Another Throw of The Dice

  ‘That’d be great,’ said Polly who smiled encouragingly around the room.

  ‘Hear, hear,’ said Jim, ‘but perhaps we’ll need a chair person to keep us on track.’

  Polly nudged him.

  ‘Keep you on track you mean. Jim’s a novice politician,’ she explained with a mixture of apprehension and pride.

  The evening meal was a joint project of bearers, servers, consumers, talkers and clearer-uppers. When it came to organising the sleeping arrangements, Min put all the bedding in a heap in the middle of the floor and let everybody choose what they needed. She said that if anyone was cold in the night they could help themselves to the leftover pile.

  When the others had retired having queued up for the bathroom facilities, Min and Robert went to sit on the outside verandah and breathe in the brisk night air while listening to the secret sounds of the Bush. Robert put his arm around her and whispered his own private little sounds in her ear. Min suddenly felt as if their souls were speaking on a level beyond words and for the first time in a very long time, she knew contentment. Somehow a circle had been joined finally in surroundings of indescribable beauty and she knew her place in the universe at last.

  ###

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks for reading my book.

  Mary Clare

  maryclaremorganti@yahoo.co.nz

  I wish to thank friends who read through the early draft of the book: Suzanne Dowling, Peter Joyce, Randall McMullan, John Powell, Anne Rowe and Alison Smith.

  If you have acquired this publication without cost please consider making a donation to the Wellington Free Ambulance or to a similar charity in your area. To donate use link: www.wfa.org.nz

  Cover painting for the book was adapted by Kaivai Andrews and Emily Rowe from an original work by Vanya Taule’alo.