THE OMEN GIRL | Wattys 2020 Winner

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At five in the morning, when the older Suns ring their handbells out in the hall, I rise with the others. It's my first time since coming to the temple.

I wait for Rama.

She's a deep sleeper and a sluggish waker, so I reach up and nudge her shoulder, again and again, until she grumbles and rolls onto her side. She draws her blankets up over her head, but sits up, and climbs down her hammock.

"Don't look at me." She rubs her eyes through the blankets.

"What?"

"I'm gross."

I do not understand. There is nothing gross about waking up. So, I tug her blanket off and away, and she covers her face and whines. An itch bubbles in my chest again, that foreign feeling from before – a laugh.

I wait in silence instead, arms crossed, as Rama wipes her face. She looks at herself in a mirror she keeps tucked beneath her pillow, then when she is content, she leads us outside.

Outside, the hall reminds me of the packed markets, but there is no shouting, and nothing smells of dung. Acolytes in grey and guardians in black fold out from their rooms, one after the other, like a muted dance. The music is the rustling their clothes make.

Everyone congregates to the sprawling balconies of the upper floors. Morning mist swaddle thick and blankets the canopy white. In the distance, the temple pierces through the thick like some mountain.

Around us, the Suns in red and yellow light sticks of incense. They weave between us with the incense until the scents sink into our clothes, our skin. It sticks to my hair, because I still have mine.

Then the temple bells toll, and it's like a field of flowers closing, because everyone kneels row by row. They kiss their foreheads to the floor. They chant on the same pitch, the same rhythm, the same words. It's a prayer I don't know the words to.

To the side, I see Naqi, bent like the others. His eyes are closed, and his mouth is not moving. The khab is asleep.

An older Sun clears his throat at me, so I kneel. I press my forehead against the floor. I close my eyes, and do not pray.

#

Naqi sleeps on even after the morning prayers are over.

He rolls to his feet, eyes closed and swollen with sleep, and auto-paths away from the dorms and down the stairs and out to the mess hall. I do not know how he does not fall, or knock into things. It does not register to him that I am there, or that anyone is there. I scowl.

Rama by my side explains, "He's been doing that for years."

"Someone should knock him awake."

"People have, and it's never worth it. Naqi doesn't know his own strength when he gets a rude awakening."

I snort. Rama watches me and fidgets.

"Hey, Lumi?"

I look over.

"About what's been happening, with everything, and at the mess hall. With that boy. Are we—okay?"

I frown. "What do you mean?"

Rama does not elaborate. She casts her eyes down and is silent, silent on something like shame. I know she is talking about my days as a recluse, and about how Roaz had mocked me, though I don't know why that has anything to do with Rama.

But to break the strain of the silence, I say, "Hey."

I say, "Can I still call you Pea?"

Rama – Pea – looks back up and brightens. Her smile swells her cheeks. "Of, of course!"