I haven’t written in what feels like a long time.

My words have been lost in rhythms and pictures or, if I am honest, they have just been lost.

Today I took a breath and let myself feel the shining edges of October.

After baking our bodies by the fire all morning— waiting for the thunder to roll and sculpting worlds from play-dough— we stir ourselves into wellies and coats and step outside.

We set out towards the haunted house— it is the time of year after all— each one of us deaf to the other beneath the dusky damp rustle of our own hoods. We swap stories nonetheless, throwing tales of ghosts into the mizzle. There is little complaining today. Soon hoods are pushed back, cheeks streaming and hair curling wet.

The blackberries have gone over. All the brambles are tipped with curling brown pincushions, or yielding black balls of wet mush. I didn’t make a pie this year, the tallest one reminds me. He strides ahead with hands plunged deep into his pockets, his reflection swinging behind him on the glistening road. And the swallows have gone, he tells me, as an afterthought, over his shoulder.

I watch the upside down him as the grey sky tears, revealing a gash of blue. His legs seem impossibly long, his back impossibly straight. Littlest fingers lace into mine and squeeze hard. A gesture of compassion before they are whipped away in chase of the long boy.

Inside the house the two seem close in age and size. They are contained by windows, clothes and walls. Out here they extend, elongated like their shadows, they stretch in the afternoon light pushing against the edges of the day. But the difference between the inside version and the outside version is most stark in the tallest. He seems to go on forever, his hair brushing the sky. The littlest feels it too, hurling herself after him, trying to pin him down. Trying to keep up.

The air yawns between us and I pause to watch a flock of starlings curling up from white grass like scraps of silk in the wind,

The huddling of the morning is replaced by shining space; arms swing, boots splash and bodies disappear into sodden hedgerows. We are connected only by the leaning light of the afternoon that buoys us towards the cliff path. And by words. Both big and little voices fill the quiet air with sound: describing with great authority everything they see; arguing about the rules of the races they sporadically engage in. I am brought in to arbitrate on the gendering of a herd of cattle and then promptly ignored as they skitter between the gorse after what they both assure me is a cuckoo. My soft assertion that it is in fact a blackbird is met with silent scorn and shared amusement. What do I know? This is their afternoon. Their shadows swim ahead of me along the lane.

It stops raining without us noticing.