutter about “bloody band-aid carpentry” as we tacked on temporary fixes. But not this time. This time, we’d done it right. And it showed.

I bent low, fingers brushing a bit of sawdust from the bottom beam, and drew in a breath.

The scent of fresh timber rose clean and sharp. That unmistakable mix of cut wood and cool air—part spice, part earth. There’s something ancient in it, something that presses a thumb gently into the centre of your chest. A kind of quiet victory. The smell didn’t just say done; it said belonged. Like the land had noticed, and approved.

Then I spotted it—a flicker of colour at the edge of my vision. A harlequin beetle, vivid and deliberate, making its slow ascent up the fabric of my sleeve.

“Hey there, little harlequin,” I murmured, the corners of my mouth lifting as I turned my wrist to get a better look.

It paused mid-crawl, antennae flicking forward like tiny question marks. Its body gleamed with a lacquered sheen—inky black legs, segmented with delicate precision, and that back. Brilliant red, dappled with orange and yellow spots like drops of paint flicked from an artist’s brush. A living ember against the drab weave of my gardening jumper.

There was a serenity in these moments that nothing else quite matched. No paperwork, no conversation, no headlines—just this. The unhurried presence of another life, smaller and older than mine, going about its business with grace.

I extended my palm, patient and open, and waited. The beetle hesitated, then shifted course without protest, crawling onto my hand with the careful pace of something that had survived for thousands of years by never rushing. I brought it close to my eyes, drinking in its detail.

“What beautiful colours you have,” I whispered, almost reverently.

This was what fuelled me. Not just the science of it—the names, the categories, the field reports. But the astonishment. The thrill of noticing. That something so tiny could be so bold in its design, so unapologetically vivid.

I crouched by the edge of the garden bed and lowered my hand to the leaves, letting the beetle disembark into a patch of rocket and curled mustard. It moved on with calm assurance, vanishing into the green like it had always belonged there.

I stayed like that for several minutes, elbow resting on my knee, gaze tracking its path through the foliage. A beetle, a garden, the faint scent of wood and soil rising around me. No urgency. Just observation. Just presence.

A tiny explorer, carrying its world on its back, reminding me—once again—of mine.

A light growl from my stomach broke the spell.

“Right,” I said aloud, the word a small concession to the body’s priorities as I tore my gaze away from the patch of garden where the harlequin had disappeared. The moment lingered for a beat longer—its quiet wonder still clinging to me like the scent of crushed herbs on my fingertips—but reality had returned with a rumble. The cold edge of hunger nudged its way up from my core, practical and insistent.

“Time to clean myself up and eat.”

Even the thought of breakfast had weight now—thick slices of toasted sourdough, maybe a duck egg omelette with rosemary and caramelised onion, steam rising off the plate as the morning sun angled in through the back windows. It wasn’t just about food; it was the ritual of it. The reward. Muscles sore but satisfied, fingers still bearing traces of dirt despite two washes, the smell of fresh timber on my jumper.

The wall was finished. The beetle had come and gone. The garden hummed behind me with its usual life, content to get on without me.

I started up the path toward the house, brushing dried grit from my palms and rolling my shoulders as I walked. The air was warming slightly, though the breath I exhaled still misted faintly. Birds flitted between the apple tree and the wire fence, low calls threading through the stillness like questions left hanging.

And there it was again, tucked just beneath the quiet joy of a task completed—the thought of Luke.

A flicker of curiosity, sharp and clear, threading its way through the domestic calm. What had prompted his phone call? Why the solo visit?

I couldn’t shake the sense that something lay beneath it. Not ominous exactly, but... off-axis. A tilt in the usual rhythm.

The mystery of it followed me up the steps, mingling with the hunger, with the scent of rosemary still clinging to my sleeves. A puzzle piece placed down—but not yet turned face-up.