They are not “Drowners” in their own tongue—they are “Fiati”.

  Their people often communicate without words; rather, they utilise chirps and whistles and use their bodies like drums, beating open palms or tight knuckles against chest, stomach or thigh.

  Roach thinks it sounds rather like music — like beetles singing their rallies. The few words of her own language that they share are often sputtered or pinched, even tasted in some regard. Exhalation is their favourite — breath is sacred after all. As sacred as a heartbeat.

  Monet’s maybe-father tells her softly, “To breathe is to remember.”

  They are led deeper into the Fiati’s homelands, into a volcanic basin hollowed out by time. Calcified trees hug the walls, roots still clinging to what’s left of their world, while hydrothermal seams cut beautiful colours into the darkness. The city itself is vertical, stretching endlessly down where water ripples and pulls with the hidden tide.

  They come to a halt inside an enormous dome filled with tiered stone walkways and rounded dwellings. Water is everywhere, trickling through burrowed-out canals, baths and reflective pools. The architecture is ancient and renewed by nature — grand statues caked with mineral and rust, half-reclaimed by stone and ore as though meshing.

  The ceiling curves like a cathedral vault, and painted all across it are murals of moonlight and femininity: a woman embracing an enormous ball of light, the same woman merging with the light—dispersing white rays in fractured beams before the colour fades into splashes of red hands and ashen turmoil.

  The halls are filled with families and the elderly, all of whom whistle greetings across chambers. The tiles lining the floor are ridged with patterns, and many scrape their heels or toes across them to rumble differing levels of sound, responding to enquiries with rhythm and vibration.

  It’s a city completely bustling and alive without a single word.

  CLAP.

  Sharp. Out of place. Their guide demands attention with a single slap of his hands, followed by a high-pitched cry that he whoops into the quiet, the echo bouncing back to sing in return.

  Everything stills, and the world grows hushed, hundreds of eyes turning to regard them. Hundreds of eyes that soon fill with joy, lighting up like little—

  Flames.

  Several call back.

  Roach can’t help herself. Desperate is she to be felt. So desperate, in fact, that she copies, throwing her cry into the silence, her own echo joining the fading call.

  She waits for the fires to grow brighter. Holds her breath.

  Again, more echoes, more cries in the night. The room is quickly filling with sound again, people too—appearing from alcoves and hallways, high arches and platforms, summoned—summoned are they by this homecoming song.

  Many begin to move forward — a woman with tearful eyes, her mouth agape as she clutches her heart.

  Monet finds the queen's hand. Inhales sharply.

  Their guide only smiles wider, bright as the goddess on his ceilings, and gestures to the woman closest. Whoops, again.

  She runs forward.

  Monet squeezes, shaking — the queen nudges her forward; it’s all it takes to send her running, running so fast into the arms of a…

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  Mother.

  To watch them embrace is painful.

  She watches anyway, unblinking.

  Hands cup the girl's face and smooth over her head, down her neck and shoulders. She’s held tightly. Held as if to never be let go again. Kisses are laid across her hands and fingers, pressed with trembling lips over scar and damage.

  The mother is not the only one to step forward. The Fiati are abundant in children too. Children who perk up and grin broad grins while they approach Monet fearlessly. They hold one another's faces, touch noses and rub. Each time. Slow and patient. A moment for all who have missed her.

  Tears have built up like salty lakes, and soon the room is flooded. Vast quantities draw near to celebrate and welcome, and Roach is not freed from this ghastly, loving fate. The maybe-father nudges her next, a reflection of encouragement. She looks back — wants to shake her head; her eyes are wide and frightened. Yet, she doesn’t. Instead, slowly, slowly, walking forward.

  Monet is already waiting, eyes wet — always wet — but shining. Her hand is outstretched and taken, and before she drags her in, she sings a tender, rising note. It’s caught by the crowd and tossed back as Roach is enveloped.

  At first, a younger child tugs at her fingertips, drawing her lower — the queen, cautious, leans down, and so softly, butterfly kisses are laid on her cheeks, a million little flutters that tickle. Another child embraces her from the side, nudging her nose against her temple and jaw, while an elderly woman clasps her free hand and pets her fingers. All are chirping. Cooing. Calling.

  Very quickly, it becomes all too overwhelming. All too suffocating. Many try to touch her, to share such grace and warmth, but the Queen of the Dead and the Scuttly are not used to such things.

  She wants to run away.

  She’d like to curse or hiss like the rabid thing she is, like the feral little girl that doesn't trust such compassion, but instead she falls to her knees, and she takes it, tears welling in her eyes that she dare not let loose.

  She is embraced by them all. It’s too much.

  Arms and limbs and fingers that all seek to bring her in, to drown her in community. The waves come with crushing strength, but they only fill her chest and push all the salty water into overfill, and like the child that she is, the queen begins to cry.

  The sobs tremor through her body in heaves until she's bent over herself, clutching at her chest and trying to steel her rising heart—she swears it seeks to leave her, to join those with the open palms and eyes. Pressure pushes in from all angles. Heat too. She can taste their sweat, the shared breath of one giant lung as it collectively sucks in. Breath is passed and shared, and she’s light-headed and swirling and hot but touched and held, and all her teardrops are caught by kind hands.

  ‘To breathe is to remember,’ and so she sucks in and tries to remember what it felt like to be one.

  A father strokes away her fat tears, a mother brushes her hair, an auntie warms her cramped digits, and an uncle begins to hum. Sisters and brothers hold her as she weeps. Monet clutches her tightly, bringing their connected fists to her chest, where a little heart rages. Too many tears. Too much joy. Too much softness and body heat. It’s ludicrous and mad, and she rather hates it, and yet her heart, her lonely heart… opens.

  The chorus of voices turns to something else. Higher octaves joined in, echoing about the wide clearing and bounding from the ceiling. Everything comes back to fill up her abdomen. To light her fire. Monet sings too, until it's only she who cups Roach's sadness, until it's only them in the centre of a widening circle.

  The Fiati draw back to join hands. The cavern shakes, or maybe warbles, or maybe turns into something else altogether. The whole world seems to tremble, not unlike the Angel Tower but different — there is nothing breaking here.

  Monet tilts forward to press their foreheads together, and the younger girl catches the last of the salt that falls from the queen's eyes, giggling as Roach catches her palms and shudders, overwhelmed tremoring through her bones.

  Monet is a quiet child no longer, entirely different from the person Roach had stitched back together a week ago. Despite the cuts on her face and body, right now she looks fully healed.

  Complete.

  She comes to cup Monet’s face as well, swiping her thumbs gently across the scars on her cheeks, their oft weeping becoming something else, something that brightens up their eyes and lightens up their chests.

  They sing together, sounds that rise and fall and never quite make words—or perhaps they were once words, forgotten and lost but kept and held by those that hold everything.

  It's a great deal of time before Roach realises that the hush has returned, only fractured by the two children still crafting sound from the centre. She doesn’t mind, for her stare is held, her attention stolen.

  Monet’s voice is beautiful and clear, light as water, as she sings a long and high note that does something silly to Roach’s heart.

  Her eyes fill with tears once more. She’s not sure why. The sound is so lovely it hurts. She repeats carefully after her, her hair stroked as she forms the melody. The final note fills the dome before it falls away, fading into exhalation, into two children curled close.

  Then, the silence swoops in to swell in the empty space — like breath.