Rose, sun and hot air balloon tattoo on an arm

Tobias had been told to keep the basket beneath the morning mist until the sun cleared Carrick Ridge. He ignored the order. The burner roared, the sunburst on the crown caught the first light, and the village fell away beneath them like a dropped glove. Clouds lay in combed white rows over the moor. He could make out three farms, a stone bridge, and a goods train no longer than his thumb, trailing its own grey thread of smoke.

By nine the wind had turned foolish. It pushed them west toward the estuary and the sea fog that sat on it like wool. Tobias pulled the vent cord twice, then a third time, and watched the needle of the altimeter shiver. He thought of the ballast sacks lashed in the bottom of the basket and of how much of the day he had already spent being careful. He emptied one over the side and rose clean through the cloud, into a sky so bright it hurt.

Above the fog the sun sat like a coin on the rim of the world, and the painted rose turned slowly in the warm air above him. When they came down at last in Nessa's paddock, four hours late and smelling of paraffin, she was already waiting at the gate with a bucket of cuttings and a face that said nothing at all. She handed him a stem. It had no thorns, because she had cut them off on purpose, and he knew she had been waiting for him to ask why.