2022-05-23 - Sunsets

By the time the two sailboats unmoor and part ways, there's still plenty of time left for sailing, especially as the daylight grows longer on these late May days. Past Ocean Shores, and then out to sea -- to the true sea. Jules has been on the ocean, but never in a sailboat, and she's utterly delighted to venture farther. Not too far, though, as they agree that the safety of the bay is best come nightfall.

Sunset finds Jules sitting on the prow again, looking westwards as the sinking sun paints the sky and the waters that reflect it. "This was perfect," she tells Mikaere, contented. The day sailing has relaxed her in a way that her morning runs can't, especially not after the built-up stresses of the past week or so. "Thank you."

The ocean is exhilarating, of course: bigger winds and bigger waves, faster and choppier so that it feels, at times, like flying. The wind's not in their favour in coming back in, of course, but there's a motor for that, the sails carefully tied down, and then, eventually, the relative calm of the bay-- and the beer from the chilly bin that Mikaere offers Jules as he comes to join her.

"I'm glad you enjoyed it," he says, quietly but with feeling. "We might've had to part ways otherwise. She's a jealous mistress, my girl." He means the boat, clearly, patting her deck with a fond hand (and, after all, Jules is a woman, not a girl). "I know how much it can help, to... get away from things. To be able to breathe again."

Jules favors Mikaere with a smile as she reaches up to accept the beer. "I can tell," she says of the boat. "She's very clearly the first lady in your life."

She's happy enough to sit there quietly for a time, watching the sun descend and the colors gradually change and deepen. "I was glad to see that Ravn's okay being out on the water," Jules finally says. "I didn't know if he would be, after what happened." Now she risks a peek away from the horizon. "I guess I didn't tell you anything about it, did I. He almost drowned."

Mikaere clambers into position alongside Jules, thigh-to-thigh, and opens his own beer (cans: no need for the bottle opener on his key chain today). He laughs for her description of Wā Kāinga, but it's not exactly a disagreement-- nor is the way he pats her hull again, just for emphasis. Good girl.

"You didn't," he agrees, having been equally content to sit in silence, enjoying the sound of the waves against the hull, and the occasional jangle of metal as the wind whips at the sails, secured though they are. "Shit. I'm glad he is too. I'd hate to see something like that get in the way of... something like this. How are you coping?"

"It was close." Her admission is somber. Jules cracks open her own can. "Better," she decides, but it still takes a moment for her to decide. "Better now that Una and Della are talking to me again. Though Della getting hurt so bad -- it seems like almost everyone is treading on thin ice. You, me, Della, Ravn -- we were all just this close to slipping under, you know?"

"It's like that, sometimes." Mikaere lets that hang for a moment, then makes a face, still staring out into the distance rather than look at Jules, though his leg is warm beside hers; his body, too. "Not that it's quite like this, back home, where my ma's from. We've two places, sacred places, where the barrier between this world and the other is easily slipped through, but neither are like this. Ones I know of, anyway. Does it frighten you? We're all stronger for our experiences. We're learning."

“We are,” Jules readily agrees, but not without a sigh. “Honestly? Yes, it scares me. I think I’d be an idiot not to be scared. Thank God Ravn knew to hold still, otherwise he could’ve dragged me down too.” She’s all too aware just how lucky the two of them were. “And thank God he was there to begin with, to keep me from getting stuck. I would’ve been, I think. Who knows.” She’s happy enough sitting there side by side, but still leans against Mikaere briefly to nudge him with her shoulder. “If that ever happens again, can you knock me out, please?” Her tone’s light enough, but the request is completely serious.

Mikaere's exhale is a sharp one, timed to just after that final request. "Yeah," he says, in a voice that suggests apology and regret as much as it does a promise.

He shakes his head. "I should've rugby tackled you. I should've-- it's a good reminder, you know? We have these powers, but that doesn't mean they're always the right tool to use. They can do amazing things, but-- not always the right things."

“I shouldn’t have gotten so frustrated I picked the damn thing up.” Jules isn’t about to blame Mikaere for his failure when her own was so very great.

“I met my ancestor.” Her pause gives this admission the weight it deserves. “Well, someone that called himself my ancestor. Maybe it wasn’t. It’s impossible to know. Still.”

