This was the season tourists never saw. They came for the "endless summer" of December or the "wildflower spring" of September. They didn't come for May, when the vineyards turned to skeletons of twisted grey vines, and the hills across the valley looked like they were wrapped in suede.
Liam drained his mug. The cold bit through his flannel shirt. He turned his collar up and grabbed the ladder. The gutters could wait another hour.
Liam grunted. He wasn’t listening to the weather. He was listening to the silence. In summer, the valley hummed with cicadas and the distant drone of harvesters. Now, the only sound was the occasional thump of a fallen apple from the old, neglected tree near the shed—fruit too sour to eat, but which the cockatoos would strip bare by the weekend.
He sipped his tea. It was his favourite time. Not because it was beautiful—though it was, in a melancholy way—but because it was honest. The land stopped pretending. No blossoms, no glossy green leaves, no sweating tourists in hire cars. Just the raw bones of the earth, a low sun that never climbed high, and the promise of a deep, restorative sleep.