Kalia’s family sat around the smoldering remains of a campfire atop Cliff hill, the craggy outcrop of brush and stone that separated their town from the mines. 

 

On one side, the town of Parway was in the hill’s shadow, the bustling of its port slowing as nighttime set in. On the other side, the nearly-set sun still cast the mines in a dim grow, its laborers casting long shadows against the rocks they dug.

 

The whole island could be seen from this spot on the hill, and Kalia liked to try and pick out each place she visited from atop the hill’s peak whenever she was up here.

 

There was Euwans Rock, the cliff she’d dive into the water from to scare Codfish and her sisters. Recently she had begun to count when she jumped to see how long it took her to reach the water below. She hoped that she could eventually get good enough at and jumping that she’d start to fly, but so far she could only get her time in the air higher by counting faster,

 

Down on the other side of town was the port, where boats headed to the mainland frontier stopped over to replenish supplies and trade with each other. Kalia had come up with a fun game where you’d sneak onto one of the ships and avoid being seen for as long as possible. If you could remain undetected until the boat left, you won!

Then you’d have to jump off so you weren’t carried somewhere far away. 

This last portion was the best time to taunt the sailors.

Pops really didn’t like this game, but he couldn’t stop her from playing it.

 

Sorta near the docks a few streets away was Home.

The place would be busy just with Pops and Kalia’s siblings, but Home was also a big Tavern where Pops made giant pots of chowder to sell to the sailors. 

It was hard to find a time we’re there weren’t at least a dozen people there, be it her siblings doing chores or customers starting fights over beer.

Kalia didn’t know why people fought over beer. It tasted awful.

 

Then nearby to Home was the church.

Kalia hated the church.

She held a hand out in front of her and imagined squishing the place between her fingers.

It was painfully boring, smelled like burning spices, and Pops made her go there almost every day.

 

From dawn to noon, she and her siblings would have to sit through endless lessons about the most mundane things like reading, writing, and how the world worked. She couldn’t even torment Codfish to pass the time, since he had apparently ‘learned it all already’. 

Yea right. Like there was ever gonna be an end to that stuff. Kalia knew that had to have found some sort of excuse that the nuns would accept, but no matter how many of his shoes she hid, he wouldn’t tell her.

 

Then there were the nuns and friars themselves. They hated each and every one of Kalia and her siblings, and always seemed to pick one of them whenever they wanted a passage from the testaments read aloud. Any mistake in pronunciation, no matter how slight, and they'd get loudly berated in front of all the other kids.

 

The campfire shifted, a charred branch breaking and sending a cloud of glowing cinders rising into the sky.

 

“Alright kids! It’s time to get going.” Sounded the bellowing voice of Pops,  from somewhere nearby the fire.

“I know there’s no church tomorrow, but that doesn’t mean we can stay up here forever. Can everyone please help me pack up?”

 

Recently, Kalia had tried clambering around the church to try and ring the bell at the top. She hadn’t managed to get very far before she was caught, but when she did she had overheard the nuns saying some things about her.

 

First they had talked about Kalia’s behavior, which at this point she was used to and just tuned out automatically. Then, though, they started insulting her, and talking about Kalia’s family. Her real family.

 

They said that she was going to become a Shipwhore one day, and about how it would be fitting considering her breeding.

They spoke of her mother as if they were speaking of a demon, calling her a rabid temptress who would tempt men with vows to give her their hearts to eat.

They spoke of her real father like they spoke of a beast, saying that he was a shark who would show up to the island to prey on poor defenseless girls, leaving them with bruised bodies and swollen bellies.

 

Kalia’s mother disappeared a few years back only to wash up on the beach a week later, naked and dead.

Kalia hadn’t seen her father in even longer, ever since he had dropped her off at Pop’s tavern when she was 5. According to the nuns' thoughts, he still showed up from time to time even though Kalia had never seen him.

 

That left her with Pops, a number of her half-blood related kids from her mother, and a few other children from various origins for Kalia to call family.

 

According to the nuns, Pops was a whoremonger and a disgrace to the church as an ex-clergyman, and her siblings were only better than Kalia because they hadn’t been fathered by a sinner of the highest order.

 

“Kal!” Pops called out to her. “Can you come down here and help? We’ve got to get home before it gets too dark.”

 

Kalia thought about ignoring her adoptive father for a few moments, but pushed the thought away at once. Even though he used to be a priest himself, he never yelled at her.

