Content Warning: This episode will elude to the off-page suicide of another character; there will not be any graphic descriptions of the act. Please use your personal discretion when reading.

Everything in Lacuna City was a train, bus, or a walk away but that didn’t keep people from driving their luxury cars or tourists from getting ride shares. The roads were filled with mid-day traffic, meaning that by the time Suri got off the bus on the other side of town the sunlight was stretched thin. 

Spring hadn’t come around; it wasn’t ready for winter to wake it yet. 

Suri didn’t mind. The day was already cloudy, threatening to rain. A brisk wind nipped at her cheeks as she made her way down the tree lined streets. Her hands flexed in the sleeves of her puffer jacket. The cold iron of the gate she pulled open chilled her to the bone.

Lacuna was one of five continental islands that composed the world she was born into and knew. As large as it was, the land was meant for the living to traverse it. The dead were meant to return to it.

Trees rooted in ashes of the lost loved ones and cherished family members reached towards the sunken sky. Leaves clinging to the branches distorted any remaining daylight daring to peek through to the thick grass Suri strode across. 

Many of the trees towered above her. The one she navigated to barely reached her knees; a tiny, fragile young tree.

“Hey, Dad.” She bit her lip and tucked the short locks of her hair behind her wide ears. “Long time, no see.”

The tree didn’t respond. Why would it? 

Yet, somehow, reason wasn’t making her feel better at the moment. 

“I don’t even know why I’m here.” She sighed. “I–I guess I was hoping that by coming back here, by taking some time, that I would…”

Be over it? Understand? She groaned, tilting her head back to face the canopy as if it would protect her from her feelings. Suddenly biting her lip became a means to keep her from crying.

People died all the time. From disease, from accidents, from old age. But her father?  

The pacing began. She was surprised she hadn’t burned holes into the floor of her room with the amount that she had paced in the last year. It was her go to stress reliever, next to eating her feelings and pulling on her hair. The latter she had fixed with a pair of scissors and, soon after, groveling to her hairdresser. She hadn’t gotten around to breaking the other bad habits.

“I shouldn’t have come.” She shook her head. “I was doing well. I came here to tell you that I went back to school. That I got my own place. That I was big, and strong, and totally put together.”

She was not. The past year had shown her just how weak and fragile she could be. It had shown her that grief ate people whole and spit them out in tiny pieces that could never be glued back together. 

Especially not when the grief was all twisted up with anger and confusion. When it came with questions like, “Why did you do it?” “When did you decide it was all too much?” and, “Wasn’t I enough to keep you here?”

Suri wasn’t so sure that she ever wanted the answers and it wasn’t like she would ever get them. That fact alone made her lip quiver. Not because she was about to cry. Because she was mad.

Her head swiveled to glower at the small tree, though she told herself it was a squint to keep the droplets beginning to fall from her eyes.

“You know something?” 

Still no response.

“You left me. I’m the one here picking up the pieces that were too much for you. I had to fix what you broke. And I had to act like everything was okay.” 

It was very much not okay. 

“And I get to deal with the stress. And anger. And guilt.”

That finally gave her pause. Her feet stopped and she began to sink into the softening ground. It smelled like wet grass and she rubbed her cold nose. She blinked her tears away. The rain picked up, flicking the leaves of her father’s burial tree. It was as if the plant was finally trying to answer her.

“I’m still so mad because, well, I didn’t know that you needed—”

“Help.”

Her eyes widened at the audible whisper. Did a tree really just speak to her? No, be serious. 

She whirled her head, wet hair sticking to her cheeks as she squinted and looked for any sign that she wasn’t losing her mind. When she found it—found someone—staring at her from the ground.