Day 54,

The mists are back this morning.  It’s funny, while I’m sure I’d find them eerie if not frightening if I was out in them, just sitting here on my porch watching them is strangely calming.

Maiko showed up again today.  Before nightfall even.  She’s in the bathtub at the moment, so I’m taking a moment to write while she’s in there.  Apparently it’s a novelty to her.

I think she was a little surprised to see me when she showed up carrying another bundle of the sort of food she’d left last time.  Still, I greeted her as if this was a perfectly normal occurrence and that seemed to put her at ease somewhat.  I showed her inside where she deposited her offering?/payment?/token-of-thanks-for-shelter? on the kitchen table.  I let her know that she didn’t need to do that, but I thanked her for it all the same.

I returned to watching for giants on the porch and she joined me, sitting in silence as neither of us really knew what to say.  It was Maiko who broke the uncomfortable quiet first, asking if I’d seen anyone else that… looked like her before.  If that was why I was acting casual about her presence.  Because I’d spoken with others like her before.

I said that I hadn’t, and that if she remembers how I was last time, I’m really not as calm or socially capable as I might look right now, I’m just a little better at hiding it right now because I was expecting her this time.  No, I’ve never met anyone else that looks like her, but she seemed nervous and uncomfortable, and it only seemed right to be kind and try to make her feel better.

She seemed… disappointed by this answer.  Maybe she was hoping I had seen others?  After another awkward stretch of silence I asked her if she had.  Met others like her, that is.

She stiffened when I asked this, and I feared I’d made a mistake by prying.  Was I coming across as some sort of hunter trying to find out where the rest of her people were so I could harm them in some way?

But, after another long enough pause that I was starting to form an apology/reassurance in my head, she said just her mother, but she disappeared a couple of years ago.  Whether it was the shades that took her, or the villagers, or something else, Maiko wasn’t sure and she’d never found any sign.  She’d never really talked to anyone else.  The villagers reminded of her of the shades; short, hornless, and eerily bloodless.  Not red, but colored like the earth the shades rise from, whether sand pale or soil dark.  And anyway, her mother had cautioned her to stay away from them, even if she never really explained why.  She wouldn’t have ever approached me if the shades hadn’t caught her out at night.

I told her I was sorry to hear about the loss of her mother and that sounded rough.  A hollow platitude to my own ears, but what else do you even say to that?  Some things are stock phrases for a reason I think.

Meaning to commiserate, I said that I didn’t know who my parents are, or if I ever even had any.  When she asked about that last part I went on to explain my own situation as what the villagers call an “outsider,” washing up on a beach two months back with no prior personal memories, just a headful of stories and facts about what might be another world.  So, as welcome as they’ve tried to make me, the two of us still sort of have that in common; not truly being part of the Village.

We went back to –

I hear the bathroom door opening.  I guess that’s my cue to stop writing for the moment.