Sending out \\ smoke signals // {Aramir}

It was the sort of night that had you wanting to walk out into the velvet shadows and look up at the stars, and just breathe in the scents that seemed so much darker and deeper at night. The air in the cove smelled of freshly dampened earth and sea salt, the occasional waft of some night blooming creeper traced delicate veins in the landscape of the wind.

Saamina had been waiting an hour at least before she heard the soft snapping of twigs underfoot, and then a shape separated from the tree line, and Gage’s inquisitive voice rose just barely over the sounds of the nearby ocean. The mangrove branches rustled as she leapt down onto the sandy bank, her thin frame swaying with the desire to rush forward and throw herself at the long-lost friend. Some small burst of shyness kept her from doing so. Instead, she called out, guiding him towards where she was waiting.

“Gage? Over here!”

Darkness had fallen with a vengeance by this hour, and all but the silhouette of the boy approaching was lost from sight. Is he angry with me? The unsettling concern spiraled this way and that through her head. Two weeks seemed like a lifetime apart, and who knows what sort of assumptions Gage could have made in that time. Maybe he thinks I'm angry...or that I don't want to be friends anymore. It was so far from the truth, but the possibilities of all that her behavior could have appeared to be was sobering. In fact it was so fraught with anxiety that Saamina nearly shrank back into the mangrove trees and hid.

But however frightening the prospect of facing and trying to explain matters to Gage was, even more unthinkable stretched the blank span of months and years without this boy in them. Thirteen might be young to know your mind, and Sam hadn't even made the effort to analyze what her attachment might be, but it was strong enough to know subconsciously that losing him wouldn't be as simple to recover from as the loss of a mere playmate or childhood friend. The only comparison that even came close was Brooke's absence.

Instead of hiding, Saamina stepped out into a patch of sand that was at least marginally lit by filtered moonlight coming down through low-hung branches. Shoes abandoned when she'd taken to the mangrove branches earlier in wait, her toes now dug little furrows in the sand. What to say to make this better, to make him understand that I would never abandon him on purpose?

"Please don't be mad at me...but...I'm not supposed to be spending time with you anymore. I don't understand, and my dad won't explain...my mom tried but it just seems like old history where she knew your dad...and it shouldn't matter for us! He won't listen, and finally I had to see you, so I snuck out tonight." her words jumbled into a confusing heap, punctuated by a frustrated sigh and then silence. Her worried eyes tried to pierce the blackness cloaking him, in hopes of making out a sympathetic expression on Gage's face. It was unlikely, he hadn't moved or said a word. Please, please don't let him leave.

"I missed you..."

His hands smoothed at her cheeks, the rough pads of his fingers soothing in their texture. The laugh, low and sincere, washed over her, transforming the moment from anxious and intense, to something calmer and peaceful. The cove swam back into focus, sharpening its details around her in a way that only enhanced the beauty of the night. It’s dark, overhung shadows enclosing them both in the singular splash of moonlight, shutting out the rest of the chaotic world. Everything slowed down inside her, heartbeat and breathing returning to their usual rhythms. Yes, it was all okay again. So, with her cheek leaned into Gage’s hand, the story bubbled its way out with remarkable ease. Telling him was natural and right, there weren’t meant to be any secrets kept…or apologies, like he said.

“I didn’t know at first, I swear I didn’t. Dad just got so angry at you and then said I wasn’t to talk to you at all. So, I kept asking mum, but she can be so hard to get a straight answer from, you know?” Of course he knew, somehow he always knew. That’s why he was as essential to her well-being as the ocean, the air inflating her lungs, as Brooke had been…

“Well, I finally got her on a good day, and she told me that your dad and her were friends back in school, like us.” The knowledge of how that relationship had ended, sent Saamina scuttling closer until she was tucked up against Gage’s side once more, flopping down to tug his larger frame beside her on the sand. Her impish smile reminder of previous times here, she snuck her way into the unbuttoned flaps of the jacket he wore. It wasn’t terribly cold, but the shared warmth was a safety blanket that Sam craved. “Mum said that your dad and my dad had a big fight because of mum. Something about my parents getting married and your dad didn’t approve of it, tried to convince mum not to get married.”

The sudden screech of a heron, out stalking fish during the late hours, cut the story off for a few brief seconds. Saamina smiled, her body warmly nestled into Gage’s arms, the oceanfront night swirling around them, it was a pocket of bliss. A sweet and rare experience in her young life, and all the more poignant coming on the heels of what felt like years of separation.

