Chapter 227: Day 226

Day 226,

It was Cass’s birthday today.  I hope it was a good one for her.

It wasn’t something she originally wanted to bring up.  Lin and Maiko had wanted to spend the day together in private, leaving Cass with little recourse but to join me as I alternated between submersions in the healing pool and various exercises to try to build back some strength now that I was starting to get the stamina for them.  Cass was more morose than usual through the morning, practically sulking, and at first I thought it was because she didn’t like having to have a chaperone at all times and I wasn’t doing much interesting.  When I asked, she initially denied that anything was wrong.  After some well-meaning prodding though, she confessed that today was her birthday and it was the first time she’d spent one away from her family.

It bothered her more than she had expected it to and she was embarrassed about it.  Making a big deal out of birthdays was mostly a tradition for younger children, one that she’d outgrown, but her parents, her mother in particular, had still kept doing little things to show that she remembered without ever outright stating that’s why she was doing them.  And thinking about that was making her homesick, but she didn’t want to outright say it for fear of looking like she wasn’t cut out for expeditions like this.

Of course, our conversation was far more circuitous than that, and very little of that she said outright, but that was what I managed to put together.

I tried to help her feel better, saying that it was okay to feel those things and assuring her that homesickness and missing family was nothing I’d ever hold against anyone.  It’s normal.  Human.  I then added that I didn’t view thinking about one’s birthday or wanting it acknowledged was childish either.  If my memory is correct, then in whatever place I was before washing up her there were people that celebrate their birthdays throughout their whole lives.  And, sure most of them tend to make it smaller and quieter the more they accumulate, they still usually do something.

So what did she want to do today?

More than anything else?  She wanted to explore this island more.

I asked if she wanted to do that together or on her own.

The look on her face as she processed that question and it dawned on her what I was offering was priceless.  She asked if I was serious.

I said I was.

Alone then.  

Trust and independence.  Not sure what better gift I could have given her.  Although I did try with telling her I’d do a telling that evening that I hadn’t done before.

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Excited as she was to go run off and explore on her own though,  I did have conditions.  First, no taking the boats out.  Second, no swimming out over or past the reef.  Third, no getting close to large or dangerous looking animals, or dangerous looking plants.  Fourth, no eating anything unfamiliar (it already scares me enough every time Maiko does it).  Fifth and finally, if she sees or hears Lin and Maiko, give them their privacy and don’t eavesdrop.  With that and a reminder that, as my apprentice, anything she does is my fault too I let her go on her way.

As sundown approached, all three of them returned to meet me at camp, all three of them happy and satisfied looking.  Cass was significantly more talkative about her day though and we were all happy to listen as she showed off the notes and sketches she’d made.  Lin started to question letting Cass run around on her own, but I defended my decision and Cass’s competence.  I’ll admit in the privacy of these pages that I left out the fact that I definitely wouldn’t have done this if we weren’t already sure there was nothing dangerous here.

As for the telling, it went well.  I really got into it more than I have in some time.  Audience makes a difference.  It was another story that I’m pretty sure the past me made up rather than a retelling of one I’d read or heard.  Partway through I started doing that thing I’d done for that  other birthday telling (Euadne I believe that girl’s name was) where I began asking for audience input on the direction of the story.  Just from Cass to start with, but I eventually pulled Lin and Maiko into it as well.

It’s funny, now that I’m thinking more on it, I think the original creation of that story was similar.  Made alongside friends with each of them dictating the actions of a specific character.  The details of that creation are fuzzy though.  Was it something I did often?  And the friends.  I recall neither names nor faces.  Nor any other details of them or their lives.  When I try to focus on any of them, I find only a feeling of closeness and camaraderie that I’d forgotten until now, not dissimilar from what I’ve come to feel with my friends in this life.  Yet, there’s a melancholy there too.  A sense of having, in that moment of shared creation, an expectation of being together forever contrasted with a lurking suspicion that we’d unceremoniously drifted apart even before I washed up here.

I have to fight not to let a fear of that same drifting happening here get to me.  Besides, where would I even drift apart to?  The same places as all the other outsiders before you.

I suspect they’re all asleep by now with how long I’ve been writing tonight.  Lulled by the chorus of the rain frogs.  I preemptively returned to the spring to write as everyone else was readying for bed, saying I was just going to write “for a bit,” and promising to be quiet when I returned.

The truth is, I’m looking to see if last night’s happenings will repeat themselves.  Just in case they do, I’ve brought my other notebook as well.

For, as I lay in the upper pool last night, lantern crystal cast into the water in a moment of whimsy to light it from within, back resting on the smooth rocky edge I closed my eyes for a long moment to luxuriate in the sensation.  The water’s warm embrace.  Floating yet anchored.  Little aches fading.  The chorus of the night allowing me to pretend it was raining.  The wooden ball purr that was utterly unlike a purr.

I opened my eyes at the mental registry of that familiar new sound.  The nature sprite had joined me in the pool.  Its cloak of leaves spread across the rocks behind it as its feet grew and spread like roots along the floor of the pool.  For once, it hardly seemed to notice me.  Was this the first time I’d seen it with its eyes closed?

Having grown used-

They’re here.  Once more.  The other sprites.

 

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