This is a work by Meaghan Shelton titled ‘Spotted Pardalote’. Meagan offered her beautiful work as a prompt for a Luxville Tale. Spotted Pardalote (2020) oil and acrylic on birch panel 300mm x 300mm. Image used with permission.

This tale will soon be recorded. In the meantime let me read some other Luxville Tales to you at Madame Yum’s Insta TV @madameyum

The Winter Birds.

Every year she heard them call. An omen of winter. Every year the first call was a surprise. And every year she spent the time to wait, watch and listen for the second.

When she first heard them, she was living in the Queensland hinterland. She had moved to shake off the cold, and stupid dumb love in Luxville. She needed to stretch. She set up her easel and lived for a while, in a caravan with no power, lighting a fire for a rare warm shower.

That first call was intriguing; singular, repeating. She sat still in the doorway and waited for the bird to appear. But each time it called, was like an echo of where it had been. It wasn’t until later, washing her brushes on the outside bench, that she saw it. As though it sat still only long enough for her to see.

Tiny, black with a patch of bright red on its tail, with rows and rows of bright white dots along its body. More dots circled its head like a crown. Once she had taken in the detail it went back to digging a home in the clay bank nearby. Darting in and out quickly, never still, carrying small pieces from the bush floor to make the burrow comfortable.

As the season cooled, she rugged up and watched through the caravan windows as more arrived. She called them her winter birds. She watched them for hours making homes that would last on only a while.

That first year she spent days wrapped in a quilt, propped up on the little couch that became her bed. Time passed unseen as she held her teacup in both hands, the teapot on the table so she didn’t have to move far. She sometimes dozed with her chin on her folded arms, her breath fogging the window.

And she forgot the cold, and her work, and her busted heart. She was stretching in that stillness, allowing her winter birds to dig into her chest and leave their small pieces of comfort.

In the following years she filled her journals with sketches over winter bird season, having to use all her pencils to capture the variations of colour, dots and patterns. The caravan was full of tiny painted canvases despite the number she had already sold.

In the last year she discovered the soft, whistling wheet-wheet call was the falling tune created by the call and response of a couple. And she realised her winter birds had come closer each year to build their homes with hers, while they patched together her heart.

LUXVILLE TALES story by Erin M McCuskey | image by Meaghan Shelton (used with permission).

The #LuxvilleTales are generated from reader contributed images. Post me a single image themed ‘faded glory’ and I will write you a short tale. Tag it #Luxville & #LuxvilleTales and tag me too! Love Madame Yum

Note: These beautiful birds are Australian, live in temperate climes and are sometimes called Diamond Birds. Meaghan’s friend calls them the Falling Birds after their song, listen below.