Our Summer Is Not Over - vanish into fiction

* * *

Mia’s first memory of Murad was the salty smell of the sea.

Though she passed out before long, as if she’d been beaten all over, that scent alone remained especially vivid.

When she opened her eyes again, Mia’s body was wrapped in bandages. Instinctively, she called for her parents, and a warm, gentle hand covered her eyes.

“Mommy’s right here. Everything will be fine now.”

As the kind answer reached her, Mia finally began to sob.

She couldn’t recall exactly what had happened, but the moment the boat capsized was seared clearly in her memory.

Sensing Mia’s trembling, her mother carefully patted her back.

“Mia, do you remember what your uncle said about Murad last time?”

Though she knew Mia disliked hearing about her uncle’s behavior, her mother still asked, and Mia whined softly.

“It looks like we’ve arrived here. It’ll be hard to return to Pilath right away, but the Murad side said they would contact your uncle, so don’t worry too much.”

“Are you sure we can’t go home now?”

Her mother’s voice, mixed with helplessness, soothed Mia.

“We’ll go back home once you’re feeling a bit better, Mia.”

That steady patting and her mother’s calm voice soon brought on drowsiness.

The voice of the seven-year-old girl began to fade into sleep.

“Mommy, when we get home, let’s not go out to the sea for a while.”

“Okay.”

“Mommy, I think I’m going to hate the sea from now on.”

“That’s understandable.”

“But… to go home, we’ll have to take a boat again, right?”

Surviving a shipwreck would be traumatic for any adult, so it was obviously far too much for a mere seven-year-old child to endure.

As Mia’s whining faded, the gentle patting also slowed. Before long, her mother’s hand stilled, and she asked Mia,

“If my daughter doesn’t want to go on a boat, should we just keep living here?”

“Can we do that?”

“If we look for a way, sure.”

“Mm… but I still want to go home. I can handle it.”

“My good girl, my brave girl.”

The hand covering Mia’s eyes disappeared. Suddenly overwhelmed by the returning light, Mia squinted. Only after blinking a few times did her mother’s face come into view.

Her mother, as if she found Mia utterly precious, gazed at her lovingly and stroked her eyes.

“I love you.”

A gentle kiss landed on Mia’s face. Mia responded with a bright smile and asked,

“How much?”

“As much as… As much as you could imagine.”

If only she had known that would be their last conversation feeling each other’s warmth, she would have talked longer.

She would have told her to run away from there, right then and there.

* * *

As the sun set red on the horizon, Mia managed to break free from her thoughts.

It was a memory that had surfaced naturally amid the silence on the way to the party hall. The flood of thoughts that crashed over her, as if to punish her for momentarily forgetting her parents, was like a towering wave.

All at once, the emotions building up in Mia’s heart were swept away.

Her shamelessly racing heart returned to its normal rhythm. As she felt the steady movement of the carriage, Mia calmly erased the thoughts that had shaken her heart.

“Huu.”

With a soft exhale, the confusion within her dissipated.

Resting her head against the window, Mia recalled the letters she’d sent to countless people after the war, in an effort to organize her tangled thoughts. They were letters to the families of Hipolian hostages who had been captured while she lived in Murad.

She wrote down the last messages those people desperately wanted to convey to their families before being killed and made sure the words reached their loved ones.

She wrote to every family she could remember, except for one. A woman whose son she could never find.

‘The only clue is the surname Darby. There’s no other way to find him.’

So many families disappeared in the chaos of war, and it seemed the Darby family met a similar fate. Not a single trace had been found in the past four years.

‘But I’ve bought myself a year, so I should try to find him and deliver the message in that time.’

After all, it was a request from the woman who had stayed by Mia’s side through so many hardships. Mia wanted to grant it, no matter what.

She thought about asking Dylan for help, but it seemed best not to get further entangled with him. If she still hadn’t found the Darby family before leaving in a year, then she would ask for his help.

That worry remained with her all the way until she arrived at the party hall.