Chapter Text
"There's someone at the door!"
Ragatha called to her across the backyard. From where she knelt in the soil, Pomni tilted her garden hat for a better look. "What?"
"There's someone at the door. Come get it."
Pomni waved her garden trowel for emphasis. "Why can't you get it?"
"I can't. It needs to be you. Come inside."
She allowed herself a moment, time to turn the request over in her thoughts, bask in its nonsense. She tossed her trowel to the side. She brushed the dirt from her overalls.
When Pomni walked into the kitchen, she discovered an empty room. It was curious Ragatha would shy away from a social call. She made for the front door and opened it.
Standing side-by-side on the porch, holding hands, Gangle and Zooble waited for her. Pomni gaped. Zooble looked her head to toe, her smudged overalls and messy undershirt. "Seriously? You're still doing the farm girl bit?"
"How can you say it's a bit? I live on a ranch with my girlfriend."
Gangle laughed. Pomni listened to the sound, sweet, sing-song. She thought how Gangle looked livelier, how she presented as warmer; a little pink blush coated her cheeks, a rosy color where she once looked so cold.
Zooble held out their arm, presented an opportunity. Inviting, come in if you wish: but, only if you wish, only if you have decided this is best. "Hey, Pom. Sorry it's been a minute."
She made a comparison to that first encounter in the tattoo parlor. She remembered that softness in her chest any time she saw Zooble, an old friend come to visit. She shifted where she stood, sighed, and wandered into Zooble's hug. She felt a delicate hand touch her shoulder, Gangle's hand.
Zooble spoke into her ear. "I'm happy to see you."
"Me too. I've missed you…"
When they separated, Pomni returned to the foyer. She stood aside, allowed them to enter. Both slipped out of their shoes at the mat. Gangle lingered an extra moment, took in her surroundings. "This is a beautiful home. You were right, Zooble."
"We were amazed when we first came here," Zooble said. "It's like a castle in the sky."
The group heard footsteps down the hallway. They turned to meet Ragatha. She held a small wooden box in her hands, and a mischievous grin aimed at Pomni. "Thanks for answering the door, sweetheart."
"Let me guess," Pomni said. "You guys planned this behind my back."
Gangle nodded enthusiastically. "Zooble and I wanted to see you. But, I didn't think it would be a surprise like this… are you okay with us being here?"
"Of course I am."
Zooble pointed to the box. "So, what's in there?"
Ragatha opened the lid, and they all looked inside. Boxes of colored pencils, oil pastels, and sketch paper waited. "Figured I'd grab some art supplies for your visit. Make it a little nostalgic, huh?"
The group began with dinner preparation, a smooth project with four sets of hands. Pomni learned that Ragatha had procured ingredients ahead of time, and kept them carefully spaced in different spots in the kitchen. She commended Ragatha for her efforts to keep her little project under wraps. They all sat down at the table for hearty bowls and light conversation.
When they all finished and scrubbed their dishes clean, the four set up shop in the living room. At the couch, Zooble and Gangle sat back-to-back, scribbling away at their sketchpads. Their faces flushed with shared concentration, little flickers, momentary lapses, focus that caught and snagged now and again. Ragatha turned the TV to idle programming, busied herself with her documentary.
Meanwhile, Pomni kept vigilant of her surroundings. If she looked closely, the clues identified themselves. She noticed the little glances, tiny shifts near her person; she tabbed those times Zooble flashed in the corner of their eye, or when Gangle peered over the edge of her sketchpad. Finally, Gangle set her pencil down.
"Pomni?"
She turned to Gangle. "Yeah?"
"How was it with Jax?"
Pomni knew, she prepared for this from the moment she saw them on the porch. And still, she felt swept off her feet, as if the ground beneath her became soft, and her insides turned uneasy. She produced a sound like a calibration error. "It was… it was okay."
"Did you guys talk?"
"A bit."
Zooble closed their sketchbook. They, too, angled to meet Pomni face-to-face. "Alright, no point beating around the bush. Pom, Gangle and I've worried about you. I know we didn't part on good terms, and it sounds to me like you've gone through the ringer."
Ragatha said, "Pomni, please forgive me. But I told them how hard things have been for you."
Pomni heard what Ragatha said. She sifted through her thoughts, dug around refuse and waste to uncover a mental image of that journal page she wrote, the page where she envisioned herself standing at the edge of warm waters, counting out the waves. She held her sunhat in the wind, perched atop her head with her deft touch. She turned around, said something to everyone behind her, but they could not hear her. She looked back toward the ocean.
She had a notion, some foreign, uncomfortable idea that she had finally grown tired of apologies. She heard them plenty, from Ragatha and Kinger, Zooble and Gangle. Her stream of consciousness instructed her to stop listening, stop swimming, drown in your sorrow, drown with me to make amends at last. She said, "Zooble, it's water under the bridge. I'm grateful you're concerned about me, but I don't hold anything against you."
"I understand that. It's just… Pomni, you're someone very important to me. I consider you one of my closest friends. Now I need to act like it. I don't think I've done a great job of that recently."
Gangle, too, slid her sketchpad away. She took Pomni's hand in her own, caressed Pomni's fingers with her thumb. "I feel the same as Zooble. It's because of you I'm here now. I'll always be grateful to you."
"You wrote to me first. You did all the work."
