The trees were shining in the distance.

The trees were shining in the distance and distance was a scintillation like the variations on a phrase. The world seemed all of music then, that moment, for I looked up and there saw Cesca, saw her, for the first time, and in the instant seeing knew her difference and her promise and saw at once the knowledge in her eyes.

We were tired, hot, Zora and I, our dresses stained under the arms and around the hems and in broad streaks across the skirts. We were determined to set the tree. It was too big for us, and we knew it, and we'd only begun the task in late morning when we should have done it earlier, before the heat settled down in the valley layered with the moisture seeped in from the sea, but we'd had several minor upheavals in the house already that morning with the pipe going under the sink in the kitchen and Ossie getting stuck in the vase on a stand in the library and there were too many strawberries which had to be picked before the heat finished them and a stray dog was after the chickens at dawn.
That was how the day had begun.
I thought it would go on that way, devastating and wearing me down and the only way to survive it and the next which was sure to come was by working myself beyond caring.

So by the time I looked up to see Cesca standing there I was silly with the heat and exertion, the scents of earth and grass and tree and flower, heady and heavy clotted in the humid morning, silly with Zora's crossness for she was as tired as I and hadn't slept well the night before.

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