This one is a bit longer, more of a one shot really. I will admit, I loved writing this one!
She found the tin tray and a trail of mud and sand on the hall floor and, pursing her lips in annoyance, she went in search of the culprit. She found him in his bedroom.
"Lucien, what have you been doing? All that mess..."
He looked guiltily at his mother. "Sorry, Mum. Matthew and I went panning for gold in the creek. He thought he found some but he didn't." Genevieve tried her best to keep a straight face.
"I don't think a tin tray would be much good for finding gold, Lucien," she replied, "and the gold has run out anyway, more than 50 years ago."
He looked disappointed, and even more so when she sent him to wash his grubby knees and hands. Genevieve took pity on him and cleared up the mess in the hallway. She could never resist the shamed look in his eyes when he was in trouble.
He came to find her later in her studio, bored now that he had no one to play with. He loved being in his mother's studio, everything about it reflected his mother: he loved the smell of the oil paint and smoke from the fire, the light shining through the tall windows onto the wooden floor, and all his mother's paintings around the walls.
He squatted on a stool by the window and waited. He knew she didn't like to be interrupted when she was working, so he contented himself with watching her and looking at the dust motes dancing in the spring sunlight.
The painting she was working on was nearly finished, and she was adding some gold to something in the background of the picture. He'd never seen her do this before, so he moved his stool closer and watched more carefully.
She lifted a piece of gold leaf with some waxed paper, and smoothed it onto the painted canvas, then brushed away the parts that didn't stick to the area she had prepared. Suddenly, there was a thin edge of gold on the vase in the painting, and Lucien was fascinated by the way it caught the light.
"So is that gold from Ballarat?" he asked, standing up to have a closer look at it.
"I don't know," his mother replied. "It may be. I buy it from a shop in Melbourne, so it's probably Australian gold."
She picked up a small piece of the gold leaf that had fallen on the floor, and put it on the palm of her son's hand.
"It's really light," he said quietly, watching it move as he breathed on it. "I thought gold was heavy. That's why panning works, isn't it?"
She laughed. "Yes, gold is heavy, but this is so thin and so delicate that it feels light." She took the piece from his hand and beckoned him over to the fireplace. "Look, it's so light it can fly!" She held the gold leaf over the fire and let it go.
She pointed at it as it floated up, glittering and twisting, until it stuck to the dark wood ceiling. Then she turned to Lucien, who was still looking at it open mouthed. She smiled at his look of wonder and ruffled his hair.
"Now, you had better go and play in the garden. I need to finish this before dinner and I still have plenty to do."
As Lucien walked away he picked up another fragment of gold leaf from the floor. Could he fool Matthew into thinking he had found it in the creek, he wondered? He put it in his pocket ready for tomorrow's gold prospecting expedition with his friend.