Did I only dream it rained? The sticking and then the running of a hard rain after months of none, almost for me, as though called by my missing it so.

Not just a rain but a downpour, a deluge like we needed, the land too like a sun scented desert for me, the woods that, eucalyptus and scrub, are not woods enough for me with the ground all dust and never moss.

But even a downpour would never be enough, not here. The trees were fine, and so too the dust. It was me who needed rain, dripping from the boughs they do not have here onto the soft salal and sponging forest floor this land also does not have. One rain is not enough to create a woods so gentle.

The heady rain scent is rare enough here that it is cloying, the land seeming desperate, puddles splashing up too briefly on pavement, only to disappear in hours. As I once disappeared in forest. The dry here is so great it swallows you up like ferns can if you go deep enough, like hills do here, swallowing up the life it holds so briefly and then sucks so fully out of the green covering grass which held the water. The little rain those green blades caught leaches down in the space of a week when the season hits, tips first empty and dry, turning sharp, the hills suck away and days later the grass is dead and dry and dead it crowns those hills they proudly call golden.