“I guess that if someone tried to convince you not to be my friend anymore, I’d hate them too. I’m sorry he took that out on you…it wasn’t very fair. He just gets really angry sometimes.” Unintentionally, her fingers rose, touching the spot on her jaw that had ached for a week following, “He doesn’t mean it. It just all boils over sometimes.”

Did Gage ever get angry like that? The consideration was a weighty one. She’d never seen him angry or upset, but then they didn’t always spend time with other people; the majority of outings were just the two of them. Saamina had always liked it that way, but now she was curious…what was this boy…her boy, like when he interacted with others. His mother? Did he have the same open gentleness that she adored? The way he would tell her anything she wanted to know and never be ashamed or shy of sharing the knowledge with her? He was her lighthearted if analytical counterpart. Did he fill that void in others as well? A tiny flare of jealousy pricked at Sam’s chest, but was quickly snuffed out by the flow of his breath against her cheek. Nothing could be wrong in this little cocoon they formed. Still, the thought was there.

“Gage, I’d like to meet your mother…would that be ok?”

Her stocking feet padded softly across the silky floorboards, unconsciously following Gage until she saw the figure seated at the couch. Uncertain if he’d meant for her to wait then, Sam paused halfway across the room, taking a moment to absorb the beautiful décor. It was like a memorial to the seafarer, with little lamps of shell and glass and murals painted with skillful fingers that showed ships sailing out on cresting waves and little dolphins leaping along beside them. It was a room tasteful enough that adults would admire the richness of the wood and contrast of creamy gold walls…but it was a room that a child would adore with its many appealing little treasures. Particularly the fireplace called to her—layered with tintypes and portraits—a wealth of information that she wanted to leaf through. Among all of those frames there must be one containing a picture of Gage as a boy, and one of Arnav. The thought piqued Saamina’s curiosity; she wondered what this man must have looked like to star in so many people’s memories. Feet inching closer in that direction, the decision was almost made to creep over and have a look while Gage was busy, but then his hand beckoned her over, and the woman seated was looking up at her expectantly.

“Momma, I want you to meet my friend, Saamina DelMar. Saamina, my mother, Sandy.”

Sam wasn’t sure what to expect with this meeting, but from her own experiences, she knew not expecting was sometimes the best. This woman was all that remained of Gage’s family, and so she represented something precious, something important. With that knowledge stuffed at the back of her brain, Saamina turned and joined her friend. His mother looked tired, as though facing reality was an exhausting prospect for her. But at least there was a clarity in her eyes that meant she was actually seeing Sam. Living with her own mum, differentiating between seeing and seeing came second nature until the girl only needed a swift glance to confirm the suspicion one way or another. Did she look like Gage? Maybe a little around the mouth and eyes? Certainly she hadn’t passed along the wild hair gene, as hers appeared tame enough if a little neglected. All these thoughts passed with the rapidity and fluidity of a first impression, along with the idle observation that Sandy’s shawl was a beautiful piece of work and likely quite expensive.

“It’s really nice to meet you, Mrs. Bystrom. Your house is big! It makes me think of the beach, and I really love the beach, so I think I love your home too.” Her eager smile was sincere, regardless of the oddity of the comments. She hovered for a moment, uncertain if she should remain standing over the seated woman or kneel down beside Gage…but then her own slight frame would be far below eye level. With an internal shrug, she settled for occupying a space on the sofa beside Sandy, angled enough to face the woman. The movements made were a little slow, careful, as though to prevent spooking a skittish creature, but not with any timidity.

Eyes roaming the walls again, her tongue prattled on for a few moments in the silence, “Especially all the lovely paintings, ships…dolphins…did you paint them? I’m no good at painting, but I have a brother who is. He made me a picture of a dolphin once, we used to watch them swim around the cove where he took me divin’ for oysters. Lots of dolphins there, but more otters than anything…but they’d both come to check you out if you went in the water. Really curious animals.” Her words jumbled to a halt and Saamina grinned sheepishly. “Sorry, I talk a lot. Maybe it’s why me and Gage get along so well, he doesn’t mind my talking. He’s a really good friend to have, I bet he’s a good son too.” Her gaze skittered between Sandy and Gage’s faces, trying decide if she’d said anything inappropriate.

