27. So, what do we do now

- "So, what do we do now?" Liyan asked after a few days.

She could see very well that Elle didn't have much fun at work.

- "To leave? Or not to leave?" Elle answered good humoured.

She liked it in Kerikeri actually and everybody agreed that the winter was mild and pleasant. The flaura, a bizarre cross between English and tropical species, made this narrow spire of New Zealand territory a cousin of the tropics. It streched as if to reach the Capricorn parallel only making it, though, to the 35th South.

Kerikeri had the air of a friendly township, active and businesslike, tightly knitted to make it possible to wander through the streets and the shopping areas on foot.

- "The YHA is comfortable, the main room fantastic. I think we can spend the winter here. What do you think, Liyan?"

Liyan loved living in room 6. She didn't contemplate leaving at all, specially since she could now talk with F-sharp at length. The room was a dormitory for women, Saa and Shii in the bunk beds next to the door, Maa and Scottie in the bunk beds opposite. Elle's bed was the single one on the floor next to the window along the wall where she had hung her usual metly piece of cloth as tapestry.

What Elle particularly liked was the wood stove in the common room. As it started being chilly in the evenings, she took it on to light the fire with twigs and branches gathered from the gum trees underwood, on the way to the river. The fire was then fed with logs pulled out from under the dining room. The logs had to be split with an axe. Massa and Hiro used to bring a large crate of split logs that they filed neatly next to the stove.

After dinner the hostel's regulars made themselves cosy on the old sofas in front of the fire to enjoy an evening of old. Travel or pub stories, hearsay and gossips, all got on well with various points of view on politics and philisophy.

- "You know what?" Scottie said once, "Massa took a swim in the nude at the waterfall... Yes, I'm telling you!"

- "Was he drunk?" asked Saa, the Japanese girl from Hiroshima.

- "No, not even!"

- "Not like the other night at the pub!" added Chris who had seen Massa deeply asleep have his eyebrows shaved by a fan. As a result he had shaved the left half of his skull to match.

- "What are you going to do if you don't go to the mandarine plantation any longer?" Liyan asked the day Elle had left the sorting hangar out of the blue.

Her palms turned upwards and pulling a face she shook her head to mean she didn't have a clue. But she would find something.