The billabong didn’t move.

It lay beneath the afternoon light, flat and unbroken—like something that had decided long ago not to give anything away.

​

Jimmy slowed as he approached it.

​

The air felt different here. Not quieter—just… held. As if the place itself was aware of them.

​

Amanda stood near the edge.

​

She hadn’t said much on the walk out. Just enough to show she knew the way. Nothing more. Now she stood still, looking across the water as if she’d been there longer than he had.

​

Jimmy stopped a few steps behind her.

​

He glanced at the trees. Dry branches, uneven shadows. The ground underfoot shifting between dust and something softer, uncertain. Nothing about it settled.

​

“You come here often?” he asked.

​

Amanda didn’t turn.

​

“Sometimes.”

​

Her voice was low, but it carried without effort.

​

Jimmy stepped up beside her and looked out.

​

The water didn’t move.

​

Back home, water meant sound—flow, current, something alive. This felt different. Like it had been left behind.

​

“What is it?” he asked.

​

“A billabong.”

​

He nodded, though it didn’t help much.

​

He waited.

​

“It used to be part of the river,” she said after a moment. “Before it changed.”

​

Jimmy frowned slightly. “Changed?”

​

She didn’t elaborate. Just kept looking out across it.

​

The silence stretched—not empty, but closed.

​

Jimmy crouched, picking up a small stone. He turned it once in his hand, then tossed it lightly into the water.

​

The ripple spread outward in a slow circle.

​

Amanda watched it.

​

“You shouldn’t do that,” she said.

​

Jimmy straightened. “Why not?”

​

A pause.

​

Then, quietly—

​

“It remembers.”

​

He almost laughed—but didn’t.

​

There was nothing in her voice to suggest she was joking.

​

He looked back at the water.

​

The surface had already stilled again, as if the ripple had never happened.

​

“You really believe that?” he asked.

​

Amanda turned then.

​

Not quickly. Not sharply. Just enough to meet his eyes.

​

“It doesn’t matter what I believe.”

​

Jimmy held her gaze, uncertain.

​

There was something in the way she said it—not dismissive, not defensive. Just… final.

​

A breeze moved across the surface of the billabong. Barely there. The kind of movement you could miss if you weren’t paying attention.

​

Jimmy realised then—

​

he didn’t understand this place.

​

Not the land.
Not the silence.
Not the way things were said without being explained.

​

Back home, things had names that meant something. Here, everything felt partial. Like he’d arrived in the middle of something that had started long before him—and wasn’t interested in catching him up.

​

Amanda stepped back.

​

“We should go.”

​

Jimmy nodded, but stayed a moment longer.

​

He looked at the water again.

​

Still. Closed. Unchanged.

​

Then he turned and followed her.

​

But something stayed with him as they walked.

​

Not what she’d said—

​

but the feeling that there was more behind it.

​

And for the first time since arriving,

​

Jimmy wondered if some things here were never meant to be explained.