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Adora is cleaning through her old things when she sees the drawings. She doesn’t remember the girl’s face very clearly, but she remembers the feeling of warmth that came with childhood innocence and first love. Catra, she knows. She’d almost forgotten about the girl with the defiant eyes that masked just a little bit of fear. But now as she cleans through her old belongings, cardboard boxes that were never unboxed ten years ago when they had shifted to this city that had been so new to her, she sees the drawings. She’d thought that they had been lost to her forever, but they’re there, a little dusty, and the colours are smudged, but they’re there.
The first one is one of the earlier ones, done in messy crayon and Adora can almost recall the day Catra drew it.
“Catra!” Adora calls, her voice a little unsure. She stumbles around, looking for her friend. “Catra, where are you?” A twig breaks under her foot, and she almost jumps at the sound. She knows Catra is safe, and that Catra can take care of herself, but she worries anyway. She’s always worried about Catra. “Catra, I miss you,” she finally whines, hoping that it will draw her best friend out of whatever new hiding place she’d found.
“Hey, Adora,” comes a voice from above and Adora yelps. Catra quickly jumps from the branch she had been crouching on and Adora tries not to worry. She knows, rationally, that Catra is agile and quick, that she lands lightly on her feet and will not sprain her ankle.
“Adora, do you want to see the drawing I made?” Catra asks and Adora loves her friend in this moment. Catra is so excited, so energetic, and she makes Adora laugh and what more can a seven year old ask for in a friend?
“You know I do,” she replies excitedly as Catra opens her hand to show a piece of paper that’s been folded too many times.
“Look, that’s the tree next to the creek, the old one that you hate! And that’s me, up in a branch teasing you. And that’s you, asking me to come down,” Catra points out. Adora thinks this is the best drawing she’s ever seen. There are squiggly dark lines to show the waves in the water, and at this age, neither of them realise that creeks don’t have waves. The drawing is crude, but the colouring is neat and Adora likes how green everything is, even though in real life, the woods are more brown and yellow.
“Catra, I love it! You’re so good at drawing and colouring,” she says and notices the way her best friend blushes at the compliment, probably ready to dismiss it. Adora likes making Catra blush like this, she thinks it makes Catra happy.
“Yeah, well you can keep it. I don’t think Mom will be very happy about the drawing anyway.” And Adora wonders why Catra’s mother would be sad about a drawing, but she does not say anything. She thanks Catra and beams at her and Catra beams back and that is that.
Adora turns the sheet of paper to see the writing on the back, written in ink in her own shaky handwriting.
Picture me in the trees,
I hit my peak at seven feet.
She remembers now, that she had never been agile, or at least not as agile as Catra used to be. She remembers how she could never climb past seven feet, even as Catra scaled the taller trees with barely a scratch to show for it.
The second picture is a little better. Adora thinks they were eight or nine when this happened.
“Hey, Catra. Do you think we should build a swing on that large, scary tree by the creek?” Adora asks, as she and Catra are sitting near the ixora bushes.
Catra pauses in her flower-crown making. “Yeah! Do you have a tyre we can use? We’ll also need some rope. Do you think you can get some?”
“Yeah, I think we can find some and then we’ll make a big swing and we’ll fly into the sky!” Adora exclaims, waving her hands about in a flying motion and Catra laughs in joy. Adora loves these moments of happiness and she returns to stringing daisies, satisfied now that she’s made Catra laugh again.
They’d never ended up making that swing, not after they realised that they’d need an adult to help out and Catra had been too afraid to ask Shadow Weaver, while Adora didn’t want to bother her new foster parents. After all, she’d only been with them for one and a half years and they could always change their mind about her and she didn’t want to go back to her foster home. But the next day, Catra had shoved a drawing, this drawing, into Adora’s hands. The difference between this one and the older drawing is stark. This one is done with pencil, each line carefully sketched, with much more detail than the previous drawing which had outlines drawn in crayon. Everything is coloured in with colour pencils, and even though Catra and Adora aren’t in this one, Adora remembers how excited she’d been to see the drawing because of how easily she could picture the two of them swinging near the creek. There’s writing on the back of this one too:
I was high, in the sky,
With Etheria under me.
The third drawing is of a tea party in Catra’s house. The drawing is happy enough, but it breaks Adora’s heart, because this was the first time she’d been to Catra’s house.
Catra and Adora are playing at high society, with Catra wrapped up in a thin scarf that she wears like an overflowing skirt. She holds out a teacup, her pinky out, and pretends to sip at her tea. Adora giggles. Eleven years old and the world seems so bright to them.
“Lady Adora of Etheria,” Catra says.
“Lady Catra of the Horde,” Adora replies.
“Hey, how come I’m from the Horde?” Catra asks, with a confused frown, putting down her teacup.
“Well, we can’t be from the same place, can we? There can’t be two ladies in the same city.”
Adora puts down her cup too, eager to talk about the formalities of being a Lady in this fantasy world they’ve created.
“No, I think that’s princesses. Besides, Etheria isn’t a city, dummy. It’s a country. We can both be ladies from Etheria.” Catra says, rolling her eyes at her friend’s naivete.
“We can’t both be princesses of the same place?”
“Well, maybe if we’re married, we can be!”
“Then I change my mind. I want to be princess Adora of Etheria. You can be my wife! Then we’re both princesses.” Catra lights up at this perfect solution to their predicament, but before she can confirm that she loves this idea, there’s the sound of a key turning in a lock and suddenly, Catra shrinks.
