VERY MILD SPOILER ALERT FOR A FOX OF STORMS AND STARLIGHT. It’s a minor explanatory thing that comes out in chapter 9 of Fox Book, which provides motivation for a major plot point that happens in chapter 12 (there are 49 chapters).
CONTENT NOTIFICATION: Kevin’s point-of-view scenes have a lot of swearing. Sorry-not-sorry. But maybe don’t read if the f-word offends you.
Also, this is an unedited draft. Feel free to let me know in the comments if you spot typos etc, but yo: unedited draft, so read accordingly.
Catch up on Chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 5.
6: Sunny
I’m curled up on the single armchair in my parent’s room, balancing my overheated laptop on my legs as a storm mutters away outside. The only windows in this room are highlight ones, so that Mum could hang her art and photos all around the walls, and the walls themselves are dove grey—I feel like I’m cocooned inside the stormcloud itself, rain pattering down, thunder rolling, grey inside and out. I’m supposed to be studying—Mum has the oil burner going, and the air smells of warm lavender and even though it’s hot outside, the air con in here is working overtime and I’ve stolen the knitted throw off the end of the bed to wrap around my bare legs.
Mum’s on the bed—as usual—and she’s watching me—which isn’t usual.
Part of me wants to make the most of this moment—Mum’s not usually in a chatty mood, you know? It’d be nice to talk to her, ask for her advice while I can—but I don’t want to make her retreat, either. She’s so sensitive, and I don’t say that in a sarcastic, mean way, it’s not like she can help it—I’m pretty sure if she could, she would—it’s just how she is, you know? I hate that I cry when I get frustrated. She hates that her brain shuts down completely when she’s overwhelmed, and she can’t get out of bed.
Neither of us are exactly the picture of resilience, and neither of us love that about ourselves, so I reckon the least we can do is be kind and respectful of each other. You know?
I’m supposed to be studying, and I’m trying, I really am, I’m researching food webs and forest ecosystems for my science assignment and it’s interesting, it is—I love researching random stuff, following rabbit holes of links down to worlds previously unknown, the way that a serendipitous article can scythe through your ignorance and transform the way you see the world—Did you know trees communicate with each other via pheromones? That they sleep at night? That their leaves change colour because they’re drawing back in all the nutrients from them before jettisoning the leaves for the winter? That they care for the sick or the weak among their own species, feeding them sugars and nutrients via their roots?—but honestly… I’m distracted.
Kevin wasn’t at school today.
I haven’t seen him since Friday, since we walked in the bush and watched an echidna trundle back to its home… and held hands.
And he told me not at school, and that’s fine—okay sure, there’s a tiny part of me that’s sad that he doesn’t want to admit to our relationship in public yet, but ‘not yet’ doesn’t mean ‘never’ and it’s not about me, it’s that the whole idea terrifies him. I know that. I saw it in his eyes. But…
“How did you know Dad was the one?”
My mouth has apparently decided to talk without my direct instruction, but the question’s out there now, and nerves are flittering around in my stomach, and it’s too late to take things back—any of them.
Mum stares at me with dark, serious eyes. She lifts the white mug she’s been cradling to her mouth, sips at it with long fingers curled around the ceramic and lavender steam curling around her face, staring at me all the while.
She swallows, rests the mug back in her lap. “That’s a weighty question for a Monday afternoon.”
I shrug. All questions are weighty if you think seriously about them.
The ghost of a smile caresses Mum’s lips, and my heart skips. Despite everything else, a smile from Mum the last few months is like finding a polished, unclaimed diamond in the street, and I spend a moment finding the right words, thinking about how I’d describe that smile on paper.
“I didn’t.”
It takes me a moment to connect her answer back to my question—and then I frown, and blink. “Then why did you marry him?”
My throat sours. Is this why depression hits my mum so hard? Is this why she spends half of her life in bed, unable to function normally, unable to shield herself from all the small, petty horrors of the world? Does she in truth not love my father?
I must be showing a little of my panic on my face, because this time, Mum smiles all the way, and pats the covers of the bed next to her.
I ditch the laptop, closing it and setting it on the small table next to the dove-shaped oil burner with its lavender fragrance, climb onto the bed—it creaks, and it’s almost like it’s protesting the storm outside, the creak is just like the sound the trees make when their branches scree together in the wind—and I snuggle up close to Mum’s side, curling up in a ball, laying my head on her hip, taking care not to jostle her tea.