A pause from Mikaere. "It's easy," he says, slowly, "to beat ourselves up over things we did, or didn't do. Easy, with retrospect. Doesn't make it helpful."

It's the latter part of what she has to say that really catches his attention, though. "Yeah? What was that like?"

Jules is wry, like she knows the answer she gives might be unexpected. “Extremely weird.”

She sips from her can slowly. The next part is more difficult to admit. “I know I should talk to Ravn about it, because he was trying to give us instructions, but I haven’t wanted to.”

It is unexpected, and it draws Mikaere's attention away from the horizon and back towards Jules for the first time in a while. "Yeah?"

He's slower to follow on to that, taking a moment to sip from his own can, and to run his fingertips over the railing about the bow. "In my experience," he says, "if there's something you're supposed to do, before something else happens, you'll get time to do it. Not endless amounts of time, but-- time moves differently, with these things. So. When you're ready, talk to Ravn."

“Yeah. Okay.” It doesn’t fix everything, but it does lighten some of the load. Jules lets out a heavy breath, then looks up at Mikaere as some dry humor returns to her.

“It was totally weird. I don’t think I thought it was weird at the time,” thanks to a certain amount of self-empowerment artificially inflated, “but in retrospect. I mean, imagine it. Landing two hundred years or so in the past and someone being like, oh hello, grandchild, I’ve been waiting for you.”

Is that a hint of uncertain guilty? A little recollection of what he did instead of something helpful? It's there and then gone again; he's busy looking thoughtful, instead. "That... would absolutely be a thing," he agrees. "A fucking weird thing. And he wanted you to do something?"

Jules misses it, with the way she’s largely focused on fitting events into a narrative that she hasn’t really shared much of to date. “Yeah. Not totally sure what. ‘Close the door’, whatever that means. So I need to talk to Ravn again. But right now, I just want to focus on normal things. Not make him relive it.” Or herself.

Another shoulder nudge, this time more playful. “Speaking of normal things. Good job, you gave me the best birthday present, and you didn’t even know it.”

Close the door. Mikaere mouths the words rather than repeat them out loud, but they don't mean anything to him. Could he ruminate on them further? Of course. Does he? No. Jules wants to think about more normal things-- and look, he's happy to do so.

"Wait, what? It's your birthday? Shit. You weren't going to tell me?" He nudges back, making light of the comment.

“In a couple days, on the twenty-fifth,” Jules replies, grinning. She’s just as pleased with the response as she is with changing the subject. “And no I wasn’t, because I’m not planning on having a party, and I don’t expect you to do anything for it anyway.” No expectations. “And I have finals next week anyway. But sailing this weekend and a big party next weekend, I think that makes for a good birthday, no need for anything else.”

Mikaere's watching Jules side-on, as if he needs to make sure that what she's saying is actually true, and that he's not about to get himself in hot water, 'keeping things casual' though they are. What he sees there seems to ease him, though, because he returns her grin with one of his own and says, "Well, in that case: happy birthday. I'm glad I have-- completely unintentionally-- made it special. Helped to, anyway."

There’s no ulterior motive to be sussed out. At least in this instance, Jules says what she means and means what she says. “Well, thank you,” she says with amped-up graciousness. “When’s yours?” Since they’re on the subject. “Are you the big blowout party type, or a slice of cake out on your boat kind of guy? Or more like, it’s time to try skydiving because who knows if I’ll live to see another birthday?”

Mikaere takes a moment to sip at his beer before answering. "September," he says. "End of September-- the 28th." It means he may not be here, by the time his birthday comes around, but that's not a conversation for right now. "I'm not much fussed about the things, if we're honest. A nice dinner, a few drinks; things I'd probably enjoy anyway, you know?"

It’s noted. Not just the date, but what Mikaere doesn’t say. Jules doesn’t let her smile dim. She’s not going there. “Makes sense to me. I’d rather do things with people, generally speaking. Experiences, not things.”

The sun has just about met the water. It occasions another nudge, and this time, Jules stays leaned in, head tipping towards Mikaere. “Wait for it — let’s see if we get the green flash tonight.”

