They walked through Lulu’s front yard into her house.
‘Aiden must be out at the fire pit. Let me grab the camera and we’ll go out.’ Lulu scurried down the hall. Alice spotted the guacamole on the counter and darted over to it, fumbling with the cling wrap covering to dip a finger in.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ Lulu hollered from one of the bedrooms. Alice laughed as she sucked guacamole from her finger.
‘Okay, got it.’ Lulu returned holding the camera. She narrowed her eyes at Alice. Alice held up her hands in innocence.
They walked outside. ‘Aiden?’ Lulu called.
A single paper streamer curled around the corner of the house, and then another. And another.
‘Lu?’ Alice asked uncertainly.
Lulu came to her side and wrapped an arm around her waist, walking her into the backyard and full view of most of their workmates.
‘Happy birthday!’ Ruby, Aiden, several other rangers, even Sarah, stood with plastic cups raised.
Alice’s hands flew to her face. Lulu and Aiden had turned their yard into a birthday bazaar. Butterfly bunting was hung around the patio, and brightly patterned fabric awnings were strung between the trees. A fire was glowing in the pit. There was a pile of cushions and a couple of beanbags on a huge rectangular rug, with streamers tied haphazardly in the bushes. Dips and salads and corn chips were spread over a trestle table, alongside what must have been a fifty-litre cylindrical Esky, with a hand-drawn sign that read Dangerous Punch. And, to Alice’s absolute delight, everyone was wearing butterfly wings.
‘As if we didn’t know it was your birthday.’ Lulu grinned.
Alice gaped at Lulu, her hands pressed to her chest in gratitude.
‘Come on,’ Lulu urged, laughing. ‘Dangerous Punch time.’
Someone put music on. Aiden manned the kebabs sizzling on the skillet over the fire pit. Alice, light-headed from the surprise and rush of booze to her head, greeted everyone with exuberant hugs and cheer. She refilled empty punch cups, stoked the fire and offered around nibblies. She did all she could to avoid focusing on the one person who wasn’t there.
When the sky was dark and the punch was flowing, Alice sat with Lulu under a blanket by the fire. Flames reached for the inky sky, shooting sparks like stars.
‘I don’t know how to thank you,’ Alice said.
Lulu squeezed her hand. ‘It’s my pleasure.’
The fire burned in a sea of colours: yellow, pink, orange, cobalt, plum, bronze.
‘Can I tell you something?’ Lulu asked.
‘Please,’ Alice said, smiling.
‘I knew there was something special about you, chica, the first day you arrived and I saw your truck.’
Alice gave Lulu an affectionate nudge. ‘Well, that’s a bloody lovely thing to say.’
‘I’m serious,’ Lulu said as she took a sip of her punch. ‘In my family monarch butterflies are daughters of fire. They come from the sun carrying the souls of warriors who fought and died in battle, and return to feed on the nectar of flowers.’
Alice watched the fire as it hissed and popped. She tightened the blanket around her, thinking about everything hidden under the monarch butterfly stickers on her truck, and whose daughter and granddaughter she was.
‘When I first saw the fire warriors on your truck, I knew that you’d change everything about life here,’ Lulu said.
Fire warriors. Alice didn’t know how to respond.
‘Dangerous Punch! Get your fresh Dangerous Punch refills here!’ Aiden called across the yard. His wings were lopsided and sagging. One of his antennae was broken and flopped over his eyebrow. Lulu snorted with laughter. Relieved for the distraction, Alice joined in.
‘C’mon.’ She pulled Lulu’s hand in the direction of the Esky. ‘More Dangerous Punch.’
They drank and danced under the winter stars. As Alice twirled in the light she caught sight of her monarch wings. She couldn’t shake Lulu’s story from her mind. Daughters of fire.
He came in the early hours of the morning when the music was mellow, the fire burned bright, and everyone who hadn’t passed out in their swags or stumbled home was snuggled in beanbags with blankets. Alice watched over the flames as he swung out of his four-wheel drive and headed for the Esky. Aiden clapped him on the back and offered him a cup of punch. Dylan downed it in one gulp.
‘Rough trip?’ Aiden raised his eyebrows, refilling his cup.
Dylan downed it again.
‘How’s Julie?’
Dylan shook his head. ‘Not my problem anymore.’
Aiden gave him a third cup of punch. ‘Ah, mate. Sorry.’
‘It is what it is.’ Dylan shrugged.
He turned to scan the yard. Through the fire, his eyes found hers.
When the sky started to lighten, Alice and Dylan were the only two awake.
‘Is this your first desert all-nighter?’ he asked.
Alice nodded, smiling drunkenly as she chewed on the lip of her plastic punch cup. His attention was hypnotic.
‘Well,’ he said, looking up at the sky, ‘I dunno if anyone’s told you, but it doesn’t count unless you see the sunrise.’
They left Lulu and Aiden’s swag-littered yard and, wrapped in blankets, made their way up a sand dune.
‘Here comes the sun,’ he said, his voice low, his eyes on her. Her skin tingled. The sky was so clear, so alive with shifting colour, that Alice flung her arms out wide as if she might soak it in.
‘It reminds me of the ocean,’ she murmured. ‘So vast.’ Her head spun with memories.
‘It was,’ Dylan said. ‘Once upon a time, this was an ancient inland seabed.’ He motioned around them. ‘The desert’s an old dream of the sea.’
A kaleidoscope of butterflies spun in her stomach. ‘An old dream of the sea,’ she repeated.
Their skin was painted by the fiery dawn light. He stood to the side of her. Though they weren’t touching, he was so close she could feel the heat of his skin.
‘You’re so beautiful,’ he whispered near her ear. She shivered.
As the world lit up, he inched closer and wrapped her in his arms. They stood that way, held together by the sunrise, until the sound of the first tourist buses broke the spell.
Lulu waited at her back door, teetering off balance as she clutched a half-empty cup of punch to her chest. The yard was littered with streamers, butterfly bunting and bottle tops. She swayed, eyes fixed on the sand dune behind Alice’s house, where Dylan was hiding between mulga trees, the same place Lulu had seen him standing for months, watching Alice through her windows.
It started the afternoon Alice arrived, when she drove through Parksville in her yellow truck for the first time. Lulu was filling up at the petrol bowsers when Dylan had pulled in. He was making overtly mate-ish conversation with her, which she guessed was his way of erasing their history, until he stopped mid-sentence, staring at the road. When Lulu turned, she saw what he saw: Alice with her long, dark hair streaming out her window, dog beside her. She’d looked straight at them. Straight at him. Lulu kept talking but Dylan wasn’t listening. He was besotted by Alice. The way he’d once been by her.
Later that night, after Alice had dinner with Lulu and Aiden and walked home, Lulu was sitting outside on the dunes with a glass of wine when a movement in the shadows caught her eye. She’d remembered the smell of Dylan on her skin, and squinted to sharpen her vision in the darkness, sucking in her breath at the sight of him sneaking along the back fence line of Alice’s house. Before she could stop herself, Lulu moved to the corner of her yard to better see Dylan crouched under the stars, hidden by a mulga bush, watching Alice. Inside her new home Alice went tentatively through the rooms, as if she were a guest. For a while she sat on the couch staring at the wall, cuddling her dog. Her face was so sad. Dylan waited until she went to bed and turned out the light. Then he stood, silently, and walked home. Lulu had retreated to bed, where Aiden sleepily asked why she was shaking.