.

postman’s knock

handed over with a grin

the parcel

It was the light which first alerted our world to strangeness: dim, muted, brownish. Then the sun, a small eye, orange-red and baleful. The clouds were a greyish beige, still and portentous. No wind yet, though storm threatened. Waiting for the climax, the final throe. The copper beech, back-lit; the hoot of a train in the stillness; a falling leaf. People stopping and pointing at that sun, not understanding. Talk in the street: the like had never been seen. Something was happening.

.