According to the Nuns this was because he was weak of mind, unable to provide discipline or to decline the advances of sluts.

 

Kalia didn’t see it that way. To her, Pops was a man incapable of hate, and even though she had gotten old enough to know that he wasn’t in the right all the time, his condemnation by the church had done the same to them in her eyes. It was clear that they weren’t as full of love as the Nuns would have them believe. 

 

While both Pops and the church offered room and board to unwanted and lost children, it was only those who went to the former who were allowed much freedom. Kalia had spoken to a number of the church’s kids over the years, both before and after they had started lodging there. From what she could tell, they spent most of their time studying advanced scripture and learning to sing in choir. Seeing one off of church grounds was rare, and even more so to see one smiling.

 

She shuffled over to the side of her boulder and slid down the side, landing on the ground with a thud.

Everyone older had stayed home because they had jobs at Pop’s kitchen, so it was up to Kalia to provide a good example for her younger siblings.

 

So Kalia folded the picnic blanket dutifully and helped pack away the uneaten portions of their dinner. She woke Argus, one of her younger brothers who had fallen asleep, and helped to chorale some of her other siblings down from a large tree that they were climbing.

 

Once everyone was back together and the picnicking equipment was stowed away safely in baskets, Pops handed Kalia an oil lamp and told her to lead them back, saying that he’d take up the rear to make sure that no one was left behind.

 

“Um, Pops? Will you let me walk in the back with you instead?” Kalia asked her adoptive father. “I’ll tell Maurice to lead us back. He’s old enough.”

 

“Oh, don’t worry about me, Kal.” Pops reassured her, mistakingreason for why she’d want to. “I haven’t gotten that old yet.”

 

“Please? I’d like to talk to you about something.” Kalia asked, a softness present to her voice not usual for her.

 

Pop's eyes widened slightly, blinking a few times before he answered.

“Oh. Of course you can, kid!” He answered, taking the lamb back and walking a dozen feet away to hand it to a pale boy with a burnt jaw.

“Let me guess, you’ve fallen for another self-proclaimed explorer?” He chuckled.

 

“Please pops, this is serious!” Kalia said, clenching her hands in embarrassment.

 

“Sorry, sorry! Go on. I’m all ears.” He said as they began walking behind the rest of their family.

 

“Right, well… I recently overheard Sister Lèane talking about me and my real parents…” Kalia started, averting her eyes from her father’s.

“And she was expecting me to start doing the things that they did, even though it’s you who’s been taking care of me. I’m not really going to end up like them, am I?”

 

Pops hadn’t let Kalia see her mothers corpse, but she knew exactly what it had looked like. It had washed up bloated, naked, and torn, damaged in ways that had left no mystery of how she had died. 

For weeks after it was found, the Nuns wouldn’t shut up about how Kalia would end up dead in the exact same way if she didn’t fix her wild behavior.

 

They had scared her, but Kalia wasn’t the type to listen to what people did and didn’t want her to do. Worried as she was, making assholes angry was worth a bit of risk.

 

Pops sighed. “I won’t lie Kal, you do a lot of stuff that you shouldn’t, and frankly, it scares the pants off me. A lot of the time I just want to lock you in your room so that you don’t get hurt.”  He started, looking as if he had been thinking back to a few memorable events.

“But I also know that would be pretty pointless. Instead of learning anything you’d spend your time trying to find a way around my restrictions.”

 

“So you do see my parents in me, then.” Kalia huffed, slightly peeved.

 

“Yes, in a way I suppose you’re similar to them, but at the moment it's only in the best ways.” Pops told her. 

“But you’re young, and you have the wisdom from seeing where they went wrong. As long as you stay conscious of yourself, the discomfort that rises from thinking about your parents will guide you to be better than they were.”

 

Kalia stopped walking as she thought deeply about her parents and Pops. She remembered how much hate people filled their words with whenever they were spoken about, and how bad she had felt to bear their blood.

 

“But what if I make a mistake? What if I turn out like them anyway just because that’s what everyone around here expects?” Kalia whimpered. 

“What do I do if good people hate me forever just because of what I am?”

 

“Then you can show them that they’re too quick to judge. Or you can go somewhere where they don’t. Or you can do something so incredible that they have no choice but to like you.” Pops said as the rest of their family hi on ahead.

“You’re stubborn enough to do anything, Kal. That’s why you’re going to be ok.”

 

Kalia sniffled, and rubbed her eyes to clear them of what hadn’t quite yet become tears.

