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“Bubba?”
Oksana turns her head, breaking the staring contest she was losing to the sea, and meets a pair of eyes that draw her in even more than those waters. The two of them are sat beside each other, toes gently pressing into the wet sand. Until then it had been quiet, only the sound of distant thunder rolling and waves crawling up the shore. Oksana had been content to stay that way forever, bathed in the soft golden light as the sun creeped closer toward the horizon. Her knee was so close to Amber’s, she was acutely aware of it.
“Yeah, Bams?”
“What do you think happens after all of this?” Amber asks, a rare look of worry coming over her sunkissed face.
Silence. Oksana isn’t sure what she thinks. “We.. go on,” she says, finally.
“Well shit,” Amber sighs. “I guess that’s as good an answer as any.”
“We go on. Cause we have to. And I don’t know what the hell that looks like... but I know that we will, and we’ll be stronger for it. No matter how hard that change is.”
“You’re not just talkin’ bout the shoreside... are ya?” Amber turns to face her, folding her legs up toward herself, feet resting on top of each other, pointed toward the sea.
Oksana catches her breath, before saying, “I guess not. I know down there is gonna be a lot different than up here, more than just missing the sky or the stars, but missing people. We’ll all have a role to play and that might not be where we wish it was, but we all gotta do our part. Duty calls...”
“It does indeed,” Amber mutters, looking down at the sand, examining a shell barely peaking out through the surface.
A wave crashes on the shore. Oksana returns her gaze to the ocean, watching the sea foam fizzle on, only to be washed away again.
Beside her, Amber pushes herself up to stand. “Speaking of,” she says, offering a hand to Oksana. She takes it. “We got dishies to do.”
“We?” Oksana asks, smile creeping onto her face. “I thought only I had dishies for a month.”
“Yeah, well.” Amber begins pulling Oksana along with her as they make their way to The Shithouse. “I need something to keep me busy. And you could use the company.”
“I guess I could,” she says, catching up to Amber’s pace, then exceeding it, letting her hand fall away. “But we’ll see if my company’s a slowpoke. Think you can keep up, Gris?” Oksana breaks into a sprint.
“Oh- you-” Amber starts, beginning to chase Oksana up the beach, whose curls fly behind her in the wind, sand kicking up and pelting her calves. “It is so on, Bubba!”
Laughter fills the twilight air as the two storm through the quiet settlement, past campfires and clotheslines and tired folks who give them annoyed glances. They reach the back of The Shithouse, both slamming hands-first into its wall at the same time. They take a moment to catch their breath.
“Looks like we tied. How’s about a rematch? Maybe an... arm wrestling contest?” Amber prompts, flexing her bicep and raising an eyebrow at Oksana. Her stupid crooked grin and stupid strong biceps.
Oksana rolls her eyes and uses her hand to shove Amber’s face away playfully. “No chance, I may be fit but I ain’t stupid. That won’t ever happen again, not after last time.” She shakes the thought away, and reaches for the door handle.
“Wait, Bubba.” Oksana looks back in curiosity to find Amber rifling through the pockets of her cargo shorts.
“Where is .. I swore I had it.. oh, there it is,” she mutters, before pulling out a bunched up piece of fern green fabric. When Amber unfurls it to its full extent, Oksana sees that it’s a soft kerchief with a small interlacing pattern embroidered in gold around the edges.
When Amber notices Oksana’s look of confusion, she explains, “To hold back your hair. We don’t want that pretty head of yours to get gross dishie water on it, keppa?”
“Oh, um. Yeah,” Oksana manages to breathe out as Amber moves behind her and gently lifts her long hair off her neck and brings the scarf under. She could swear her heart stops as Amber’s arm brushes her shoulder when she reaches up to secure her work. As she steps away, Oksana finally takes a deep breath in, and Amber steps around to examine face-on. Her tongue pokes out a little bit as she methodically adjusts the fabric over Oksana’s hair.
“Aaaand...” Amber tucks a stray curl behind Oksana’s ear. “There. Perfect.”
As Amber pulls back to stand a good head shorter than her, Oksana can’t help but look at her. Her mischievous smile, pushing her freckled cheeks up and crinkling her eyes at the corner. Her ginger hair falling behind her shoulders in twin braids. Her warm hazel eyes dancing with bemusement and something more, something else. Her lips, chapped and pink and split into a grin as she starts to speak.
“You gonna keep starin’ or we gonna get to work?”
Oksana blinks herself out of it and reaches, again, for the door. “These dishies won’t wash themselves.”
-
It’s an unseasonably warm day in the middle of winter when the shoreside moves beneath the waves. They were all prepared to leave, of course; they knew what was coming. But the process of rushing to their bathyspheres and launching into the sea was carried out in mere minutes. The commotion caused by Hominine’s ascension left little time for goodbyes.
It took them a few days to settle in, as a city. Founder’s Wake , they called it. A new beginning, some said. Oksana supposed they were right to say that—after all, everything was changing, even the one thing she didn’t want to leave behind.
Within a week, Oksana has been called away to her duty, to serve aboard The Biggest Baby. As she packs her things, a figure appears in her doorway. She turns around.
“Amber,” she exhales.
Leaning against the curved doorframe, she makes her way over to where Oksana stands, beside her bed. Despite the circumstances, Amber smiles at seeing her. Her hair is cut short— she had trusted Oksana enough with scissors to give her a haircut— and she wears a green scarf that’s been folded into a headband, the ends of the bow flopping over like bunny ears.
“So, Ballaster, huh?” Amber starts, folding her arms across her chest, sizing Oksana up.
Oksana laughs nervously. “I guess so...”
