Lara left the small town and began walking out to the house she was renting. She passed the new estates on the outskirts of the town. They now numbered about a thousand houses, doubling the population of the town in the past five years. Breeze block prisons for the commuters. Just enough space for the tvs and beds and microwaves.

A few tractors chugged past her. One of the trailers was packed full of moaning cows, pushing their noses to the gaps in the wooden trailer, desparately gasping for air. The countryside rolled out flat and barren before her. Fields of cows and sheep, a few lonely trees. Only the ditches held any life and these too were under threat - cut further back each year.

Further out, she stopped to piss behind one of the old falling down houses. Trees were poking out the chimney and windows, ivy crawling along every ridge, brambles oozing out the doorway. As she squatted down she heard a rustling and a large bird shot out of the house. A not abandoned house at all -- a very alive one, she thought. More alive than those concrete boxes everyone's building now. The wind licked her arse and rattled the long grasses she crouched in. A frog hopped beside her. Cold and slimy, his snake-like head stared black-eyed and unblinking. She felt like sleeping and lay down for a while.

It was late when she woke and the sun was just setting as she reached the wooden bungalow she'd been renting. The meadowsweet glowed creamy white in the dusklight. Tall silverbirch and round copperbeach trees made familiar shapes. Lots of blackberry bushes and a riot of dandelions, and nettles exuberant on the stone driveway. The landlord had wanted to spray the 'weeds' but had reluctantly agreed to leave it alone after Lara pleaded with him.

"Bloody mess everywhere," he'd grumbled, "I don't know how you stand it."

Delighting in its narrow escape from chemical warfare, the place was coming alive again.

She made a cup of tea from some plantain in the garden and settled down on the front step. She watched the shadows growing, whispering in the trees. Flowing along the driveway, flickering about the house.

The phone rang, startling her, making her spill some tea. She rose to answer it slowly, wondering if she should bother.

"Lara? I'm not getting you out of bed, am I? I tried ringing earlier but you weren't there." Judith, her ex-colleagues voice on the other end.
"It's alright, I was still up."
"So how are things? How've you been?" Judith sounded anxious.
"Grand. How are you?"
"Your story is being printed after all. I thought you'd like to know. Check out tommorrow's paper."
"Really! They put it in, uncut?"
"Well, no... You know it couldn't go in like that."
"Mmm." Lara wasn't too surprised.
"Is that all you got to say?"
"Well I suppose I couldn't expect anything else from a propaganda vehicle which gets it's petrol from the kind of companies in the story."
"You're getting very cynical Lara, it's not good to be so negative about everything."
Lara laughed.
"You've really changed Lara - you're getting hard and bitter." Judith sighed
Laura laughed some more and Judith grew impatient.
"And how'd you think you're going to change things by running away and hiding in the back of beyond?"
"I'm not hiding at all. I'm searching."
"What the fuck are you on about? You're having a nervous breakdown and won't even admit it to yourself."
"A breakthrough, not a breakdown."
Judith sighed loudly, completely exasperated.
"Listen, have a rest for another few weeks and I'll see you back in the office when you're feeling better."
"I'm not coming back."
"Just have a break and I'll talk to you soon." She had a school teacher tone to her voice. "Mind yourself Lara, look after yourself."
"Goodbye Judith."
"Ok, talk to you soon." She was unwilling to let go of her caretaker role. "We all care about you, you know. We're all worried about you."
Laura knew there was no point saying any more.
"Ok then, bye for now."

Lara shook her head as she put down the phone and yanked the lead out of the socket.

Judith had been more than a colleague, she'd been a friend, someone who stuck up for her in the editors room when no-one else would. But she couldn't reach her now either.

She shuddered as she remembered those meetings in the editors room. The battles to have anything published intact, uncensored.

"You can't say that!" Jimmy would roar, "You just can't say that!"