"Yes, but I wouldn't have written to just anyone. I felt safe with you. I've always felt safe with you. That's why I want to show you something."
Gangle reached into her bag, rooted around inside. She produced a leather-bound art book, the size of large construction paper, and she handed it to Pomni. "Turn to the first page."
Pomni ran her hand along the cover, sage, well-worn. She opened the book to a drawing, Gangle and herself, seated shoulder-to-shoulder under the arms of a banyan tree. The tree roots towered above the ground, conjoined and interwoven, nature's precise wiring, a barrier to protect them and keep them safe from the world. Little pink dots, rose petals, scattered the air and covered the ground around their place. A cloudless sky loomed overhead, and the sun's light spread across their little world.
She noticed a red ribbon, drawn around Gangle's wrist, and she, Pomni, held a little gold bell.
"Gangle, this is beautiful."
"It's yours. I want you to have it."
"I can't take this. You worked so hard on it."
She took Pomni's hand, curled her grip into the book cover. "It's my gift. I've wanted you to keep it. I've wanted to tell you how important you are to me."
Ragatha, with a tear in her eye, nodded. "It's an amazing piece. We'll get it framed."
Pomni felt it, a little tremble at first, a waver in her core that spread up her body to her eyes. She shut them tight, pretended not to feel it at first, and then she relented. She had lost this battle long ago. "I don't deserve this."
"Of course you do," Zooble said. "What do you—"
"Please, let me finish."
The others huddled closer, folded hands and watchful eyes. Pomni felt the churn, that little ball in her throat that came around at times inconvenient. She pressed her finger at the base of her neck, poked along until she felt the muscles loosen. "It's so hard for me to describe it. It's just this—this thing. It's like hot iron sitting in my chest, and when I try to force it down, when I try to forget about it, it comes back. It keeps coming back any time I think about us."
"You've felt like that?" Zooble said. "All this time?"
The waves coagulated, condensed, strung together like a ball of yarn. She counted her fingers; she timed her breathing to match. "I've never known how to talk about it. I've never known how to say that I… I feel like I shouldn't be here."
Ragatha made a sound, an inhale so pained, so sharp, that Pomni had never heard it before. "Nothing matters more than you."
"I've tried to change this feeling," Pomni said. "I've been trying something different."
"Something different?"
"I've stolen your idea," Pomni said to Ragatha. "I've tried writing everything down in my journal, get it out of my head. Maybe it'll help me make a little more sense of it."
"Do you want to show us?"
A push and pull, tugging at her heart strings. She shook her head no. She told them she would wait until the moment was right. It was too soon.
They crowded around Pomni. Ragatha collected her, held her tight. Gangle squeezed her shoulder, and Zooble rubbed into her scalp. Pomni sank further, further into that warm feeling that wrapped around her whole body.
"We love you, Pomni. We love you so much..."
Water skin lights, and an open ocean in front of her eyes. She felt tears well, too many to keep her eyes open. She loved Zooble, she loved Gangle, she loved Ragatha, she loved Kinger, she loved Jax, she loved, she cared, she loved them so much that her chest and her lungs and her heart, her beating heart, kindled with the feeling. The fire re-lit. It was not finished yet.
"I love you too."
Two long rows of holes to whittle the afternoon away, run out the clock to the evening. He had finished one, stuck the final pot into the soil. He felt the ache in his bones, the little dings and twinges that reminded him of his age. He wiped his sweat with his gloved hand, which made a little smudge on his forehead.
"Dog of a day. Right, hon?"
Atop her gravestone, blanketed in the tree's shadow, a grasshopper chirped. He smiled. He loosened his collar, retook his trusty shovel, and returned to task. More holes to fill, topsoil to place.
For a while, he continued with his work, and made good progress. Near the end, he felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. He answered without checking the caller ID. "This is Mr. ▆█░▋▃▀▃."
Silence across the line, a space that carried a message in a language he did not quite understand. The tiniest suspicion snuck into his thoughts. "Who is this?" he said.
"So it is you. Huh."
Kinger sat down, on the spot. "Jax. I admit, this is a surprise."
"Yeah. That makes two of us," Jax said. Kinger heard him inhale twice, exhale twice; he counted the seconds between, five, too rigidly timed for coincidence. "Pomni gave me your number."
"She did?"
"She told me to call you. She said it would be the right thing to do. If I wanted a change."
He belongs with us.
She had done it. She had taken his wall, his impenetrable foundation, his will of steel, and she found a way inside. One day, very near in the future, he hoped to learn how. For now, his focus needed to be in the present. "What sort of change?"
"I have no idea. Just… something different, I guess."
"Different can be good."
"It can be terrible, too."
Kinger chuckled. "I'm afraid you'll have to take the risk. The good with the bad. Are we doing this over the phone, or will you come in person?"
"You'd let me come to you?"
Kinger kneaded the dirt. His joy seeped through his touch, down into the earth and across the flowerbed. And he experienced Queenie's own feeling in return, her unbridled happiness that filled his whole body. "You can come any time. I'll text you my address."
"I'll come tomorrow. Don't tell Ragatha."
"I won't."
The line ended. He set his phone aside. He put his forehead on hers, whispered to his wife. "He's coming home."
The grasshoppers and crickets sang, and the ladybugs grouped together in flight. Others joined in their song, raucous crowds, a full chorus. He laughed, throaty, from the heart, and he kissed her sunny stone face.