“Well,” Amber says. “Don’t forget me when you’re off being powerful and fearless and sitting on your big throne, yeah Bubba?”
Ducking her head, and brushing a stray bit of hair back behind her ear, Oksana smiles. “Naw, you know I wouldn’t go and do a thing like that. Couldn’t.”
A beat of silence passes between them, where Oksana can’t bring her eyes to meet Amber’s.
“Oksana-- or, I guess, Kodira, now...” Oh, that’s right. Even she herself had forgotten. Not Oksana. Kodira. Ballaster Kodira.
“Yeah?”
“Just... Remember who ya are, an’ where we came from. I know we’re kinda goin’ our own ways, but. We’re still us, no storm can change a thing like that.”
Kodira finds her arms pulling Amber in for a hug. She sniffs. “I’m gonna miss you, Amber.”
“I'll miss you too Bubba,” she says, squeezing Kodira tight around the waist.
The two stand like that for what feels like ages, bodies pressed together, heads resting against shoulders. Then, Kodira pulls back, her hands falling to rest on Amber’s sides. She looks at her in earnest, tears beginning to pool in her deep brown eyes. Amber brings her hand up to cup Kodira’s cheek, thumb gently tracing her cheekbone. Kodira leans into the touch, cracking a small smile as she lets out a broken laugh.
They search each other’s eyes for just a moment before Kodira’s face inches forward and their lips meet in a soft kiss. Kodira tastes the salt of her own tears as they roll down her cheeks and catch in the corner of her mouth.
When Amber pulls away, moving her hand from Kodira’s face up to her own hair, Kodira frowns in confusion. Amber unties the scarf, carefully removing it from her short curls.
“What are you,” Kodira starts as Amber presents the fabric to her. “Oh, but Bams--”
“C’mon now Bubba, I don’t need it anymore. Besides, it always looked better on you.”
Amber gently takes Kodira’s hands in hers, and nestles the scarf into her upturned palms. She guides Kodira to close her fists around it, then lightly squeezes her hands for good measure. This is yours. Keep it.
She notices Amber look up at her. Kodira slowly draws her gaze from her own hands to the woman who’s holding them, and looks at her, both affectionate and bewildered.
Amber surely notices this confusion, but doesn’t make an effort to address it. Instead, she just says, “Take care Bubba,” before letting go of Kodira’s hands, taking their warmth with them. She steps away, back turned. Amber’s wrists find the sides of her hips again as she regains her composure, shoulders straightened back and head lifted high.
Kodira watches her walk away. She doesn’t look back.
As Amber walks away, it takes everything in her not to turn around. She can’t look at Oks-- Kodira—she can’t look at Kodira again. She couldn’t bear it, knowing she couldn’t run back into her arms.
She rounds the corner, putting Kodira’s bathysphere out of sight, and she lets out a sigh. Amber is good at keeping a brave face; it’s all she’s known for so long. But it’s only now, as she walks through the quiet hall, away from the best thing she’s had, that the loneliness sinks in. She can’t help it. She cries.
The forces of life pulled them apart like the tides, the moon pulling the earth. They stood no chance against the gravity that moved them. Amber and Kodira went their separate ways, living lives so distant from one another they thought the past was washed away forever. But the tide always comes rolling back in. The waves always meet the shore once more.
-
Time goes by faster than she thought it would. Not that it’s been easy—quite the opposite—but Kodira has grown used to it, what with twenty years of serving Founder’s Wake. Being the commander of a militia is hard enough work without a god living in your head. But she’s not complaining. It’s nice being important, even if it’s exhausting.
Today Kodira is going about her business as usual-- well not business on account of the fact she’s off-duty-- and it’s not so usual, since she’s venturing outside her normal realm... Okay, so maybe Kodira was just Going About. She didn’t need to think this hard about it. She was out, exploring the side of town she didn’t often have reason to visit. Joshy’s Knuckle was not exactly her scene, but she had her reasons to be there, even if her thinly veiled excuses of “supporting the local economy” and “diversifying dip ingredients” do little to calm the murmur of hope which has built a home in the back of her mind.
She’s in a relatively small store, quaint, she might call it, perusing the shelves until a bag of chickpeas catches her eye. As she grabs it from the shelf, a faint chime rings out from somewhere beside her. Someone has joined her in the store—could it be—no. No, she needs to cut that out, stop looking for her everywhere. But, well... as the Ballaster of Defense, she really should be aware of her surroundings, so...
She glances up, bringing her gaze to the door.
And then her eyes meet those of a woman she’d loved many years ago.
They're honey brown. And she’s memorized those eyes and how they used to shine golden in the sunlight, though they don’t see much of that anymore. Now those same eyes look right at her, the skin around them rough with wrinkles, smattered with the same freckles Kodira used to count all that time ago.
The bag hits the ground with a thud.
Embarrassed, Kodira ducks her head and lunges down to pick it up, only to feel fingers brush against her own as she conks into a head of familiar red hair—though it’s lost some of its brilliant pigment with age.
Each instinctively ramble out half-baked apologies, their words tripping over the other’s. Amber, and then Kodira, both laugh softly, a tension in the air keeping the both slightly on edge.
Kodira pushes herself up and offers Amber a hand.
“Long time no see,” Kodira starts, as Amber takes her hand and stands up with her, head tilted slightly upward to look at the taller woman.
“Yeah,” Amber breathes out, searching Kodira’s face.
She begins to say something, but then her eyes fall to the ponytail that lays across Kodira’s chest, as she notices the familiar green fabric tied in a bow, securing her hair. Amber's face breaks into a toothy grin.
"You still have that old thing?”