"Yeah," says Mikaere. "What would I do with things?" He gestures, idly, towards the cabin of his boat. His boat is bigger than, say, Ravn's, but it's still not especially spacious inside: there's room for vital things, but not much more than that. It's for the best, really, that he seems perfectly comfortable in his shorts and t-shirts, and not much more than that.

Jules' nudge draws his attention back, and he draws his arm around Jules as she leans. "I'm waiting. Only seen it a few times-- conditions have to be so perfect-- but it's always worth it."

“It would just take up space,” Jules agrees, catching the drift of that gesture. “What did you do with everything else?” She takes the arm around her shoulders as an invitation to snuggle in comfortably while they wait for the sun to touch the Pacific. There’s no mysterious flash tonight, just the warm orange half-dome of the sun as it slides beyond the horizon.

“I don’t think I could ever live away from the water,” Jules murmurs, caught up in sentiment as the sun sets. “As beautiful as other places may be.”

"Sold it, gave it away, threw it out," answers Mikaere, easily. There's probably a few boxes stored in a forgotten corner of his mother's house, too, but those aren't worth mentioning right now.

There's no flash, but that doesn't mean it's not still a perfect sunset; and the perfect way to end a day. He's slower to respond, so focused on the horizon, and on the way Jules nestles in against him. "Me either. The ocean, it's part of me. In my blood, and my soul."

Jules is content to sit like that in relative silence, listening to the slap of the water against the hull, watching the sunset purple as dusk sets in. Light lingers at this time of the year, even with sundown. For a time, she has nothing to say.

Then, “One of the Creation stories is about how the first people were originally animals from the sea that came up out of the water and changed. I like that— thinking that maybe the otter you see when you’re out on the water is actually your cousin.”

It's a nice place to be; a nice way to be, just sitting here, in the gathering dusk. Mikaere's equally happy to stay quiet, though not so much that he can't break his own stillness to respond, in the fullness of time. "It's part of our tradition, too. Water's the foundation of life; it's part of the creation myth, and it's in the imagery of the words we use to describe the spiritual self. Te taha wairua, the 'real' world, by which we mean more than just what we see and hear and feel. The dimension of water. It's-- hard to explain, but it's all linked. There is no life without water."

Beat. "Of course, I guess evolution confirms it too, doesn't it? We absolutely did come from the water."

Jules hums along in agreement, without interruption. The comparison has her looking thoughtful. “I like to think that our people just knew it in a different way. Science confirming what we already knew.”

She doesn’t need to look up at Mikaere in order to ask further questions. Jules may not think of herself as a deep thinker, but as someone who’s curious—this, always. “So what is the spiritual self according to your tradition?”

"That... is a loaded question, isn't it? I have an incomplete understanding, and it's... complicated." Mikaere hesitates over his answer; trying to put something that is felt into words is a challenge, and it's one that he seems to be trying to work through rather than to immediately explain.

"A lot of it, I think, comes back to connectedness. Whakapapa, genealogy, is at the heart of our beliefs: the idea that we are all connected. So your spiritual self is connected to that too, in turn. You are part of the air and the water and the earth, because that's where you came from, generation by generation, back to the creation myth. I don't think that really answer your question, though."

“Sorry,” Jules says, but she doesn’t sound terribly contrite. Even a partial answer will satisfy that curiosity. “Maybe it does,” she replies as she mulls over what Mikaere has to say. “It sounds like maybe who you are has to do with understanding how your place in the big scheme of things is connected to everything else. And that makes sense to me. We don’t do genealogy in the same way—you said you know the name of your original canoe, right?—but it’s similar. There’s the Bear Clan, or whatever, and they’re the ones who descended from Bear and claim him as their father. What sometimes gets called their totem. That kind of thing.”

"Yeah," agrees Mikaere. "Something like that. It's-- you know how some things you understand in your gut, because they're part of you? But you can't really put words to them, because... well, they're not supposed to be explained like that. It's weird, I feel like I have this deep, clear understanding of how to translate the Māori for you, but those are words, and this isn't about words. Is it weird that I feel like I have a better understanding of my own language recently? Despite not speaking it to any native speakers?"

