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starlit-lilies · 2 years

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task 08 | home sweet home

Lily, eight, says, “It’s coming.”

Libby sits bleary-eyed beside her. It’s so early breakfast isn’t yet on the fire. She says, “What is, kiddo?”

“Listen,” Lily whispers, small dark eyes fixed on the treeline. “The birds all flew away. The trees are coming.”

It’s a mad scramble after that. Kimiko offers to carry Lily on her back, but Lily shakes her head, defiantly proclaims she isn’t a baby anymore, she’ll run with the grown-ups.

Within ten minutes, something deep inside the jungle is quaking, making branches snap and leaves rustle and birds take flight. Within thirty, the storm has caught up to them, trees shifting around their close-knit group and swallowing up their scouts. Libby and Kimiko stay with the group, both scanning the greenery for a small dark-haired girl with their hearts in their throats.

It’s Jordano who comes back and leads them to a spring that remains unmoving amidst the chaos; Jordano who risks going back out into the storm to fetch the other scouts and guide them back to safety. The storm lasts all night, and Kimiko and Libby both give Lily their rations so that she can eat her fill.

When Lily is asleep, her head pillowed on Kimiko’s lap, someone whispers: “How the fuck did she know?”

Kimiko, stroking Lily’s hair, says, “Are you surprised? This place is her home.”

. ☀ ☀ ☀ .

Lily, twenty-five, steps out of the Labyrinth’s shadow into the harsh light of open beach. Libby pushes herself forward to shield her, her hands outstretched as if to protect the people gathering behind her, to be a human barrier.

Lily, blinking rain out of her eyes, stays silent as she takes in the crowd. Not even the tempest can deter the curiosity of some, including three people who stand in the front, shielding their people just as Libby shields hers. They have questions, most of which Libby answers, and then they are each taken one by one to be “interviewed.”

Meridium. What a strange name for the island.

When her interview is over, the one named Matthew smiles at her. “It’s all right. You’re home now. You’re safe.”

It’s a refrain often repeated to her, with well-meaning beachers asking things like how do you like your new home? and how’s your new home treating you? and Lily wants to scream. This miserable place full of miserable people who hate her island isn’t her home.

Home is running under the shade of the canopy with soil between her toes and resting in trees on humid days, sharing fruit with the monkeys. Home is her people telling stories with shadow hand-puppets at the campfire and singing rounds and folk tunes and modern songs. Home is listening to the island’s music, the insect hum and the birdsong and the ripples of shifting trees far beyond her sight, learning what it means to hear a wrong note or to not hear anything at all.

The only music here is the waves crashing on the beach, and that seems so heart-crushingly empty. People don’t take care of each other here, not like in the Labyrinth. Food is kept for the individual, not the group; eating is a lonely, quiet activity. There are no clusters around campfires to share stories and songs. Everyone has their own single tent or room or place when sleeping together would be a safer and more efficient use of resources.

Lily hates it. She hates that she can’t tell Libby that she hates it, because Libby has found her husband and her friends have found “civilization” and “society” and she doesn’t want to ruin their happiness, doesn’t want them to think she’s ungrateful for this supposed miracle.

More than once she looks to the Labyrinth’s treeline. More than once she considers going beyond the Cove, letting the trees swallow her up again. Some days the urge is so strong she wonders if the Labyrinth is beckoning her home, too, if it misses her as much as she misses it.

But Libby, a part of her whispers, every time. Every time, that little voice wins.

. ☀ ☀ ☀ .

“Eh, birdie, that you?” Faolan calls, and Lily, almost twenty-six, stumbles over nothing. She stops in the darkness, whirling wildly to find him. She’s close to the farm, far from the fog on the beach, and yet his voice is here nonetheless.

There he is, leaning against a tree and peeling a mountain apple with a knife.

“No,” she whispers. “You’re—you’re not real.” She struggles to keep her voice steady. “You’re dead.”

Faolan peers at her with too-intense eyes. “Aye,” he says, then eats the mountain apple skin. Bloodred peel crushes in his mouth, stains his teeth. It shouldn’t look like that. But it does. “Strange how you realize that immediately, don’t you think? But it’s all right, Lily-bird.” He gestures with his knife toward the beach. “Come with me. We both know you want nothing to do with that miserable lot, eh?”

