I woke up in the morning, early, dreams melting away and leaving behind what had certainly not been a dream. Rather than bursting with random thoughts, my mind was silent. I went through my morning routine, ending up in the kitchen to help Neffie with breakfast, which became keeping Sisi busy as she tried to help too.

We saw off Mr Arl, then Sisi and I played and learned and laughed. There were no heavy thoughts in the quiet moments, no sense of dread if I stayed idle for too long, because the goddess—Alnaya—had been right about one thing: this was the simple life I had dreamed of.

I had no grand ambitions. I didn’t even want to fall in love and have a huge wedding and then plop out a couple kids. This was enough: cooking meals with someone, looking after a child or two for the day, then retiring to a quiet room at night. Not too much, not too little.

A trickle of rain drummed against the window, our knitting needles softly clacking, and I couldn’t help but smile.

“Is Miss Loulou feeling bigger?”

I looked over, Sisi paused in her knitting as she sort of ducked her head, staring up at me. Very cute—like she thought she was doing something she shouldn’t. Well, her question was maybe a bit rude. Like with hats and laughing and using “you”, you weren’t supposed to talk about a person’s feelings so bluntly, not unless you were “family”.

“Do… does Sisi think I have felt small?” Big and small euphemisms for happy and sad.

She sort of wriggled, looking away. “Mm, I thought you were small ’cos you didn’t see Miss Hyraj,” she mumbled.

I chuckled, one hand holding my knitting while the other reached over to pat her. “Sisi is very caring and thoughtful,” I said, then sighed. “Yes, I am, but I am happy to see Sisi and your big cousin and papa.”

Thinking, she fell into a pout. “We’re your friends too?”

“Mm, you’re my friends too,” I said and, unable to resist, I ruffled her hair.

She giggled, melting away her pout. It suited her. I’d forgotten this feeling, how nice it felt to smooth away the little ones’ worries, putting a smile on their faces after everything they’d been through.

It wasn’t a feeling I could put into words. It didn’t feel. I had always read about happiness and joy and whatever, how vivid it apparently felt, how strong. But this feeling wasn’t so much feeling as not feeling. I ached in sympathy with them, then released that knot of pain once they smiled. Selfish. Helping them to make myself feel better.

At least, that was how I’d sometimes thought it—if I ever started feeling too good about myself. I couldn’t be a good person, I thought. Because a good person didn’t deserve this.

Sisi carried on knitting, happy to be my friend, and I idly neatened her hair for a little bit before going back to my knitting. A jumper for Hyraj with a hood and long enough to be a dress—to make sure she wouldn’t get too cold when reading now we were heading into winter. Not that it felt all that much colder these days.

A slow day, calm, and simple.

When Mr Arl came home, I went to help Neffie. She really liked making sauces. The cook at the dormitory didn’t teach me much of that, so I was happy to learn from Neffie and manage the rest of the cooking. Let her focus on boiling this and frying that.

After the meal, I helped Sisi get ready for bed. The sleepy Sisi I hadn’t known before. Once she was in bed, Mr Arl took over. I went down to clean the kitchen, but, passing the lounge, Neffie called out to me: “Louise?”

“That it is?” I said, popping my head in.

“Uncle Arl likes to tidy up. I’m sure he feels guilty having us do too much, so let him do that,” she said, a laughter in her voice that left behind a sweet smile.

I froze for a second, not really encountering this before. But I had, flickers of memory, Hyraj “fighting” me over cooking and cleaning back on the mountain….

“Okay.”

Neffie sighed in relief, then pushed herself up. I thought she was being a bit silly how, like, lazily she did that, but I saw her sleepy face. She still had a few more years to grow. Well, not that I really felt like an adult yet either.

“Goodnight,” Neffie said, shuffling past.

“Goodnight,” I said. Hern, from “her arin”, the literal meaning something like: safe dreams.

Safe dreams, as if dreams could be dangerous. Maybe they could be.

Waiting by the window, I watched the drizzle trickle down, sometimes blown against the glass, sometimes not. Almost a mirror, but not quite. What I could see more like a shadow than me.

Eventually, footsteps creaked down the stairs. “Ah, Miss Louise is still awake?” Mr Arl said.

I turned around, softly smiling. “Soon,” I said, not really making sense, but enough that he nodded with his hand.

He didn’t carry on to the kitchen, though. After hesitating for a long moment, he stepped into the room, speaking softer than before. “That is it, I know this… isn’t a matter for me, but I thought they should know Miss Hyraj looked like she had barely slept this weekend.”

My heart gave a painful ache.

“I’m not saying anything one way or the other, but maybe it would be best to resolve this sooner than later,” he said, his usual smile looking strained, his gaze wandering.

“Mr Arl can tell her I’ll come home after work tomorrow,” I said.

“Well, great,” he said.

I smiled. “Goodnight, Mr Arl.”

“Goodnight,” he said, then frowned. “Is it that Miss Louise stayed up to tell me this?”

My smile grew.

He covered his face with a hand, then it slid down to cover his mouth. “Well, it is expected for a gossip to be embarrassed,” he said, eyes half-closed from the ironic smile he hid.

I shooed my hand. “That is it, I am happy Mr Arl worried about us.”

