The first thing Mana feels when she sits down is not the exhaustion of her body, but her mind finally giving way to the noise. The static of a radio whispering at dinner. Rosary beads clicking between fingers. Floodwaters rushing down the street, stripping every house of wood and metal as it goes. Then her parents’ screams swallow everything. Accusations made through cracked voices. A never ending debate over whose fault it is that Mana turned out the way she did, the anger leaking from underneath her door, slowly filling her room. Drowning her lungs. 

Then the world is quiet again. The rustling of mangrove trees is her only company. She takes a deep breath and leans back on one of them, its trunk supporting the back of her head as she looks up at the fading daylight. She puts a hand on her side and feels the cotton of her school uniform wrinkle between her fingers, until she finds the spot where it’s split open. She’d been running through the forest for what seemed like hours, but that particular tear had not been from a stray branch or thorn. It was from a girl, a classmate who had been desperately clinging to her as their parents pulled them apart. A girl who loved her. A girl she could have loved back if she had been given the chance. 

She pinches the broken threads for a moment longer then drags herself back up onto her feet, carefully balancing on the tangled roots beneath them. The soles of her dress shoes scrape loudly as she slides down to more even ground. Mud seeps in around her socks, but she trudges on deeper into the mangroves. 

She weaves in and out between the trees, glides over their roots with ease, guided by reflex. A river rushes alongside her, earthy and swollen from a week’s worth of rain, but somehow not intruding, not threatening. Just another entity lost in the forest, looking for an escape. For release. And the river succeeds, pouring out into a vast lake, the water fading out into some slight clarity in the depth and space. Mana stops at the edge of the water, the daylight now a sliver of amber in front of her. She kneels down and watches ripples settle into the shape of her face. 

She barely recognizes the girl in the water. Long, dark hair frayed and matted piles up around her shoulders. Her eyes, the same shade as the mud, are weighed down by sleepless nights and hours facing the glow of her phone screen, rereading messages, swimming in intention and subtext. She blinks the memories away and wipes sweat off of her brow. The dry heat of the Philippines presses down on her, keeping her head bent over the lake, her gaze fixed on her worn features. She looks older than nineteen. 

Then she catches something else at the edge of her vision. 

Deep black pools over Mana’s shoulders. Its outline is sharp, the rest of the world crumpling at its edges like soil against tar. Her blood runs cold. The void remains still, a shape without definition but as present and real as the mangrove trees surrounding it. A breeze passes through her from behind, cool air wrestling away the heat’s grip on her body. She stands up slowly with her eyes still fixed on the thing behind her. Her hands tremble as she orients herself. She balls them into fists, grits her teeth, and flips herself around.

She stops herself short of throwing a punch when she sees what was behind her is neither person nor creature. The great maw of a cave stands in front of her, a mountain now barring the path she came through. It takes her a moment to lower her fist, and when she does the adrenaline that had been flooding her insides is replaced by nausea. Her eyes rapidly scan the mountain face, desperately searching for a wrinkle, a gap, any indication that what she is seeing is not real, but she finds nothing but solid stone, rigid and climbing far above the treeline. She looks around at the mangrove forest now suddenly parting for the mountain in its center. In the haze of trees it is impossible to tell how wide or deep the mountain stretches. Her mind starts to race, what little sense the world made to her now slipping through her grasp, cast to the wind like sand. 

Then, just before the absence can claim her, she feels a sudden pinch of cold on her cheek. She lifts a hand to her face and feels another speck on her cheek, and another immediately after, until the specks become a shower running cool down her hair and neck, soaking her down to her toes. She closes her eyes, and the gentle drum of the rainfall gradually sweeps away all other noise. She allows it to encompass her, and she finds the ground beneath her again. When she opens her eyes the mountain and the cave still stand in front of her, but uncertainty no longer has a hold over her. She walks forward into the embrace of the cave. 

