I S O L A T I O N

Chapter Six

The wood of an old dock creaked in the rippling waters below, dipping its toes into the shallow bank of the lake like a precarious bird as Mouse sat idle atop it; she combed her fingers through mops of hair beside her as three sets of eyes gazed out at the edge of the lake— where the sun dozed in its hammock behind the trees.

The sky above them was a sleepy dull blue, the kind that spilled from the paper and leaked over onto everything below it in a melancholy hue. No sunset. Just stillness. No birds squawked, nor did any fluffy white clouds saunter across that sky that bled into the ground around them. Whatever Summer breeze there should have been by then had taken a vacation elsewhere.

She had never felt such a stillness in all her life, and yet she could not find a calmness in it. She could not find peace in her twitching hands that preoccupied themselves with nervous stroking nor her shaking feet in the boots around them that seemed to grow tighter each second. The Summer evening that poured its melancholy over her sticky, sweating skin, was the only resemblance she could see between every Summer before and this one.

She had never felt anything more motionless than watching the lake sway with two tiny bodies resting their heads against her shoulders— until they suddenly looked up at her with the sweetest eyes that even her dreams could not revive. Her little brothers, Sean and Rith, and it reminded her why she was there.

The boys liked to fish, not for money or necessity like their father but because they enjoyed the calming twilight evenings just sitting on the docks and casting a line. She liked to think that it was especially because they enjoyed hanging out with their big sis. It was a point to take them out every once in a while, and since she'd been busy the past two weeks "training" there was no way she could bear telling the urchins no.

Who else would take them? Their father was still deep out there in the middle of the lake where the hammock rocked, patiently, though perhaps desperately, waiting for something to catch his line. It had been a rough month. If it weren't for the boys making friends with the neighboring jaffa and mule, they would have all starved by then. Not that— not that she was complaining. Her father was trying his best day in and day out. It wasn't his fault the fish weren't biting.

At least, she thought as she glanced over at the small black dot of the boat's silhouette, he was honest. That was more than she could say about Margari's father and Aliana's mother. He worked with his heart and his hands. And those hands...

They were like rocks, the kind of stones that were built on walls to keep them strong and safe. Pillars. His hands were the tools of a man who sacrificed a bit of himself with every labor and did it with love. The playful noogies he would give his children, and the manner he would hoist her up into his arms when she was younger, were always so rough— almost as much as the gruff voice that would sing to the little ones.

Her father worked day after day until his body was beaten and creaking, and, while he shrugged it off with weak smiles, those hands were the symbol of his toil. They were bruised and hard, rough and cut. Splinters from his tools and boat were grown under the skin. There were scars, old and new.

For Mouse, those hands were everything to her. They were here validation that she had someone out there that loved her and was looking out for her. He was a better man than Aliana or Margari's parents.

He just wasn't very bright. Her father couldn't read or write, and there were many times that the shifty merchant gave him a shit deal because of his inability to count or value. Most everyone treated him like the village fool, the idiot who married some weird refugee and popped three kids he could hardly take care of. But damn it if he didn't try. And damn them for being so cruel to a man like him. And damn her for being such a brat.