The air was crisp and cool, punctuated by the smell of crushed eucalypt leaves Jo held in her hand. The night air still held its shape, the dry heat and dessicating winds would come later. The two of them stood near the tracks, awkward, almost leaving, but not quite yet. The tracks wound down through the mountain range, cutting a line through a tangle of bracken and blackberries, curving sharply down to the foothills. The foothills unravelled themselves into short, mounded meadows before crashing into the ocean, a grey sullen ocean of fishing trawlers and mournful seagulls.

“I was like you once,” Melani said. She laughed and blew smoke in Josie, Joey, Jo-girl, Jospehina, Jojo's face – some bush blend full of tea tree to cleanse the air and lungs. “I'd be like you again if I could be that stupid.” The ground shuddered and the casurina trees huddled in a small grove nearbye nodded their heads as the heavy freight train roared down the hill towards them.

“Bullshit,” said Jo.

Mel patted Jo's arse as she left. “That's what I mean. I said like you, not a carbon copy. Savour it!” Mel shouted above the rising clangour. “You might as well.”

Mel hauled herself onto the last carriage with practised ease; her lean arms always surprising in their strength. Jo imagined trying to follow, her arms wrenched out of their socket from the force, spraining her wrists and falling to the tracks. Dust blew in Jo's face, Mel's throaty laugh, rich with sixty five years of sass and spice coated the dusty wind and peppered Jo's tongue. Mel had sparkling green eyes, heavy powdered makeup and a face sun-scorched into dense wrinkles. She'd been a motorcycle stuntwoman with the travelling show and would still be doing it too if she'd had her way. Mel was part woman, part myth – she'd been a revolutionary, the centre of numerous scandals, love affairs, dumb-arse stunts and she had a habit of taking under her wing lost strays like Jo.

Jo was 16 years old, going on 57. When she was eight years old she'd dyed her hair with food colouring and had discovered that it dyed skin a lot better than it dyed hair. She'd hopped in the shower the next day and a rainbow of colour had run down her face and stayed there. She'd been to school for a while, but hadn't liked it much. She didn't bother anymore and no one seemed to care. She stayed out of the way, occasionally swigging bad wine goonie bags from sullen boys on the kerb of their lonely country town. Jo and the boys had nothing in common except a steady burning unhappiness and they generally ignored each other except for the occasional abortive act of friendship that generally went badly. Jo was sick of the mainstream, sick of the freaks with their designer difference, sick of the dropkicks and the dropouts, sick of feeling stupid and sick of feeling smart. Now she was going to become an apprentice stone mason, build tombstones and shit. The shit would be the main part of it, not so many tombstones were carved anymore and never by apprentices, but that was her ambition, she wanted to make some of the beauty that lingered in cemeteries. Everyone had to have a dream, and it had been a long time since she'd dreamt anything.

Jo had made a decision and Mel was on her way again, satisfied another troubled freak would find her way in the world. It wasn't the decision Mel would have made, but it was a step somewhere that wasn't down a toilet and that was worth a smile. Mel and heard of a show in the north that was gearing up and was on her way to meet them, stopping in on her people along the way. Mel had people everywhere and while she never had much she always had people to call upon. In just about any town Mel could bang on a door, rattle a can outside and tent flap and have someone open the door who would fling their arms around Mel before ushering her inside.

Mel could have settled down in any number of places, but the itching in her legs, the passion in her mind, kept her moving. Mel had tried to settle down once or twice, she was even good at it for a while, but hearth and home would grow into cage and spiralling shapes in her mind that were not kind.

Mel waved good bye to Jo, certain their paths would cross again, hopeful of the transformations time and space could make at that delicate age. Mel hoped she would meet Jo in the city – Jo would be a tattooed, coffee drinking sophisticate with short chunky dark hair and ochered eyes. Mel would remind Jo of how much things had changed and Jo would laugh with surprised reminiscence at Jo the sullen teenager, an impossible creature from several lifetimes ago, trapped and cocooned in such a small world. Jo would play guitar after work, sing the blues and start a kick arse commune that would teach city kids how to clean their own game. Mel extravagantly blew a kiss as the train took her down the slope, she had a good feeling about Jo and she was seldom wrong about that kind of thing. Jo would get there, she just needed time and space.

Jo scuffed her sneakers on rough gravel by the track, hands in her pockets, thinking of the long walk back to town. They'd hiked out past the old quarry, following the train line as their last adventure together. Jo could not watch Mel leave any longer, she was too angry, too certain she would never see Mel again – she wanted to look anywher but at that clanling train. Jo did not see the fall, but she heard it. When Mel fell from the train onto the tracks, her head splitting open on the shining steel tracks, it wasn't just a feisty old woman with attitude that died. With her died stories – rich, complex and varied; with her died a wealth of knowledge, ways, meaning, learning hard won that could never be duplicated. With her died a small centre of the world.