 

“Then fuck my parents.” She said between sniffs.

“I’m gonna be like you: so great that no one could ever hate me.”

 

Pops opened his arms, bending over slightly so that Kalia could hug him. She did.

 

“Shh… You don’t need to do that.” He consoled her. 

“Just do what makes you happy and stay near people who like you for it. Your life is yours, so spend it as such.”

“And I’m quite certain that not everyone likes me anyways.” Pops added. “What about Sister Lèane?”

 

“She doesn’t count ‘cause I don’t care what she thinks.” Kalia huffed, almost immediately clearing her tears as the topic of the Nun came up.

 

Pops laughed, nearly dropping his lantern as Kalia nearly shifted into a more assertive mood.

 

“I’m glad to see that they haven’t gotten you down too much. Now let’s go catch up with the others, ok?” Pops said, patting Kalia on the back in such a way to push her forward,

 

“Ok!” Kalia replied, stepping forwards and breaking into an excited run, looking back once to see Pops following at a slightly slower pace with a smile on his face.

 

The walk back to town was one Kalia and her siblings knew very well. Every quarter they’d hike up Cliff Hill for a picnic, so Kalia and most of her brothers and sisters could make the walk easily in the evening glow of the sky at this time.

 

But, as Kalia skipped along the meandering path that ran along the bluffs, she found the sky getting dark well before had made her way back to town. She hadn’t even run into her siblings yet, even though she had pops and had only stopped to talk for a minute at most.

 

She stopped again and looked behind her. Pops was nowhere to be found. 

 

Wait, how long had she been walking anyway?

Kalia looked at the sky and saw that it was already covered in stars.

She looked around since town was visible on most of this walk, but only darkness was on the horizon.

She looked down, and immediately saw something strange: she had an adult’s body.

 

But she was only 13, right?

 

No, that couldn’t be true.

She remembered Pops getting scratches and wasting away when she was 14.

She remembered leaving the island with Codrin when she was 15.

She remembered when she had to kill someone for the first time when she was 16.

She remembered her first time, with a boy she met in Rundburg when she was 17.

She remembered spending her first sack of coins that she had earned from doing security for an auction when she was 18.

She had remembered meeting Davy at a Pub and getting him so piss drunk that he couldn’t get out of his chair when she was 19.

She remembered learning that her gift would kill her and drinking spirits until she had forgotten all about it until a week later when she was 20.

She remembered running into Angela and consoling her after her party had been killed when she was 21.

She remembered finding the first signs that her aging was speeding up when she was 22.

 

So to be back on the island of Parway with the memory of things that have happened to an older her. 

Why, that could only mean that she was dreaming, right?.

 

Kalia’s surroundings seemed to have grown much darker in the past few minutes, the ground now barely visible as starlight increasingly became the only thing that her eyes could focus on.

 

She took a step, but her foot struck no ground upon coming back down and she felt herself topple like a cut tree. A few thoughts passed by as she tumbled:

Had she stepped off the cliff? How had she gotten over to the other side of the fence anyways?

 

The impact with the water followed soon after, but it was rather different from what Kalia had experienced in her dives from Euwans rock. It hadn’t even knocked the wind from her and was practically soft as she hit it, breaking her fall almost like a fluffy pile of fresh hay. Like it had caught her.

 

It was only when she tried to swim to the surface that panic began to set in. Even the air in her lungs grew dry with effort and her paddling became increasingly chaotic, the relief of fresh air failing to present itself.

Had she swam in the wrong direction in the dark? A thought passed as her chest began to burn.

 

Just what was happening here anyway? This was surely all a dream, but the pain of suffocation felt far more real that any sensation her drunken mind had conjured up before. Against her better judgment, instinct took her body’s reins as it was starved of air and forced her to gasp in a lungful of salty water.

 

It was so, overpoweringly salty.

 

And as the liquid filled her chest, her wild flailing slowed. 

There was no more air. Even in her. It was pointless.

And in the futility of it all, she calmed.

She stopped swimming and just floated.

Now that she thought about it, the water wasn’t really all that much colder than she was. Maybe the hard part was all over.

 

Except-

Kalia could feel that something wasn’t quite right.

 

Was dying really supposed to feel this normal?

 

She tried to breath again, but found the act laborious and slow; just how she would have expected breathing in a liquid to be.

But it was weird.

Holding in a lungful of water didn’t exactly feel… bad?

It certainly wasn’t pleasant, but now that she had stopped struggling, it was tolerable.