Soon enough, Saamina was so relaxed that she’d abandoned the formal posture and drawn her knees up against her chest, elbows propped on them and one foot tucked beneath the other. She felt oddly natural here, sitting in Gage’s home with the evidence of so many years’ history decorating the walls about them. It was an unusual opportunity to try and see what he would have seen growing up, and her eyes were ferociously busy doing just that. Trying to absorb everything in their range of sight, while still flickering back politely to make contact with Sandy when she spoke, or drift across to Gage’s pensive face. His smile and echoed wink were a splash of encouragement, a thrill of reassurance that she wasn’t horribly embarrassing him.

“I don’t know that clutter bothers me too much. I mean, it’s just things, right? Sometimes my room gets very cluttered, but at least it means everything is visible and there. Maybe that’s different from a house being cluttered because you have too many things. I did like that rainbow lamp, though. I think I’d like one if I ever got rich and had a big house. Your lamps are very nice too.” She hastened to add that last bit with sudden concern that Sandy might be offended that Saamina was so adamant in her admiration of other people’s things. “The seashells and glass, really pretty. When I was little I would pick up shells on the beach and Brooke would string them together into garlands to decorate my bed with. He was very clever like that.”

It was a while since she had mentioned Brooke’s name, and that realization nagged at her until she took a moment to examine it. Even a matter of months ago, Brooke was her gospel, the one she quoted and referred to. He had always been her world…but now? Now she had someone else sharing that place, Gage. What had his mother said? Don’t hold it against him, dear. That remarkable head of his got the two of us through hard times. How could she ever hold anything against him? “There’s nothing to hold against Gage, Mrs. Bystrom. I love your son, it’s just part of what makes him different I guess.” And the words spilled out before her tongue had given any warning of its intent to her brain. Her eyes blinked owlishly, shocked at the statement that hung in the air with a little awkward tension. It wasn’t that she hadn’t meant it or because it was untrue. On the contrary, now that she’d said it, there was nothing more solid or certain in her life than the fact that she loved Gage. It was just that she’d never said it to him before.

Sam bit her lip and glanced hurriedly at Gage, worried all over again, but for entirely different reasons. What’s he thinking? People love their friends, right? But I shouldn’t have said that to his mum! Her teeth gnawed the edge of her lower lip, ripping the skin into a rough groove that stung when her tongue brushed across it. The silence was like a vacuum that swallowed any thought or small talk the moment it popped into her head. She couldn’t find a single sentence to break the tension.

Much of the animation leeched from Sam’s face, adopting the neutral canvas that was her usual, careful expression when speaking to or discussing her mother. It wasn’t anger or nervousness, it was just years of playing pretend. Years of making an unhappy world as simplistic and rose tinted as possible, so concern, anxiety, everything just smoothed from her face like a wave washing away writing in the sand. The smile that she gave to Sandy was polished, perfected, and balanced on the knife-edge of what she knew to be acceptable.

Maybe there was more to the question than just a social interest in a long-forgotten acquaintance’s well being…or maybe Sandy was just being polite. Like Gage, she possessed the unsettling knack for hiding away whatever was being dissected and analyzed currently, and closing the shutters to prevent Saamina from any ingress into such thought processes. It left her feeling unbalanced in those moments. Gage seemed to have fewer of them as their friendship progressed and became closer knit, or maybe she was just growing more adept at interpreting any slight facial tic that managed to circumvent his locked doors. Sandy, however, was another matter. He face a map of foreign territory that only confused and baffled Sam’s efforts. There wasn’t a landmark to be seen, and she had to sit and wonder what the woman intended by her innocuous comment.

“She’s well, thanks. Been busy today with lots of launderin’, folks been hard on their clothes with the good weather. More of the boats going out, and people planting their gardens. Do you keep a patch, Mrs. Bystrom? I bet I could find you some nice cuttings if you wanted. We have a fine patch of rhubarb, tastes really nice with some June strawberries. When they ripen, I’ll make sure Gage brings you a bucketful.”[/coolor]

To an uninformed onlooker, the chatter might have seemed just as breezy and careless as but five minutes earlier. The words poured easily from between chapped lips, and a smile still creased her freckled cheeks, but it was restrained, and her eyes were carefully avoid Gage’s this time. Where she had been an avid observer of his, she now ducked her head a bit, only occasionally flashing a glance or two up at Sandy’s face, still ineffectually attempting a read.

“It’s probably getting’ late, though, I shouldn’t be keeping you past the dinner hour. It’s real rude of me.”

She stood abruptly, but rather than edging towards the door as she’d intended, her steps trailed across the room without any verified intent or warning, and Saamina found herself staring down the mantel of photos that had held her attention earlier. Big thick frames housed the captured moments that were little peepholes into Gage’s life.

