The house on the cliff

of the news, but her answers were monosyllabic, and she would only sigh and turn her cup this way and that, looking carefully at the coffee grounds, as usual examining them for signs and portents. I wondered if she was sick, and the thought itself scared me. She was never, never sick. For the first time in years I added up her age. She was seventy years old. An old woman! I got up and stood behind her chair, hugging her from behind and leaning over to peer into the depths of her cup. Was she seeing anything bad? To me, the fine grounds looked like they always did - thick in places, a sculpted mass, and elsewhere a light scattering through which you could see the white of the cup. “No Great Portal, Loxándra?” I teased. Portals were her favourite. “Not tonight, my baby. Not a trace.” She continued her examination of the coffee dregs, almost ignoring my presence and my embrace, despite her tender address. I had been planning to ask if I could sleep in her room tonight, but I changed my mind. I hadn’t done it in years. She had made my bed, and, for the first time that summer, taken the cotton blanket out of the wardrobe. The nor’wester was blowing harder, and from my inland-facing room, the rustling of the pine trees was like a wall of sound, cutting me off from everything else. The usual night chorus of the crickets, the solo of the scops owl that had nested in the hollow of the olive tree outside my room my whole life, the chittering and sudden rustling leaps of the dormice on the roof, the thump of a ripe pinecone falling to earth, all were muffled behind the successive waves of the swaying pines.