The corporate decor, stale air, and snide comments of the other hacks made life at the office almost unbearable. But Judith had always stuck up for her. Argued with Jimmy to get things printed and told the others to shut up when things turned nasty. Judith didn't agree with Laras politics, but she stuck up for her all the same. And now she too was slipping away, unreachable.

Lara slept badly that night, dreaming she was standing on the shore yelling at Judith to catch the rope she was throwing. Shouting and throwing as Judith drifted further out to sea.

* * * * * *

She slept late and not feeling like the walk into town, drove in to get some food and a newspaper, curious to see what they'd printed. She took the paper to one of the twenty pubs in the small town and ordered a bottle of water.

There it was on page twenty-three, hidden among "Two Dead In Horror Crash" and "Brittany Shaves Her Legs With Real Razors." - the story Lara spent so long putting together about a highly popular acne drug that causes severe depression and brain tumours. Weeks of work, sorting through boring statistics, doctors reports, FDA reports, Irish Medical Council reports, letters, documents and more documents. Interviews with family members. So much work, so much effort, and you could barely find it. Who was ever going to notice such a tiny piece of truth among such bullshit?

Lara felt a terrible rage bubbling up as she stared at the paper. It's all a fix - they make the rules up as they go along to suit themselves. How could she fight it?

She'd really thought she could have been a John Pilger or Robert Fisk. A real journalist telling it as it really it. But the game's rules say the chances of that are like winning the Lotto. More's the chance of re-writting press releases or interviewing the same bureaucrat expert saying the same thing he's always been trained to say. The vacuous slogans for a vacuous audience who doesn't even want to know how it really is.

She sped home in the car, almost running one tractor off the road. Beeeep! She blew the horn as she overtook him.

When she'd moved here first from the city she marvelled at the greeness, the lack of concrete and traffic. But now she could see the place better. Feel the place better. It felt tame, domesticated, under the control of humans, not nature. A vast farm factory. The fences, boxed fields, captive animals, enslaved crops - everywhere the mark of civilised humans, dominating all they came into contact with. How could she have not seen it before? A wet desert. And now the sprawl seeping out of Dublin, making everything even more dismal. What a dump!

She stopped the car at the bottom of the driveway and sat still for a long time, wondering what the hell she was going to do.

A crow landed on the bonnet, his black wings shining blue in the sunlight, his beak set determined. He stood for a while, just watching, then flew for the hills in the distance, cawing as he melted into the clouds. Lara felt indescribably lonely. No family, no community, no place in the world.

Clouds black and heavy moved menacingly towards her. Lara stepped out of the car and stood very still as the storm gathered and spewed itself all over her. Rain soaked her clothes and hair, running into her eyes til she couldn't see anymore. Sharp, biting drops sting her skin. Soothing.

Time to figure out what to do, she thought. What the hell am I going to do?

* * * * * *

She slept and dreamt. More nightmares. About cities of stone and metal, huge piles of rubbish, plastic covering everywhere, suffocating all life. I can't breathe! I can't breathe! She woke herself up shouting, drenched in sweat, upright in bed. The clock beside her said 12.02. The witching hour.

Oh what the hell, she thought, I might as well get up, I'm wide awake now.

The moon was waxing half-full as she set off down the fields, scattering sheep as she walked. She found the small wooded patch, a place she'd discovered not long after moving here. It had some life in it, some spark.

She sat and listened and watched the shadows. Bats swooped over her head over and back, over and back, so close she could feel the breeze they made. Black shapes blurring so fast and free in the night shadows. Moonlight beat down cold on her head and she shivered.

She sat for a long time. Thinking about the land she was living in. She'd thought she'd been escaping from the city, but she hadn't escaped at all. Her dream of a safe space in a warm community was disintegrating fast. It felt more like a retreat now, a surrender. She was surrounded and the wagons were circling ever closer, advancing on top of her.

A rustle behind her made her stop thinking. She spun round, alert to danger, her heartbeat quickened. A red fox was approaching her warily, his amber eyes shining in the moonlight, his bushy tail straight out behind. Lara stifled the urge to run away, forcing herself to breathe slowly.

