All Our Shimmering Skies

by Trent Dalton

There is a difference between liars and storytellers,

‘For this story to reach your heart, son, you may need to swallow it down with a sprinkling of salt from the shores of the inland sea,’ Oshiro said. ‘You should write the facts of this story only on tissue paper. But you should carve its meaning in stone.’

‘That’s why I like you. Nuts like you and me should always mix together.’

True love is a pure gold vein in a dry hillside of dirt and stone.

the secret to a long walk. Never think about the destination. Just think about the air in your lungs, the motion of your arms and legs. There is a rhythm to it, and once you have found it that rhythm can tick-tock through time forever.

There are some who can walk further into the darkness and there are some who always run back to the light. A world of absolutes. Rich and poor. Cursed and blessed. Good and bad. Truth and lies.

That’s why people tell stories, she thinks. They remind us why we love things. They remind us why we love other people.

And she realises that if there is treasure to be found anywhere under the shimmering skies, if there is true value beneath the high plain of heaven, then it will be the lips of lovers that will one day fire her soul and the fear that will always make her fight and the friends who will take her fears away and the children she will call her own and the wonders she will see on the trees and leaves and mountains and in the stone and iron and glass buildings that will touch the day and night skies across her world. It will be in the joy and sadness that will gather in the corners of her eyes, all that salty treasure leaking from all the life she will bury inside herself, from the glowing inside her.