You walk to your flat, only about 15 minutes from the stop. The city towers above you as you do so, the buildings mismatched and colourful like patchwork, the trees beside them just as at home and just as out of place. You look desperately for answers in the grapevines wrapping around fences, in the berry bushes leaning over balconies, the goats grazing at the footpath-adjacent carrots. But they provide nothing. Not really a surprise there.
A group was set up a decades ago to number the buildings and name the streets. They have failed many times since then. Still, obviously you can’t miss your own home. The ground and second floor of a skinny building, purple, faded from the suns. A ramp winds it way to the front door, but you climb the step instead.
Your Ma is home, sewing the hem of a skirt at the table your family made together many years ago.
What’s up, love?
I... it’s been a hard day. Ehvay... Ehvay is... they went missing. They never came home after we hung out last night. I’m scared, I guess.
Oh, sweetheart. Come here.
As you sink into your mother’s arms, tears begin to stream down your face.
I just... I don’t know where they could be.
Have you tried asking an Elder if they know?
You shake your head. It hadn’t crossed your mind.
Well maybe you should ask them. When Loonah went missing all those years ago, I cried for three days before asking them, and then they gave me an answer right away.
I know. I will. Thanks Ma.
Your older sibling Loonah comes into the room, oblivious to your crying.
I made soup earlier. Does anyone want some? I think there’s some of that bread you made yesterday still left, Coco, so we can have it with that.
You realise you’re hungry.
Yeah, sure, I’ll have some, thanks.
And so, you sit with half your family, your mother and your sibling and you eat dinner, before heading off, but not without a lunchbox full of food “to keep you satiated on your journey”, even though the Elders’ temple was 10 minutes away on the tram line..