“Gage was pretty scrawny when he was my age.” A real grin flashed across her lips with those words.

And then Saamina was crying. Not because she was afraid, or because Sandy's vitriol had hurt...maybe because Gage was crying, or as near to it as he ever got...that strain behind his voice grated at her, begging her to ease it, and turning her heart inside out in the process. Or maybe it was because tomorrow was reaping day, and she was scared to face it alone again, and even more afraid because this year she had something that could be taken away. Beyond all of those reasons, Sam cried because she was thirteen and none of this made sense, it was more than she should have to figure out. That their respective parents had lost themselves in a cloud of grief and abandonment, and now she and Gage were meant to set straight what adults had been unable to sort out...it was unfair. So unfair. But life is unfair in just that way, and Sam couldn't pretend she was unfamiliar with it.Tears dripped miserably from under eyelids that clamped down, doing their best to stem the tide.

Still, just because the rains arrived, didn't mean lightning and thunder were passed -- and forgetting that her face was awash in the humiliating stain of salty emotions, Sam opened her eyes again to glare fiercely at Sandy Bystrom. This woman was small, bitter, sad in a way that Saamina didn't think could ever be fixed. Her words were intended to cut, and they were hurting not the complete stranger who stood as a guest in her home, but her son who had devoted his life to taking care of her. If she had made an attempt to curb them at Gage's pleading, then Sam might have bit her tongue and left the house with the heat of her anger unspoken. She didn't.

"No. No, you're wrong! My mum's decision wasn't made because you and Arnav failed to intervene, it was made because he loved you, and she knew it. Sometimes that happens. When two people are meant to be together, other things have to fall apart to make it happen. It's not your fault, or his, or hers, it just is."

Saamina wasn't certain where the words came from, or the surety that they were true.

"You're sittin' here just fine, with a son...and my mum would give up the world to have her son back. You aren't dead, just giving up. I'd rather have ten drunk husbands than that."

Her flash of temper was petering out, and Sam licked her lips, wondering what sort of explosion this tyrade was about to generate.

"What gives you the right to sneer at my dad, anyway? There's more than one way to abandon your children."

The tussled head that stared back at her from the window was blessedly familiar, and Sam crouched on the ledge, her palms braced on either side of the wooden-framed pane. Her face hovered close; eyes squinted against the downpour as she tried to make out the details of his face. Her name hovered like a question in the air, summoning up a teeth-chattering chuckle.

“Y-yeah, it’s me, do you have a lot of other guests climbin’ up the drainspout this time of night?”

Did he? For all she knew, maybe he did have other girls trying to climb in his bedroom window after dark…

“You ran off, and I don’t think your mom’s too happy with me, so I didn’t want to stick around, but I…I couldn’t do it again!” Sitting in the dark, with the rain obscuring her view of him, the honest words came more easily. “I only just got you back, and I really don’t want to have you gone again. I told you I missed you…” Her hand reached out, stroking a finger over the curvature of one cheekbone, wiping at saltwater and rainwater mingled in the trek across his skin. “I didn’t mean to say some of the things I did, I’m not so good at keeping quiet when I should, it’s always been problem for me.”

A full-body shiver nearly sent her tumbling off into thin air, her nails dug into the wood more securely and she inched closer to the window. The moon was showing its silvery face through the veil of rain, weaving tapestries with the falling droplets, and the occasional splash of wind would toss them like waves to splatter over the glass. Over Gage’s shoulder, Saamina could just make out the velvety colors of his darkly-painted room, blankets drawn back from the bed, perhaps in preparation for sleep.

His face was unsettling when moonlight reflected off of its damply gilded surface, eyes swollen and red, mouth flattened out unpleasantly. She was so accustomed to his mild ways, the even-keeled motion of his moods that tempered her own wild flights and falls. That he had obviously been crying was painful, and even a little shameful, to see. It was her fault, all of this, her idea to come here and her big mouth that had snapped wide open and spit out words that she never should have spoken. The guilt was a heavy brick in her stomach; threatening to tip the delicate balance she maintained and send her body spinning out of control, both literally and metaphorically. Despite the fear that he would just shut the window in her face, Sam had to know if it could even be fixed.

“Do you think I could…ummm…come in? It’s sort of wet out here and maybe not the safest spot to sit and talk. Or if you prefer, I can go…maybe you’d rather talk another day.”