The Explorer's Apprentice

1: Years an Years After

Many years later....

 Marley Faukner

Marley, (like the singer, not the dog) Adrianna Faulkner really likes the house. Instantly she is absolutely in love with the tropical garden out front, the tall, castle-like doorways, and the many, many windows. She likes bright things so this will be perfect. She can’t get her camera out fast enough, nearly spilling out half the contents of her blue hand-bag in the process. But she doesn’t care, and she won’t care about anything—not until she can find the perfect room that uncle Brock had promised, to set up her art supplies and sketch the garden, the windows, the sea, to her heart’s content.   

The sea, she thinks dreamily. She loves everything about it. To her, it is a strange, undiscovered world; it is a wild horse that can be loved but never tamed, it is a healer, it is the greatest symphony—it is absolutely everything she’s ever loved and so much more. It can swallow you whole—engulf you in its constant beauty, make you feel like you belong.

And now, for the first time ever, she has it in her own backyard.

Click.

“Taking pics for the kids back home in Seattle already, love?” Says Uncle Brock, hauling bags out of the truck that Marley forgot to take in herself, which are a lot. “That can either be really good, or really bad.” He’s got a smile painted onto his handsome face—golden from countless days of work at sea.

“It’s good,” Marley’s little sister, P.J., informs him. Small, course hands fidget atop her bright purple jeans in restless anticipation, and her eyes squint at the front door, anxious to get a look inside.  Her words come out in an extra hurried jumble because Uncle Brock has promised her the only pink bedroom. “She takes pictures of houses she likes, and then she draws them or something.”

“It’s true,” Marley admits, casting them a grin from over her shoulder, “I’m weird and I have this obsession with drawing great houses. So my picture taking is definitely a compliment.” Click. Click. Two more for the mermaid statue in the middle of the azalea bushes.

“Marley, my dear, you are a woman of many geniuses,” says her uncle. “Come in now and see the house! Alison and I have your art room almost completely set up. The garden will always be here.”

“I’ll be in in a sec. See how those smaller palm trees are slightly bent just below the mermaid statue’s crossed arms? It looks as though she’s resting them there. Beautiful. An hour from now, the wind will blow the trees upright and the scene will be gone.” She shakes her head at the thought. “And I could never draw it from memory.”  Click.

“You get weird when you want to draw.” P.J. tells her, her small brows furrowed. “It’s like it makes you insane.”

“Maybe it does.” Marley winks. P.J just rolls her big gray eyes, eyes that are identical to her older sister's, and quickly follows their uncle inside. Her legs practically eat up the dark pavement.

Peering through the lens of her camera, Marley thinks of her mother, adventuring on an archaeological dig somewhere deep within South American grounds. Marley is no stranger to moving, and has been doing so ever since she was a little girl. She remembers being no older than six years old, sitting by a warm fireplace, and having her mother stroke her auburn curls as she whispered stories about adventurers and exciting journeys. Marley’s young eyes had shimmered with raw excitement, thrill, and desire—desire to be just like her mother one day. She’d be a traveler. An explorer. At a very young age, Marley had made the decision to become an adventurer.