Chapter 21 Bioluminescent Plankton
bioluminescent plankton
Glows when disturbed. Like laughter after silly thoughts.
We’re quiet as we sneak inside and into our bunks.
The house settles around us: timber cooling, the faint howl of wind through the window gaps. We are not and will not.
I can hear his breathing, uneven, a small catch near the exhale. Awake. Like me.
I press a pillow over my face and let feathers and lavender detergent muffle a growl. Then I cast it aside, glaring up where moonlight thins and thickens on the ceiling.
What even is love? A handful of choices the other person makes that please us; the hand pausing mid-tap, the sneaky glances, the dry answer that clicks with our humour. The impulse to keep leaning in. More, please.
If that’s love, there must be a thousand others who could offer it.
And yet, none are him.
Maybe it’s the shared map: sibling, loss. I understand you; you understand me.
But there’s more than melancholy here. There’s the urge to laugh. To fold into comfort.
Maybe love is a signature. I like the scrawl so much I want to trace every curve with a finger. Call it mine.
A laugh jolts out of me, rattling the frame.
“What’s so funny?” Trent murmurs. His foot bumps the slat beneath me.
“My thoughts are pretentious nonsense.”
“Pretentious?”
“Yeah. Purple prose, but in my head.”
“Ah. Purples. We all have them.”
I lean over; his eyes catch a wash of moon. “Tell me one of yours.”
He hums, the sound travelling up the ladder. “We hold truths inside and let them out in fits and bursts. Sometimes that’s when we notice how much we’ve grown. Together.”
“The fits and bursts aren’t the growth?”
“Those too. There’s growth in the quiet,” he says, softer. “In the unspoken. A look. A jiggling leg. A raised brow. Humming a tune with wrong lyrics. Like testing water with a toe before you step in.”
I bite my bottom lip. “What about lies? Self-deception? Maybe we say the wrong thing because the right thing is growing too fast.”
“Isn’t that trying to stop it?”
“Isn’t that proof it’s there?”
He laughs, nervous; his foot presses the mattress again, a tiny seesaw. “Purples should only be said in the dark.”
I lie back. Then the dark might be my favourite place.
We are not and will not.
Outside, the wind howls. Inside, our quiet glows.