Of all the things that she had expected to feel on her deathbed, confusion wasn’t one of them.

 

As she pondered this, Kalia was struck by a sudden realization:

She could still see the stars.

 

Underwater and drowned, with both waves and cliffs above her, she could still see the sky as clearly as she could on a moonless night.

 

A strange feeling washed over Kalia. Like sort of a deja vu, but not quite.

It was just strangely familiar for some reason.

 

Kalia racked her brain for a while, and eventually a realization dawned on her and sent a few bubbles streaming out of her mouth in exclamation.

 

This entire situation matched up almost perfectly with the first lines of a poem that she had been told soon after her arrival on Parway, recited to her by a nun after she had gone looking for her father at the port.

Lucy Bee plays near the sea and dances on the rocks,

Till one fair day she’s washed away while running on the docks.

 

She sunk into the blackened depth with no hope yet to rise,

And as night fell her fear did swell and stars did fill her eyes.

How did the rest of it go? Kalia thought, trying to remember the poem’s morals and message.

There was a conversation with a sea snake next, who I’m pretty tries to get close to Lucy to eat her or something. Pretty sure it was one of those stories told to children to scare them into keeping themselves safe. 

From strangers in this case, I figure.

 

 

Salty Snake found Lucy, and asked her why she fret.

“Oh snake you see, my home left me, and now I’m cold and wet.”

 

“I can help” the snake did yelp, “Fore I’ve been ‘round the sea.”

You’ll be warm and dry and never cry, so long you stick with me.

 

“Oh snake, thank you!” Bee wept unto her dress was soaked in tears,

“But tell me now if I should doubt, or fear your ocean peers?”

 

“Fret not in them.” The snake did claim. “For they know not of you.”

“Just trust in me and you will be back on the surface soon”

 

“But it’s not free.” the snake decreed “The aid to get you back.”

“My blood runs cold, and I’ve grown old, waiting in the icy cracks.”

“So you must give me warmth as payment, your own or from a friend.”

“And then I’ll ensure your safety here and guide you to your trouble’s end.”

 

Lucy Bee felt nervous, but didn’t want to be rude.

For offering help to others was the correct thing to do.

Her family back on the surface; oh how she missed them so.

She couldn’t just turn down the opportunity to go.

 

And as they shook upon it, the snake said a final thing.

“It begins now my dear, good times will our journey bring.”

“But if we are to travel and sit by the same flame,”

“Would you please indulge me with your own and trueborne name?”

 

“Lucy Bee” the girl said, beaming ear to ear.

Before she froze a moment to shed a single tear.

Snake’s maw open wide and bore his thousand teeth,

And ate Lucy all at once, not a moment spared for grief.

 

But the girl had not died that day, a part of her still whole.

Snake had hollowed out her heart, hungering for soul.

What was a girl named Lucy rose, a hole carved in her eyes.

The snake now lived inside of her, and Lucy was a disguise.

Kalia thought the poem was pretty fucking cryptic, and now that she thought about it, the nuns did succeed in frightening her away from the port and ocean for a while.

Until she began to find the fear fun, that is.

 

But reminiscing aside, the poem hadn’t really affected Kalia at all in the long term. It was really just one of those things that could only be remembered when she was reminded of it. 

But that made the fact that she was dreaming about the poem all the more confusing, as it was the dream that had brought on the memory of the poem and not the other way around.

 

“Hello?” Kalia called out, remembering that both characters in the poem had the ability to talk underwater.

“There any snakes out there?”

 

Kalia looked around in the dark, seeing nothing but holding onto a growing feeling that she was being watched.

 

While she knew that all this was just a dream, Kalia felt a certain seriousness to the situation; atypical from her usual outlook. Syers were fresh on her mind, after all. Maybe the dream meant something.

 

“Hello there.” A soft voice echoed back, causing Kalia to immediately take notice of something right into front of her that she couldn’t previously see.

Her eyes widened.

 

It was a child made of shadows, just as dark as everything else and yet visible due to a faint outline of starlight.

 

Wait, she’d seen this child before, hadn’t she?

Kalia couldn’t recall exactly when or where, but thought the figure familiar in a way that suggested she had seen them more than once. 

More than a few times, actually.

But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't bring any particulars to mind.

 

“I wouldn’t recommend trying too hard to remember me.” The child said, its voice cute but devoid of any particular tone and entirely androgynous.

“I don’t typically stay in people's heads for too long.”