My skin prickles with goosebumps; I’ve left the throw behind.
Mum puts a hand on my upper arm. It’s warm, and soft, and I close my eyes. “I love your father very much,” Mum says. “But I never thought he was my soulmate.”
“I don’t understand,” I murmur into the covers over her thigh.
“There are no soulmates,” she says. “Only choices.” She rubs my arm, a slow, deep movement, squeezing me gently. “If he—or she—loves you for who you are, if they accept you flaws and all, if you enjoy their company and know how to fight without it destroying how you think of each other…” She shifts, and I can’t see but it might be a shrug. “Love is a choice, not an epiphany.”
She smooths the hair back from my forehead and suddenly I’m young again, and the world is so big and daunting, and I want to climb under the covers with her and never get out.
“Choices are hard,” I mumble instead.
She exhales, the kind of sniff that means the same thing as a very small laugh. “Yes,” she says. “They are. But.”
There’s a soft clunk as she sets her tea down on the bedside table, then her hand is at my chin, pulling me over toward her, asking for my gaze.
I roll, opening from my tightly curled ball, and stare up at her.
“Don’t be like me,” she says softly, so softly. “If there is one thing in this world that I could bear even less, it would be watching this happen to you.”
There’s a tear in my eye, hot and prickly. “I could do worse than be like you,” I say, closing my eyes because I can’t bear to see her face as I say it.
The tear spills out.
Mum wipes it away. “Oh, Sunmi, my sunshine child. I pray every day that you will never have to face this grey beast. So go,” she says, tracing the lines of my forehead again. “Love this person of yours, whether they are your soulmate or not. The worst that can happen is that they will break your heart.”
I screw up my face in response to that. “I don’t want my heart broken,” I say.
“No one does. But how else can life teach us to be kind?”
“Are you kinder?” I say. “Because of… you know.”
She sniffs again. “No,” she says, “and yes. This is not heartbreak. This is…”
Lavender air curls around us as she searches for the words.
Overhead, the rain falls, the thunder rumbles. It’s trying to speak for her, I imagine, give her the words that she’s having trouble finding.
Lightning flashes.
She shakes her head. “This is not heartbreak. It’s emptiness. It’s a cold, grey fog, gnawing at your emotions, and at first that hurts because it’s chewing them raw, but eventually it devours the nerve endings and then you stop hurting—but you stop feeling, too.” Her fingers tighten against my cheek; I don’t think she even realises. “That’s why it’s so hard to heal. You’re regrowing nerves, and until they’re regrown, there is nothing to cover them, no skin to protect them. And sometimes…” The pressure on my cheek eases, and she leans back against the headboard, body limp with fatigue. “Sometimes the not-feeling is easier than the sting of recovery.”
She closes her eyes, and I know I’ve lost her for the day. Inside my chest there’s a tiny bead of regret—but what I’d regret more is the not talking, the not connecting. Mina might be content simply with Mum’s wakeful presence to reassure her that all is well with the world—or well enough, at least—but that’s not good enough for me. If I can only snatch glimpses of connection with my mother, if the payment for those moments is the long periods of silence in between, I’ll take them, because it’s better than long days of in-between, neither talking nor not talking, neither questioning nor connecting over anything more important than the weather.
And it’s then that I realise I have my answer.
If Kevin’s too frightened to talk to me properly at school, if holding hands with him once in the bush is enough to make him skip classes and not see me for days, I’m okay with that.
Because the alternative is months more of paper roses.
And paper roses are nice and all… but being with him properly is better. And if the payment for that is long periods of silence…
I smile softly at Mum, even though her eyes are closed, even though she’s miles away now in the grey, baseless fog of her own thoughts. I trace the lines of her face with my eyes for a moment, the dark lashes, the downturned corners of her mouth, the lines at the outer edges of her eyes from where she used to laugh.
Then I get up, collect my laptop, and head back to my room.
I’m used to periods of silence.
And I can bear them very well, if the moments of connection in between are deep enough.
I shut my bedroom door, switch on the light, and get back to my studying as the storm rumbles its story to the clouds.
Besides. I don’t have a vase big enough for any more paper roses.
Keep reading: Chapter 7