Fruit is Forever
Written by: Rachel Hoarau
Image from Pixel Free Studio
Chapter 1
“You used to tell me about walks you’d go on,” Satmulan said. I glanced at her. She was sitting across from me and looking out at the golden field below us. She shifted and narrowed her eyes, fixing them on something far away in the glistening field.
“Yeah?” I said. She nodded, still looking down below.
“Yes, and you always said your favorite part was the wildflowers. Oh, Maeve,” she said with her rich voice. She looked at me. Her brown eyes were billions of years old, certainly, they showed that in a brilliant way, but they were bordered by supple, glossy lashes and smooth brown skin. She had a head of short, glimmering brown hair with scant gold strands in each curl. And she had a slender nose. Not very long and not very strong. Her brown lips were nice. “But,” she whispered gently, “had you ever taken note of how small they were? Was that your first thought? How small the flowers were, compared to the universe? Was that how they disturbed your walk? How did they make you stop to admire them? Was it just that?”
I felt my plump lips tense. She smiled sadly.
“No,” she said, her voice was soft and almost feminine, “they weren’t taking you away from anything. They weren’t small in your eyes. Your first and only thought was. . .”
“‘What lovely flowers,’” I whispered, kneading my hands together in my lap. Satmulan nodded. A sad smile appeared on her lips. She stood up, and because the table was so small and her arms were so long, she reached across and placed her warm hand on my shoulder before she completely came around and stood behind me. I felt her looking down at the top of my head with love on the surface of her sad, overwrought eyes. So warm. She kissed the top of my head, looked at the field below us, and then walked away. After all of these years, I still couldn’t hear her footsteps.
Warm wind quietly drifted into the room as I watched my orange tea ripple. What she said made me feel a bit better, but I still felt weak. I drained the white cup of tea and stood up. What would Mahdi think of some wildflowers if she walked by them? Would she even notice them? I wrapped my arms around myself, despite it having been the perfect temperature there. I waddled back to the large bed.
I sighed as I folded in under the white covers, watching the golden sky turn yellow, then orange. Soon it would be navy with white and blue stars all over it, and I would stare at all of them, wondering how many had in them atoms that once belonged to Satmulan’s friends’ bodies. Wondering. . . I wondered if in about ten million years or so, Satmulan would sit on this bed at night, stare out at the white and blue stars, and wonder which ones have the atoms from my body. Would she search for the shape of my body in nebulas? I closed my eyes, pained. Would she even remember me that far into the future?
. . . .
One year earlier: Back home, Earth.
She liked to be called Gold: my caretaker employed by the state and who I considered my friend. She looked just like it: gold skin, bouncy golden curls. She had aqua eyes with the smallest pupils, so it almost looked like she had no pupils at all. She was taller than me, about five-seven, and two years older than me: twenty-two
She had a habit that was well on its way to becoming an addiction. She liked to take any of my pills that suited her habit. So, one day I made a hidden hole in my pillow and started to hide my benzos in there.
It was perfect too, cause I’d get panic attacks the second I woke up. It was much easier to just reach into my pillow for relief, rather than having to scramble across the room to my dresser. Oh, I hated how my heart pounded and pulled all of the blood out of my face when I first woke up, always so dehydrated.
After panic attacks like that, Gold would find me laying on the teal floor, the bottle of pills in my shaking hand as I tried to breathe steadily and get a few more minutes of sleep in. That was usually when she’d take her first dose for the day.
I’d wake up and see her sitting on my freshly made bed in a big t-shirt, nothing else, holding a big mug of green tea. The steam shimmered in the sunlight breaking through the white drapes behind her. I smelled sweet hibiscus above me.
Calm, I languidly stood up and found a small cup of steaming red tea on the dresser. I smiled as I picked it up and sipped the hot liquid.
“Mm,” I moaned. It was strong. I turned around. Gold was gone. I smiled and nodded. Yeah, that’s always how it’d go.
Now that she had no way to feed her habit, I saw less and less of her, found less and less evidence of her around the house. I was close to being alone again, and then I was alone again. One day, she was just gone for good. And that day, I had to wrap my arms around myself and sink down into the corner of my kitchen.
“Who’s supposed to be my conduit to the outside world now?” I whispered. And, no, no, it wasn’t fate at all, but I surprised myself that day. I didn’t sink into a useless depression. I got up.
That day, I got dressed. I put on a forest-green skirt with big, pale purple flower patches sewn on it, black stockings, a green, long-sleeved shirt with the same flowers on them, so it looked like I was wearing a dress. I slipped my feet into purple mary-jane flats and buckled the leather straps. I did my messy, fluffy brown hair up in two pigtails, applied messy mascara onto my stringy lashes, and slid a generous amount of berry lip balm across my lips.
Then I got a leather messenger bag and I packed it with the inhaler I hadn’t needed to use in six months, my pills, berry lip balm, face wipes, my wallet with two dollars, and a whole lot of change in it, a notepad and a pen, a small reusable water bottle, my phone, and a long scarf just in case it got too cold.
It was the middle of the day when I opened the heavy front door. A gentle brushing of chilly wind spread over my face. I locked the door behind me, and I walked down the stone path from my house, headed off and away. I lived in some secluded brown woods where nothing but old trees ever grew.
As I dodged the mud and gripped the leather strap of my bag, I made up my mind that I’d go to the library. I didn’t end up going. I was on my way there, though. The walk there was always so lovely. Out of the woods, there was a verdant field of small hills with trees on or near each one and wildflowers grew almost everywhere. I liked to climb up in a tree sometimes and eat lunch there while I watched the soft wildflowers sway.
