A cheerful log fire was burning in the lounge of Okataina Lodge, where the two adventurers, Alan and Ernie were greeted effusively.

"Well, how many trout did you catch?" asked the bar tender, pouring a couple of beers.

Alan shrugged his shoulders and spread his fingers helplessly. "We creeled a couple of big ones," he enunciated carefully. "But they got away."

At first there was politeness punctuated by awkward silences, but as different guests drifted in, imbibing became the order of the evening. They were mostly men, whose expanding fishing stories were always self-centred, sometimes irrelevant, and to Alan's and Ernie's gratification, geared to nostalgia or anticipation, rarely to the present.

"Bloody liars," muttered Ernie, as he downed another double rum and coke. He belched and acid bile scored his throat, threatening to choke him. Alan grabbed an arm.

"You coming to the dining room, or what?" he asked sharply, regarding Ernie's sloppy, inebriated face with consternation.

"Mushht go to bed." Alan hauled Ernie outside and back to their unit.

- - - - - - - - -

Later, having dined and feeling pleasantly drunk, Alan took a torch and sauntered through the park-like grounds.

In the moon light he thought he saw the ghosts of little old fishermen hopping about preparing tackle. Starting to sweat, it dawned on Alan that he was halluncinating badly, in his drunkeness. A shape materialised in the torch light, staring with red eyes.

Alan swept the torch around, thoroughly shaken. Wallabies, not imaginary dwarfs, they were only wallabies! He laughed in relief. About fifteen of them lolloped away to be swallowed up by the night.

Alert now, Alan flicked off the torch and listened to the haunting cry of the Morepork, bidding him to enter the deep silence of the bush. He padded softly over the dappled road, so as not to disturb the brilliance of millions of glow worms that starred in the trees.

Further along several silver and black bundles of fur suddenly gambolled about on the road, before disappearing again. He heard the alien rattle of those possums.

Alan felt at peace with the world, all the petty problems of the day having dissipated. He walked on and on enjoying the isolation and the freedom from stress; freedom from the drunken idiocy of others over whose lives he had no real control.