Lily feels like she’s been running for ages; her breaths come in short sharp gasps. “Where would you take me?” she asks. “You’re not real.”

Faolan smiles, bits of bloodred apple caught in it. He looks as feral as when they’d found him, believing their group was a delusion.

He says, “Back home, where you belong. You weren’t supposed to fly the nest, birdie. But we forgive you. If you come home with me I’ll take you to meet someone who misses you very, very much.”

Lily steps back, throat tight. “You’re from the island. You’re just like all those visions those people are having down there. You’re not really him.”

Faolan shrugs. “Eh, I feel like me.” Red water spills from his mouth. His words are half-gurgled, like he’s underwater, and his too-big too-intense eyes are fixated on her. “Maybe I’m a hallucination. Maybe I’m his shiryō,” and at that Lily chills, taking another step back, unaware of the fog thickening around them.

Faolan’s red grin widens, relishing in her fear. “Maybe that ship out there is real, and Libby will get on it and go home to her real daughters. Then who will you have?”

“You’re scaring me.”

“I always scared you,” gurgles Faolan, water spilling down his throat, soaking his shirt. His skin is bloating, turning blue. “That’s why you let me die, eh? Ha. You’re glad I’m dead, I know you are. But it’s alright, birdie.” His gaze goes flat and flinty, the eyes of a soldier with a task.

Further down the treeline, closer to the entrance of the Labyrinth, she hears, impossibly, Kimiko’s voice. Okaasan.

Her head whips toward the sound of her mother’s voice, and she staggers in her haste to follow it, leaving Faolan behind without a backward glance. She almost starts running, only her disbelief keeping her from full-on sprinting past the farm, because it can’t be, it can’t be, if it’s really her then yes, she’ll go home, of course she’ll go—

A hand grabs her arm in the thick fog, cutting off her momentum, sending her wheeling backward. Kimiko’s voice vanishes, supplanted by another, hoarse and disbelieving, one that snaps her out of it.

“Miriam?”

. ☀ ☀ ☀ .

Lily, twenty-seven, is watching the sunset, her feet buried in wet sand, the surf gently washing over her legs. Flora runs up to her, both little hands holding a seashell up for Lily’s inspection. Lily grins and takes it, holding up to the golden light, watching the rays catch in the shell’s interior iridescence.

“Oh, Flora, this is so beautiful,” she praises in Japanese. “Great job!”

“It’s for Mama,” Flora replies in kind, matter-of-fact, and takes the seashell from Lily to deposit it in her toddler-sized basket. All those hours of teaching her Japanese is paying off; Flora speaks French or Spanish with Tomas, English with Libby, and Japanese with Lily, and she is getting better every day.

“She’ll love it,” Lily replies, but Flora is already toddling away, her head down and eyes squinted for the best treasure. Lily laughs to herself, leaning back on her elbows. All around her is the music of the island: the calls of gulls, the voices of people also out and about to enjoy the day, the gentle hum of the waves. It’s different from the jungle’s, but, she’s come to realize, that doesn’t mean it’s bad.

When the sun is almost set and the sky is darkening, she calls Flora back and takes her hand, carrying the basket of treasure in the other. They walk back to the farm, Lily swinging their clasped hands to make her sister laugh, waving to the people she passes by: Tamyra, Madi, Theo, Vince and Henry. Her friends.

The smell of dinner hits her once they’re close enough to the High House. Tomas must be cooking, because Libby is playing the piano, the notes floating out the open windows.

“Are you hungry?” Lily asks her sister, and Flora grins up at her, nodding. They reach the bottom of the stairs leading up to the High House, and Lily reaches down to pick Flora up. She calls: “Mom, Dad, we’re home—!”

She pauses, just for a moment, catching herself on her own words. Then she smiles and continues upstairs.

Yes, she’s home.

#stranded task 8 #disturbing imagery in the faolan bit bc... faolan #self para #last one is in a future when everyone is OK and happy :)

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