“Quick, it’s my Mom,” she says, hurriedly taking off the scarf she had draped around her shorts. She bites her lips, as though bracing for something and Adora can’t quite understand why Catra seems so scared. Adora has never met Catra’s mother, but she has always pictured the woman as someone nice to have raised her best friend.
“Catra, who is this?” comes a biting voice. Catra’s mom sounds cold, almost, but Adora holds her cool and smiles at her anyway.
“Hi, Mrs. Catra! My name’s Adora. I’m Catra’s best friend.” Catra’s mother gives her a sharp look, almost glaring for a second before schooling her expression into one of neutrality and then finally breaking out into a smile.
“Adora, you can call me Shadow Weaver. It’s a pleasure to meet you, dear. I’m so sorry about Catra, she can be quite a nuisance. I’ll tell her not to bother you anymore.” Adora doesn’t think of Catra as a nuisance- why would Shadow Weaver imply that? But she knows when she isn’t wanted so she smiles an uncertain smile at a now gloomy Catra and pretends like she doesn’t hear Shadow Weaver yelling through the door, the words muffled.
At 26, Adora understands this better. She can’t remember any of the details, but she knows now what Catra was going through. She turns the page and sure enough, there’s writing on the back:
I’ve been meaning to tell you,
I think your house might be haunted,
Your mom is always mad,
And that must be why.
Back then, things seemed so much simpler, but equally horrifying. As an adult, Adora knows what was happening was child abuse. As a child, she just hated seeing her friend unhappy and knew that Shadow Weaver made Catra more unhappy than anything else.
The last drawing brings a smile to her face, though. It’s divided into two parts, and is done quite well. The first one depicts them as pirates, and has been outlined in ballpoint pen, so the ink still stands. Each stroke is confident, and Catra has become quite the artist at the age of thirteen. The second one shows them in a foreign setting and is bursting with colour. Neither Catra nor Adora had known what India looked like when Adora suggested they run away there, but they knew it was a place far, far away from Catra’s home and they thought it was a place where they could be happy.
“I wish you lived with me, Catra. Maybe things wouldn’t be that bad, then.” Adora states, sitting behind her friend on the grass. There they are, at the tender age of thirteen, the threshold of childhood and a life that is neither childhood nor adulthood.
“I wish I lived with you too, Adora,” Catra says sullenly, plucking at the grass in front of her. Adora sticks her tongue out as she gathers more strands of Catra’s hair. There they are, at the precipice of so-called womanhood, both of them so unaware of the years that will follow, years of high school and crushes, of studying for college instead of playing around, years that they will spend without each other, milestones that they will not achieve together.
“If things were up to me, we would be pirates! We’d sail the high seas, just you and me and nobody else. I think it would be fun.”
“Well, if it were up to me, we’d run away. Maybe we’ll go somewhere far away, like India.”
“What’s India like?” Adora asks.
“I don’t know,” Catra replies. “Away, I suppose.”
“I think it’d be hot. Well, your braids are done! The right one is a little thicker, but I just learned how to make fishtail braids, so they’re not perfect. But, uh, you look very pretty,” Adora says as Catra turns to face her.
Catra reaches to the back of her head, feeling the rough pattern of her braids with her hand. “I think they’re lovely, Adora. Thank you,” she says, smiling warmly. And Adora knows that this is more than just her liking Catra as a friend. They’ve known each other for six years, and Adora loves Catra.
It happens quick, and isn’t even a real kiss, just two mouths against each other, but Adora thinks, ‘soft’, and Adora thinks, ‘yes’, and Adora thinks, ‘more’. Catra pulls away, but she’s smiling, almost shy.
“I love you,” Adora says.
“You’re such an idiot. But I love you too. I guess, I’ll see you tomorrow, then.” And Adora smiles giddily at Catra. She wonders whether this makes them girlfriends. She wonders if two girls can even be girlfriends. She thinks that she wants Catra to be her girlfriend. She knows that she loves Catra in a way that can’t be put into words, the kind that she reads about in folklore.
The next day, Catra hands Adora a drawing and they kiss again. Adora thinks that they’re getting the hang of this kissing thing. It’s less awkward, now. That is the last time they see each other.
Adora doesn’t even realise she’s crying until she sees the tear stain on the page. A few days after the kiss, her foster parents had found out that they wouldn’t be able to keep her, especially now that they were expecting a child. Things had worked out in the end, with Angela and Micah adopting her almost immediately, but she never got to say goodbye. She’d sent letters to Catra, later, and none of them had been returned. She’d forgotten all about the girl she’d loved as a child, but now that she thinks of Catra again, it feels like everything happened just yesterday.
She doesn’t know how long she spends looking at the drawings, and she doesn’t remember when she sat down, but Glimmer finds her curled in on herself. Adora is grateful to her adoptive sister for not asking any questions and simply sitting next to her until Adora can tell her what she wants. Glimmer holds Adora as she cries and lets out her feelings, feelings she thought she’d gained closure over a decade ago.
“Glimmer?”
“Yes, Adora?”
“Do you think you can help me find someone? It’s an old friend from The Horde.”
“Of course, Adora. I’ll ask Bow or Entrapta to get on it.”
Adora smiles shakily and gets up, picking up the pages with her. She keeps them on her new desk, and the last one reads:
Your braids like a pattern,
Love you to the moon and Saturn
Passed down like folk songs
The love lasts so long.