Jo did not know Mel was dying from the sharp crack of skull against tracks. Jo's first response was to laugh, a sharp high retort at Mel – playing pranks again and not yet ready to leave. Jo's smile quickly died and she ran on to the tracks, choking on the dust and feeling like a shit. Jo stroked Mel's hands and face, her skin a delicate membrane too soft to contain a life. “Mel? Are you ok? Mel?” Mel wasn't dead, not yet, but the back of her head was slippery and Jo felt pieces of skull shift as she gingerly felt for damage. Later, Jo would pretend Mel died here, it was a simpler story to tell and she didn't feel like sharing the full details. “Mel, you've hit your head on the tracks. You...”

Jo looked to the trees, looked to the empty sky, looked to Mel lying on the tracks. “Please wake up.” Jo pushed down on Mel's thumbnail, wincing as she pushed hard against the quick. “Wake up.” Mel did not respond.

Jo half dragged, half carried Mel from the tracks; acutely aware that every movement could bring Mel closer to death – not that she had a choice, there was no way in hell she was leaving Mel on the tracks. Jo made a bed for Mel, rolling her jumper into a pillow soon slicked with blood, soft segmented fingers of casurina needles forming a lumpy mattress. Mel's breath flickered like a candle, her lips a soft blue, eyes closed, mouth empty and gentle. Mel began to murmur – short wheezes, obscenities and secrets, even in a coma Mel was never one to follow convention.

“Fuck no! The other one... the other one! Sheep belong to pigs, were you born stupid?”

“Mel, can you hear me? Are you ok?” said Jo, relieved that Mel was breathing. If Mel was breathing, talking, it couldn't be that bad, surely. She felt a warm flicker of hope in her chest, it was going to be alright.

Mel would die under the casurina trees and Jo would sit with her until the end.

“Snow, and smoke, you have to be careful. There's never enough water. We need a fire, a fire I promise.”

Jo hunched down next to Mel, chin on her knees, holding Mel's hand, the tops of Mel's hands were surpringly soft.

“I don't know what to do. I don't want to leave you to get help. What if something happened?”

“There's never enough, but we'll see it through, somehow.”

“I don't want to leave you and I don't think I should move you, your head is cracked in pieces.”

“Don't, don't...”

“What can I do?” Jo squeezed her eyelids together and tried to imagine she was somewhere else. She felt herself grow heavy with confusion, lethargic and needing of direction.

“The smoke will make it clean. The smoke will make us clean.”

Jo's heart leapt and she smiled softly, smoke she could make smoke. It would cleanse their spirits and bring the rangers. In the heat of summer even a small fire would be too dangerous to be ignored, they'd charge towards them, ready to arrest some fire bug or some stupid camper, she could almost hear their arrival, tyres squealing, chatter on the CB Radio and then a chopper coming to take Mel to safety. “Wait here,” she whispered in the growing light. “I'll be close, I promise.”

Jo gathered sticks, reassured by their clean snapping sounds, and built a fire. She cleared a broad area, pulling up dried grass and churning the soil with a small hatchet from her backpack. She made the fire small at first, soft timber and clean hard wood. When the fire caught and was steady she added freshly chopped green timber, a eucalypt sappling chopped into lengths, some native rosemary, some sharp lengths of blackberry, softened by bracken. She paused every now and then to check on Mel. Mel had stopped talking, though her lips still mumbled the air. Everytime Jo checked she was afraid that Mel would be dead, that she had somehow killed Mel by not sitting beside her and watching.

Jo held a branch of fresh eucalyptus leaves on the fire, waited for them to catch and brought the pungent smoke to Mel's face. She gently washed the smoke over Mel's body and breathed in the pungent fumes.

The fire flickered and Jo shivered, unnaturally cold, as the sun rose higher. When the fire was built Jo sat and listened as Mel's blue mouth held off death breath by breath. Mel stood on the lip of death, her mind had been fragmented by the fall and scattered as it was into pieces of fluttering confetti or thistle down. Broken pieces saw many things, touched many things, channelled many things and, lips to tongue, unlike any before or after, Mel spoke of what those fragments touched.

Snow fell, high up in the ranges, a stand of dead eucalypts, a clear blue sky. Those trees had been dead for as long as anyone knew; naked, weathered limbs, slowly diminishing as one hatchet or another turned them to the fire. The hut felt like a luxury after three days hard trekking through snow and slush, though it was harder to keep warm. They found the places where the wind came in and shoved dirty underwear in the cracks.

“Do you think we've lost them?” Reframe.

Fire, metal melting, hubcaps flowed like quicksilver, puddles so bright eyes ached. Slide through.

The smell of coffee and cinnamon, the jingle of the bell. The bread's toothsome crust, the white inside a lattice of air and texture. Wipe the bread in olive oil, dip it in the dukkah, crush the cumin seeds between your teeth. Breathe slowly through the nose, yes, this is here. Release.

“Mel, can you hear me?”

Tang of salt sharp breeze, an ocean going on forever. Cold spring ocean, still cold from winter. The whales are slowly returning, they grew weary of blood and avoided this place for a while.

Mel had a seizure, teeth started to chatter first, her head tilting back. Nnnngggggg Nggggg she said her eyes rolled open, only to reveal their whites.

A gravestone, granite oucropping, the land's bones poke through the skin, old smooth lumps gasnite.