"I'm a blueberry," she said. "See? Look here and say if I'm not."

She held out two small hands, cupping four dusky round berries, dark as navy gems and still wet from the rain. Her face was wet as well, and somewhere far below in the shadows of the grass, her toes twined and curled in the dirt. She was happy and wild; happiest now just after the rains, with the grey clouds still circling and low. I could refuse her nothing. I tried hard to make this image of her - right now - fix itself in my mind.

"It is just as you say," I confessed and she delicately ate them from her palms like they were secrets. All around this hill, the bushes were heavy with them; a multitude of blueberry stars, each in midnight purples against dark green leaves. As she licked her fingers clean, she watched me with interest.

"And you are old tea leaves." Down she squatted, pulling her thin dress over her knees. She hugged herself and rocked in the grass. Cool damp soil, more black now than brown.

"Aren't we a pair," she said and furrowed her brow. The wind kept blowing her hair to her face where it stuck. She shuddered from a chill.

"You will get sick, we should go back inside."

"You worry too much. I don't mind being sick. I can breathe in air like this. Look down into that valley, it is soaked and fresh and cold. All the smothering heat from before is knocked out of the air, rinsed back into the earth." She dropped her fingers to the ground and dug out fistfuls. I would not have been surprised to see her eat from them. She ground her fingers together so the mud fell away in clods.

"We won't have many more days like this. And so what if I get sick? If I do, it will be because this day has entered into me bodily, and I rather fancy that notion. My disease would last as a testament, long after the clouds have gone."

"Well then, I will get sick." She glanced up at me as though I had insulted her.

"No you won't. You are immune; you resist all these charms."

"All but yours."

"Yes," she smiled, and it was again all right. We filled our pockets with more berries and wandered down into the valley to play among the old cannons and ruined concrete bunkers. When the sun did finally burn through, it found us perched upon a crumbling dome, watching the fading storm clouds on the horizon. We strained our ears in serious, devotional silence, and sought to hear - for as long as we could - the low and fading thunder.