He looked at me for a moment, hand coming down, then said, “I think we are a bit past Mr Arl by now. If they would like to call me Prist, or, well, I suppose it is uncomfortable to call me by that. What about Uncle Arl, like Frinnef does?”

It was quite funny to see him kinda flustered about all this. I guessed it wasn’t the sort of thing he was used to, maybe… because the family couldn’t invite just anyone into their home, not with Sisi. So easy to forget how nasty racism was, except I couldn’t forget. Not for myself and not for the little ones. Like an extra sense, so conscious about every little thing around new people. I had let my guard down before, ignored it with Mrs Frinchen, forgetting that people who looked like me could be racist to others. So naive. Not again.

“Uncle Arl,” I whispered, then nodded with my hand. “But then, Uncle Arl has to call just me Louise.”

Though I fumbled the words, he didn’t laugh, just nodded back with his land. “Louise it is.”

Going upstairs, I felt light. My head was still full of thoughts, but they weren’t heavy, not weighing me down. Outside, the rain rattled against the window. I drifted over after changing into my pyjamas. How I’d hated the rain, how I loved it now, so comforting. I thought it a shame the rainy season was going to end soon, but it couldn’t rain forever.

Not quite a mirror, what I saw reflected in the glass more like a shadow than me, yet I still saw myself there. Gentle candlelight behind me, flickering in the little draft.

I understood, which was why I didn’t understand.

Why she had rescued me. The goddess of this island, who rescued those adrift, and offered them sanctuary. Hyraj had told me that sanctuary was a very specific thing, and being adrift was probably a specific thing too.

Adrift…. I had no home. I had a place I went back to because I had nowhere else. A place where I was safe, but that was only one kind of safe. Not the kind of safe I tried to give the little ones. Not the kind of home I tried to give them. That building… it meant something very different to me that it meant to them. What it meant to me was something I didn’t want it to mean to them.

But that wasn’t it, was it? Wasn’t all of it.

She wanted me to look in the mirror and see myself… as a person. Because that wasn’t how I saw myself now. I was a reflection. I existed as something that was useful to other people. I was Sisi’s nanny, the cook’s helper, the little ones’ big sister. There was no me.

But that wasn’t their fault, was it?

I already knew. I was broken and, what scared me more than being broken forever, was that I didn’t have to be broken. I was terrified that I could “fix” myself. Not normal, but not broken.

Because I’d seen many broken children at the orphanage, and some of them had gone through therapy, gone off to live with their foster families, or been adopted. Not perfect, but not broken. They’d struggled and pushed, even when there was no promise things would get better.

I didn’t cry—because I feared no one would come. I didn’t try—because I feared that it would make no difference. At least for now, I could tell myself it was because I was broken. I couldn’t be happy. No one could love me. As long as I could be useful, that was enough.

Adrift, it wasn’t that I didn’t have a home, but that I didn’t want a family. I didn’t want people who loved me without me needing to do things for them. That just meant they would leave me when I did something wrong, right? If I annoyed them, if I made a mistake….

I didn’t know why Hyraj fell in love with me, so how could I make sure to keep doing the things I needed to do to make her keep loving me? Was I supposed to just trust that she would? Trust that, if she stopped loving me, she wouldn’t leave me?

How could I do that? After spending all my life without trusting anyone, how could I start now with this?

Smiling, I reached out, touching the glass, touching the shadowy reflection of my fingers. Still lying to myself, trying to protect myself from the pain I saw in others.

The first step wasn’t falling in love with Hyraj and living happily ever after. This was the first step: looking at myself. Long ago, I was a little girl with no one, and I had spent my life trying to make sure no one else was like that. Trying to become who I needed back then.

But I couldn’t change the past, nothing would. I needed to look at the me in the mirror. Not a little girl any more, but still someone who deserved love and happiness and a home where she felt safe. Because, no matter how much I felt like I didn’t deserve that, none of the other girls at the orphanage—no matter how much they screamed or trashed the place or tried to hurt me or the little ones—I’d never felt like they deserved what they went through, always hoped they could find the help they needed. Even once they turned eighteen and were suddenly adults who were responsible for their every action, how could I blame them for being broken after spending their entire life in pain?

How could I blame myself for being scared when I never had anyone to hold my hand and tell me everything would be okay?

People talked about blame and excuses like they didn’t matter, like people were always terrible if they did terrible things. But the point of blame and excuses wasn’t to say that they didn’t do terrible things. No, it was to try and understand why they did and how to help them not do it again. If a little one was bitten by a dog before, I would do my best to keep her away from any dogs we saw on the street, pick her up if I had to. I wasn’t a therapist who knew how to help children overcome their fears, I was just another kid trying to make the little ones feel safe.

My thoughts meandering, I reached out with my other hand, then leaned forwards, resting my forehead against the window pane. Not too heavily, scared it would break. But touching my reflection more.

I needed to understand I wasn’t a robot who existed to serve others. I was a person too. I deserved happiness, I deserved to feel safe, and—if Hyraj wanted to give it—then I deserved her love too.

Whether or not I could love her back, I still didn’t know. After spending so long believing I was broken beyond repair, I didn’t know what I would look like once I picked up the pieces, but, if she was willing to stay by my side while I did, then I wouldn’t push her away.

Not this time.