Silent Child 8
She had somewhat of an idea of why the small mommy wasn’t coming, but why weren’t the mean daddy and the other nice small daddy coming either? Her second-favorite daddy was holding her hand very tight, and the big daddy had put a piece of rope around both their wrist for some reason. First, it seemed like they weren’t walking fast enough. As the walk continued, it reached a point where the pace felt just right to her. Then they were walking a little too fast for her. Her second-favorite daddy carried her for a little while, then came closer to the big daddy and told him something. After that, the walk didn’t last much longer and they stopped in what seemed to be a very broken home. Under the part of the home that still had a roof, they built a fabric object that had nice drawings on it. She remembered what it was called: a tent. Between the time her first daddy was gone and the time her first mommy was gone, her first mommy had started a game where they would build a tent outside and sleep in it. She tried to go in, but the big daddy stopped her, made her sit next to the big mommy on something wooden. A fire was started.
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Lalli and Emil should have been back hours ago. Mikkel finally got to the point after reminding her that they would probably be fine for a single night if need be:
-… Don’t go looking out for them tonight.
-I’m not going to! I’m not an idiot!
Whatever they had woken up without realizing, but had been too slow to react before they walked past it, was going to be on guard for the better part of the following night. She was going to have to wait for the early morning, by which point most things will have let their guard back down, to be even remotely safe. That was why…
-I’m backtracking tomorrow morning, if they don’t show up!
-I can accept that.
Mikkel then got up from his seat, but was stopped by Reynir. An exchange in Icelandic ensued, and Sigrun had to butt in to find out what was happening. Mikkel explained:
-He’s letting me know where the… spirits are.
She really didn’t have any more energy left for being patient:
-Then you listen to him! He and that four year old kid who’s as good as ours are our only lines of security right now!
As Mikkel left to answer nature’s calling, Reynir went back to sit on the seat he had been sharing with Mikkel. Sigrun looked between the two lost children they had picked up along the way, both bundled in spare uniform jackets as a concession to the fact that nights outside the tank were going to be too cold for their usual clothes.
-I can not believe the two of you are our lifeline right now.
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The meeting with Onni could definitely have gone better. When he saw Katja in her own safe area, Reynir decided to enter it to speak to her, to get an idea of the extent to which she understood the situation. In his search for a good place to start, he discovered that her understanding of her surroundings was still quite lackluster. It turned out that while she was aware of having a name, she hadn’t been aware everyone else had one. Due to the circumstances in which she had grown up, she, among other things, also thought that all adult females were “mommies”, that all adult males were “daddies” and that all buildings, in which she included the tank they had just abandoned, were “homes”. Having two immune parents and being immune herself, it had taken Tuuri’s Rash actually developing for her to understand the true nature of trolls. As a result, Reynir just barely managed to finish an explanation as to why they were sure Tuuri wasn’t going to come back as a troll before waking up.
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Reynir had said mommy Sigrun would go look for Emil and Lalli in the morning. Instead, she came back without them, looking sad. Then they continued walking. For a very long time. Mommy Sigrun was walking more slowly than everyone else, and ended up being the one in the back. Then she fell. Daddy Mikkel and Reynir didn’t notice, so she pointed. Daddy Mikkel went to speak with mommy Sigrun, then put her on top what Reynir had called a “wheelbarrow”. She was a little jealous. She wished she could have been carried on the wheelbarrow also instead of walking. But she also hoped this didn’t mean that mommy Sigrun was going to be dead soon, also.
After they stopped walking, daddy Mikkel and mommy Sigrun spoke a lot, then one of them used a rifle for a reason she couldn’t understand; there hadn’t been anything bad nearby. Then Mikkel talked with Reynir, and at some point, hit him on the head with the thing from which the soup came out ever since they had left the moving building that Reynir said was called a tank.
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Reynir came to explain that Emil and Lalli were probably dead also, but they weren’t entirely sure. He also taught her a lot of new words, and explained who were the people she had seen in the place where she could speak, but not in the tank. She learned what siblings were, and decided that Reynir, Emil and Lalli were her brothers since only Mikkel was her daddy. And that Tuuri had been her sister, even though she was gone now. After that, Reynir explained what a cousin was. When she asked about the lady living in the nice building who had given them good food, Reynir said she was a “friend”. Someone who isn’t “family”, but who you still like. Reynir was surprised when she asked him to explain what “family” was, then why the lady in the black dress wasn’t “family”.