The fox sauntered up to her and sniffed nonchanantly at her legs before turning and wandering away through the trees, completely unbothered by her presence. Lara smiled and suddenly noticed all the moths and insects flying round her, also completely oblivious to her. The trees too seemed unmoved -- and the woodlouse crawling along a branch overhead. Life teeming, getting on with it, like it had before she came, like it would after she left. Feeling like she was now really at home, she relaxed at last.

What was that? She froze. Was the fox back? No, someone -- a human -- was coming through the field. At this time of night? No-one ever came here! She watched a man appear, walking steadily in her direction. What the bloody hell is he doing here? She tensed, ready for confrontation.

But something in his walk softened her. He walked gently, unlike most men, with a slight bounce.

"Hello" he smiled as he came nearer.
"Hello." Lara peered out of the trees.
"I hope you don't mind. I've seen you here many times." He paused waiting for some sign. "Do you mind?"
"Not as long as you haven't brought a six pack and don't expect me to talk about football."
He laughed and came right up close now, relaxing and looking for a spot to sit on. The moonlight shone on his blue-black hair. His hands were large and graceful, moving when he spoke, dancing to his words.
"Aren't you scared coming out here on your own? Scared you'll run into the ghosts!"
"Death and the dead don't scare me. It's the life without joy and the walking corpses which fill me with dread."

A fox barked in the distance, a long, steady, eerie bark.

"Maybe you want to come for a cup of tea?" Lara asked, getting up and shaking her limbs.
"I'd love to," he replied.

* * * * * *

"So what's your name anyway?"
"Black Crow".
"Were you christened that?" Lara laughed. "Or do you just like crows?"
"Crows were a sign of bad luck for the Romans, you know."
"Why?"
"I suppose they ate too many Roman crops or something. You know what farmers are like - can't stand anything stealing 'their' food. They take all the land and then get annoyed when wild creatures try to survive by taking some of it back."

They drank their tea and washed the cups.

* * * * * *

"Do you want to go up to the mountains?" he asked the next morning.
"Why do you want to go there?" Lara was surprised.
"Ah, just an idea. Do you want to or not?"

They drove up to the mountains and parked at a scenic viewing spot.
"Isn't it beautiful?" he shook his head.
They surveyed the lonely stands of connifers - tree farms for the paper mills. The parts that had been chopped looked like stubble in an otherwise almost completely shaved landscape. Desolate, bereft, empty beyond anything a city could be. Rivers streaked down the bare hillsides. Streams of tears pouring down sad rock faces.
"Don't you ever feel like doing something instead of getting depressed about things?"
Lara shrugged, "Yeah, but what can you do?"
"Oh, I don't know. But it's worth at least thinking about, isn't it?"
"I don't know. I suppose."
"I read somewhere that depression was just anger without the passion!"
Lara laughed.
"Yeah, I suppose..."

* * * * * *

"A new development of affordable housing on the outskirts of Laois town was completely destroyed by arsonists late last night. 'This was a disgraceful act of vandalism,' Sgt. George O'Brien said, 'We would ask anyone who saw anything to come forward and report to us.'

This is the third such attack in recent weeks and building contractors are thinking of pulling out of the area. 'We have to start thinking about cutting our losses,' said builder Patrick O'Brien, 'Unless we can get assurances from the guards that this won't happen again.'

The development was part of the rural renewal scheme which is revitalising rural areas and bringing much needed employment to the area. A similar attack was launched against a housing estate in Ennis, Co. Clare last week, though guards state the attacks are unrelated.

'We're fairly certain it's not a copy-cat attack', Sgt O'Brien stated, 'And are following definite lines of inquiry on the matter.'

* * * * * *

"I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship," Black Crow raised his teacup in a toast.
"To copy-cats!" Lara raised her cup too.
"To copy-cats!"

* * * * * *