The rain stopped

Jake imagined he was staring down the wombat, but he couldn’t be sure. It was actually possible the wombat was asleep. Jake was never good at dealing with other creatures. He had heard the stories of the Canberra wombats, their reputation of mindless violence and barbaric small talk was known from the coast to the Snowy Mountains and beyond. That reputation also ensured that they were given a wide berth, usually. Unusually, a wombat had appeared in Jake’s territory, and Jake wasn’t entirely comfortable about that. Being approximately forty times heavier than the wombat, Jake was OK with giving it a prod with his hoof, which he did. With surprising speed, the wombat leapt to its feet and looked around in astonishment. So it had been asleep. Jake was even more surprised. What’s going on here? He needed to find Steve.

Just then, for the first time in Jake’s memory, the rain stopped.

Steve, meanwhile, had problems of his own. Not only had the rain stopped, throwing his world view into complete disarray, he was certain he was permanently blinded by a stabbing light coming through a break in the clouds. After a lifetime of existing with one hundred percent cloud cover and ninety-eight percent rainfall, his eyes were completely accustomed to dull and unchanging light, shadows were a rumour and the position of the sun a complete mystery, the existence of the moon and stars were a cosmic joke. Clutching his face, Steve fell to the ground screaming, but not screaming enough that he was unable to avoid the biggest puddle near his feet. Actually, his hysterics were quite gracefully managed, all up. He gave an experimental peek and was relieved to find he wasn’t actually rendered sightless and was just a bit dazzled. Blinking, he shaded his eyes (shade!) and looked around. His first impression was of yellow, and green. The colours of the world around him popped, and that was before he looked up and saw the blue of the sky. Holy crap, the sky really was blue, just like the old picture books had always maintained! There wasn’t much of it, and the clouds looked like they were going to close in again, but blue! He’s never seen natural blue before.

The second thing he noticed was Jake trotting towards him, small eyes in his huge head fixed with purpose and completely ignoring the sudden sunlight. “There’s a wombat in the top paddock”.

“So? The sun it out!”

“So?! There’s a murderous thug in the top paddock and you say ‘so?!’”

“Jake, the bloody sun is out! How do you know it’s a murderous thug? Did it try to murder you? Did it express an intention to murder you? Was there even a murderous glint in their eye?”

“Well, its eyes were closed for the most part…but everyone knows what wombats do! Why do you think you can’t be out in Canberra after dark? Because the wombats will murder you!”

Steve took Jake’s head between his hands and pointed it at the sky. “Look! Blue!”

“What’s blue?”. Jake said it like it was a foreign word. Steve stared at him. Of course. Bovines are colour blind.

“Never mind. Let’s go talk to the wombat”.

Together they squelched away, in search of the potentially lethal but probably not marsupial.

“Jake?”

“Yeah”.

Tell me, in your opinion, just how would a solo wombat murder anyone? They can’t hold a weapon, they have very short legs and teeth designed for eating carrots. They’re not exactly top of the food chain”.

“Ways and means, Steve. Ways and means”.

“You know you could just lie on him, right?”

“I could lie on him, but what would you do? You humans aren’t really equipped either, unless you have something pointy or hard in your delicate little fingers. He might murder you in your sleep.”

“I sleep upstairs, Jake, behind a door. I’ll be fine”.

"Do you? I wouldn't mind a door".

The term “paddock” was loosely used, as there was no point in having high-maintenance fencing when you could just talk to the animals and negotiate feeding arrangements. Since the war that caused both the climate and DNA to change, there was no point in a lot of things. For one thing, vegetarianism was pretty much universal among humans, as talking mammals are much harder to kill and butcher. Fish, on the other hand, were so far unable to vocalise or string a rational thought together, and so were fair game.

The wombat was waiting for them, sitting on a granite boulder, already tagged with squares of poo.

“Seriously?!” Jake indicated the poo blocks with a tilt of his nose.

“Sorry about that”. The wombat swept them off. “Old habits”.

“Right. What’s all this about?”. Steve had things to do. The sun was out!

It seems that other old habits died hard, too. The wombats who had taken over Parliament House and turned it into a gangster club house had, though the generations, spontaneously divided into factions and were actually unconsciously mimicking the political parties that had previously resided there, decades before. This particular wombat had been summarily evicted for becoming a bit to lefty, with dangerously socialist leanings, and that didn’t quite fit in with the authoritarian rule of the dominant party. This particular wombat was apparently looking for a place to fit in.

“Bull crap”. Jake was not convinced.

“You’d know, cow”.

Jake was outraged. “I am a Hereford bull, thank you very much! The cheek - from a cinderblock in fur! See, I told you they were thugs!”

“All right, all right, both of you calm down”. Racism was rife in the animal kingdom, and different species rarely got along. “Got a name, wombat?”

“Julie”.

“Yeah? Which one are you named after?”

“Dunno. It was on the wall somewhere. We get all our names from around the walls and on stuff.”

Steve was impressed. At least one of the wombats could read. Jake couldn’t read, but then it had never occurred to Steve to teach him.

Suddenly, a small brown face appeared from between Julie’s front legs.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!”

“Jake! That’s enough!”

Steve was entranced. Baby wombats were a special kind of cute. Sighing, he said “All right, come on then. You can hang out with us for the time being. What’s the little one called?”

“Malcolm”.

“Of course he is. Jake, stop snorting! Come down to the barn, I think I’ve still got some carrots somewhere”.