Inside the rain is muffled, the quiet interrupted only by Mana’s soft footsteps. What little daylight remains seeps in behind her lighting the cavern partway. The walls curve around her, muted brown rock faces jutting out in some places and sunken in in others. She finds a dry spot and sets herself down on the dirt. Cold air settles on her skin and sinks into her wet clothes. She curls up against the wall with her knees up to her chest, eyes lingering on the distant sunset. Without looking away she reaches for her phone, but feels nothing in the waistline of her skirt but her drenched cold skin. She curses at the cave floor, looks down to confirm what she already knows, and pulls herself closer to the rock behind her. She can picture the frantic messages flooding in from her parents and her friends, words collapsing over words like debris during a storm. Guilt comes in pangs, a tiny stab for every answer she can’t give. Answers she could never give even if her family and friends were standing right in front of her. Her heart was always set on leaving. “Home” had stopped being a concept for her years ago, when she stopped returning to her parents’ house after school and spent daylight beneath noisy underpasses, and nights along the edges of Rizal Park, beer in hand and head in the clouds. The bones of Intramuros flickered between spots of black until somehow she woke in her own bed to another argument in progress just outside her door. At some point her parents stopped asking where she had gone. Despite her high marks at school, the lab technician job she was somehow managing to hold onto, and her contribution to the household’s expenses, they had decided she was a lost cause. Not long after that she had decided the same of them. And not long after that her friends–busy with their own lives–faded from hers, fewer and fewer invitations out until her calendar was barren, just another piece of set dressing in the play of her life. 

Mana lifts her head up from between her crossed arms and stops just short of looking above her knees. The faint light from outside that outlined her arms and skirt is gone. Her eyes drift to her peripherals. The light is absent there too. 

She turns her head slightly to the side, to the mouth of the cave and the rain pouring through it, but finds instead more of the dark cavern stretching out an unreadable distance. She notices for the first time her breath curling in thin wisps inches from her face. Then between the curls, in front of her on the opposite side of the cave, she sees a form stirring. 

She turns her head up all the way forward, now fully registering the scene around her. This deeper portion of the cave she now finds herself in, arrested in cold, dark tones and freezing air, is empty save for her and the shape across from her. It appears to her as a jet black blur with hazy contours, crackling like static on an old TV set with no signal. Then as her eyes adjust to the dim chamber, the blur changes into something more defined. Something almost human. 

Like Mana, they are seated on the dirt, knees up to their chest, face looking directly back at hers. Their face, however, is incomplete. Beneath a swath of messy black hair stopping just at their shoulders, patches of brown skin are missing around one of their eyes, but instead of flesh underneath she sees the depths of space in the wounds, stars fluttering in the dark, their perspective warped in the curvature of the being’s cheeks and chin. The rest of their body from the neck down is all galaxies, all immeasurable space in the mold of a naked human form. This infinite dancing light and dark collected and weighted in spite of itself is incomprehensible. And then it isn’t. 

Something clicks into place in Mana’s head, something her blood and bones remember but her mind does not. Something old and true and raw. Something born long before the Earth was and will live long after it dies. 

The chamber is choked in silence, but with no tension from either of its residents. Mana is not afraid. She stifles her breath and waits to be allowed to make a sound, out of an instinctual respect and reverence. Another moment passes, then the being speaks in what sounds like a chorus of indistinct voices, “You must have many questions.” 

Mana does not answer them, but keeps her eyes on theirs. 

“It’s what brought you here. Few find their way to this place who are not looking for something. So tell me, anak.. What are you looking for?” 

Mana grips a handful of her skirt and lets the words in her mind ripen before they leave her. “I thought I knew, but.. Now that I’m here I’m not sure.” 

“Do not think.” The being rests one leg and arm on the ground and leans their head back on the wall. “Your kind have learned well enough how to think, but knowledge is not the same as understanding.” They tilt their head forward again, looking deep into Mana’s eyes. “I know you. I’ve known all of you since you first learned to walk. I know how you breathe and how you die, and every function you have in between. I could recite for you all of this land’s history better than what has been cataloged by the wealthiest institutions in the world. Every minute detail, in every tongue ever spoken here.  I–” They choke down the next word, head bent down, and in the shade of their unkempt hair Mana sees regret in their eyes. “I.. I want to understand you.” The desperation in their voice catches her off guard. For a brief moment they sounded almost human. 