That's a whole different story. He pauses in it, backtracking towards what Jules has actually said. "It's always about belonging to something, isn't it? You have the Bear Clan, and we have our waka and our iwi, but the concepts are similar. We're all connected. We belong to something bigger than ourselves."

“A little weird,” Jules decides with a grin. “But maybe it’s because you’ve been explaining it to people instead of just speaking it. Maybe it makes you think about it in a different way.”

Her smile dims when her thoughts inevitably lead her to comparison. “There isn’t a Bear Clan anymore, at least not down here on the Olympic Coast. Too many people died from smallpox and measles and malaria. You can’t keep that kind of sense of who you are when entire villages are gone. We didn’t have wars out here, though there was one in the Puget Sound. I mean, there were certainly conflicts, and the white settlers had this idea about communal punishment, so they would literally lynch a bunch of Indians to punish one person for fighting back. Make it into a big affair, invite the whole town, hang ten natives at once. But for the most part, we all just died from disease. Ninety percent of all the indigenous people here, gone. Can you imagine? So we don’t count ourselves by clans anymore. We just count ourselves as survivors.”

"Maybe," agrees Mikaere, evenly. It's as good an explanation as any.

That particular thread of conversation is easily dropped, though, in lieu of listening to the rest: so much more serious. "Fuck," he says, which may be the most descriptive thing he can come up with right now. "That's-- I mean, we talk a lot about our population, and how many were wiped out in the wars we had, but it's nothing like that. Our language is still struggling, but at least we have it. You--"

He doesn't have the words for this either, but glances side-long at Jules to watch her expression. "And it's not much better now, is it? Mortality rates higher. Incarceration. All of the statistics you don't want to be high in."

“Yeah. Poverty and alcoholism and all the rest. I mean, you saw what Taholah looks like.” That day may have been a communal celebration, but to get to it, they still had to drive by small, ramshackle houses, and it’s not as if the downtown offered much in the way of thriving business. Jules aims to keep a neutral tone and expression, but the topic will never be neutral, and neither will she.

“That’s what my ancestor was talking about,” she adds. “How everyone was going to die. I think it maybe wasn’t just about the history. I don’t know if he thought we could change the outcome. Maybe he was saying there would be a different kind of death, unless we could close the door. Whatever that means.”

"It's the same-- well, no. Not the same. We face similar issues, I suppose, is what I'm trying to say. Disproportionate numbers of us incarcerated, unemployed. Dying younger." Mikaere's nod in a sharp one, quietly unhappy.

He hesitates, whistling through his teeth at Jules' further explanation. "So... no pressure. Easy. Fine. No big deal. Oooof."

“Right?” Jules can find the humor in this, though it’s the dark sort, one that recognizes the dissidence between the weight of expectations and just what it feels like to flounder about instead of purposefully taking action. “Ravn was like, you’re a shaman now! And I’m just sitting here thinking, what the actual fuck.”

One long exhale, accompanied by what’s almost a laugh. “I don’t know, maybe it really was a straightforward commission to turn back time. There is a Revisionist on the Other Side after all. Somehow I doubt she could be convinced to erase almost two hundred years of history. And I don’t know if that’s such a good idea anyway. What happens to everyone here now, if you do that?”

"Who's to say if your people had survived, something worse might not have happened-- for them, maybe, maybe not. For someone else, probably. Seems to me, changing history is an impossible prospect. There's too many threads."

Mikaere lets that hang for a moment, then presses a kiss into Jules' hair. "But whatever he actually wanted, if there's something coming? You'll figure it out. And you'll do what you can. You, and the rest of us behind you, most likely."

“I hope so.”

For a moment, Jules turns her face into Mikaere’s shoulder, closes her eyes, and breathes. Casual or not, whatever this thing between them is, she finds solace in the physical presence of the man beside her — the fact of his being there, amid all the intangible questions and theories and guessed-at expectations. Maybe this is why she says, quiet and muffled and without looking up, “I hope you’ll stay awhile.”

Casual or not, it's not as if Mikaere could do anything but what he does, right now: he sets down his beer and he wraps his other arm around Jules as well, all the better to hold her and to keep her... well, not 'safe'. But to remind her, perhaps, that he's here.

Quietly, "I don't have any plans to go."

That's true-- it's probably not the the whole truth, but as these things go, it's true.