She lowers her legs out onto the floor and crosses her arms over her chest. “I think we’re looking for the same thing.” 

The being lifts their head back up, locking eyes with her again. “...Which is?” 

“A place to belong,” she says quietly. “There’s a reason you’re here too, isn’t there?” 

They blink, and the surprise and tension in their expression fades into vacancy. “Yes, well.. Even a god can fall from grace.” 

“How?”

“I asked you for your story. You’re deflecting.”

Mana groans. “Fine.” She rubs her face and takes a deep breath. “You want to know how I feel? I feel nothing. I haven’t felt anything in three years, since I started university and my parents found out I like girls and not church, and I traded all my friends for bottles because the bottles won’t leave me no matter how disappointing I am.” She drops her hands and anchors her gaze on a pebble by her foot. “Like I said, I want to belong. Somewhere. Anywhere. But there’s nowhere for me to go.” 

She waits, eyes fixed on the pebble, but she hears nothing from her companion. She sighs. “Not what you hoped for?” 

She hears the being breathe and the dirt shifting slightly. “It wasn’t, but.. It’s not because of you. I’m sorry.. I shouldn’t have been looking to you for answers.”

“Answers to what?” she asks. 

“To why your kind acts the way it does. Why you’ve been treated the way you have. I always think I’ll figure it out from hearing your stories, the reason for the cruelty, the pain.. It isn’t fair of me, I just.. I’ve wanted to know for so long.”

“It’s not just me, is it? You’re hoping to find out why we’ve been so cruel to you too..” 

The being smiles weakly. “You’re very observant.”

She smiles back. “You’re very bad at hiding your emotions.” 

Something in her heart stirs, and suddenly the cave doesn’t feel as cold. She raises her knees and leans forward, determination lightening her body. “Your turn. Maybe if you tell me your story I can give you some… I don’t know, insight? I know that probably sounds insane, a human giving a god advice, but–”

“No, it doesn’t,” the being says. “Insane would be continuing what I’ve been doing, wringing people’s sad stories out of them and casting them away when they inevitably offer nothing but regrets for everyone involved.” They pause, suddenly looking flustered. “Cast them away back to the mortal world, I mean. I’ll return you as well after we’ve finished talking. O-Or at any point you wish to leave.”

Mana lets out a giggle. “I’m not exactly in a rush, don’t worry. And I trust you. You could have done anything to me by now, if you wanted to.” 

“Right,” the being chuckles. “Well, I should probably start with my name. I am Lakapati.” 

“Goddess of fertility and harvest,” Mana says.

Lakapati blinks. “You know of me?”

“Probably not all accurate information, but yes, I’ve read stories about you. About all of the old gods.”

Lakapati’s expression softens. “You know the highlights, then. I’ll skip ahead to how I got here.” They close their eyes. “When the Spaniards came and built their churches, my family was in disarray. We lost everything to them too. They severed our connection. Generations forgot our names, our stories, the ways we cultivated the Earth together. We are beings of pure energy, nourished by what you share with us, by the memories of us you hold. And so years passed with us in famine. Our physical bodies fell apart.” They raise a hand up, staring longingly at the stars glittering in their fingers. “The Spaniards molded the land in their image. Painted over languages and character and families with the broad brush of violence. We assumed they would cut every thread.. So we gave up. We retreated into the farthest corners of existence, pockets in reality only a rare few could ever stumble upon. This cave has been my residence for a long, long time..” 

“I’m so sorry.. I can’t even begin to imagine what any of that was like.. Is like,” Mana says softly. 

Lakapati shakes their head, “It’s not your burden to carry, anak. I don’t want you to feel any of the pain I have felt. I wish you didn’t feel any of your own pain either.” They wince, and after a pause they look Mana in the eyes. They glimmer with sympathy and sorrow. “None of this.. None of this is your responsibility.. You’re so young. You should be living your life, experiencing all the joys this world has to offer. Love included, with whoever you want to be with.”