Benzos always made me very forgetful, and I needed twice my normal dosage to handle going outside. So, that day, I climbed up a tree, struggling up the still branches. I wondered why I didn’t put on sneakers if I was gonna come out to eat lunch in a tree. Why did I wear my dainty and slippery mary jane flats?
When I got up on the best branch, I pulled my bag off of my shoulder and onto my lap. Though it was bright and yellow out, a gust of bitter air accosted me. I hardly cared, though. I opened my purse and took out the scarf, setting it aside. I looked in my small purse, confused. There was no lunch in it. Just a small water bottle and the other typical things I’d bring out with me. I opened my wallet and spread out what cash and change I had on the branch.
“Not enough to buy anything,” I said to myself. I tried to remember why I came out and climbed up a tree on such a sweet day if I wasn’t even going to eat lunch in it. I went back over the events of the day. That was the last day I’d ever see my only friend Gold. That was the day I decided I wasn’t going to fall into a depression about it. But why? Wasn’t that just the thing I’d do? I looked at the scarf bunched up beside me. My brown eyes widened. I was certain I knew why then.
I tied it around the branch and around my neck. I had the note written out already and put back in my bag which I hung on the branch. I looked down at the field below me. Taking some last breaths, I thought I looked really lovely that day. I regretted that I didn’t pick some wildflowers to decorate my hair with. But I was already set up in the tree. I was already struggling to keep myself from tumbling apart into pieces. I wanted to die as a whole person.
I made sure the scarf was secured tight on the branch, then I hopped off of the branch. As I did, something burst in the sky. Something beyond my imagination.
I looked at it through the corner of my eye, before I exhausted the length of my scarf. It looked like a ship! Like a spaceship! A gargantuan one trudging through the ash and clouds in the sky! Colossal pieces were falling off of it and down toward Earth. My, the height of the sky was never more highlighted than when it held a monster like that in it.
A piece was falling down toward me. I gasped, but it was cut short by the yank of my scarf on my throat.
It was dark when I felt the thud reverberate through the tree and into my body. Then I heard her voice. She said the same thing again and again and again in different languages until I could finally understand her English.
My eyes snapped open.
“Are you insane!?” she yelled. A strange, very tall creature was holding me in her arms clad in armor. They were searing hot, but cooling quickly. She was wearing a black helmet that covered her entire face; tall horns towered up from the sides. My lips twitched.
“C-completely,” I struggled to say. She laid me down in the grass. I wasn’t frantic. I was sure I had died and she was my guide into the afterlife I hadn’t believed in till just then.
“Just for the record, this is a terrible first impression I’m getting of your species,” she said. She took off her helmet; it folded away into the air, and I saw her handsome face then. My bloodshot eyes strained as they widened. She was an angel! I was dumbstruck.
“I’m going to Heaven?”
She stared at me, confused.
“Heaven doesn’t exist,” she said. My eyes stung horribly as I started to cry.
“S-so, I’m going to hell?” I blubbered. Her eyebrows twitched and her lips parted as she watched me cry with the little life I had left in me.
“What? no! You’re not dead!” she stressed. “Fuck– I mean, ugh! In all of the cosmos!” she yelled. “Stop it! Stop crying!” she demanded. I shut up immediately.
We were both quiet then. She palmed her forehead. The ship continued to moan and break off in enormous pieces in the dimming sky above us. She looked up at it and sighed.
I was still lying flat on the grass with my hands on my stomach. I looked over at her taking a knee in the grass. She seemed to be thinking things over.
“Is it useless to ask if this is real?” I asked.
“No,” she said. She stood up and walked over to the branch where my bag hung. “It’s not useless. This is real.” She glanced at me as she took down my bag. “This is yours, right?”
“That’s just what you’d say if you weren’t real,” I whispered. She sighed, but it wasn’t in the way someone would sigh if they thought I was stupid. She just sighed as though she was annoyed. “You don’t convince me.”
“Yeah, you don’t seem like you’re convinced easily,” she said as she looked at my bag. “So, I could show you a bunch of things you’ve never seen before, but then you’d probably find some way to tell yourself it’s still fake. So. . . so, you’ve got to choose whether you wanna believe this is real or not and then go with whatever decision you make.”
I looked at her quietly. The sky was dimming even more now and the ship was falling in slow motion. I watched her until she was only a very tall and slender silhouette in the dark.
“I’m sorry about your ship,” I whispered. She turned and looked over at it.
“It wasn’t mine,” she said. “I’m sorry I brought it to your planet.”
“If you’re real– why are you spending so much time on me?”
“That’s not really what this is. I’m not spending my time at all. I’m just doing this, I guess. I mean, I’m done with the ship– with the dead people inside it, and I know most of it will land in your oceans. Flinging it out into space won’t really do much good at this point.”
“It’ll be a shame if the ship parts kill ocean life, though,” I said. She looked at me, still blacked out by the dark.
“Yes, it will. Why did you try to kill yourself?”
“My caretaker left me for good. She was all I had in the entire world,” my eyes shifted back and forth, “the most shameful thing is that I’m not even sure she was real.”
“Ah,” she replied. “I understand how that is.”
I stared at her.
“How could you?” I asked. My voice was almost cold. She tilted her head.
“What makes you think I can’t?”
“Someone like you– you fell out of the sky like an angel! How could anyone dare to use you and leave you?!”
Quiet.
“Are all humans like you?”
“No, not at all.”
“Then you’re very human,” she said. I could hear the sneer in her voice. She walked toward me and knelt down beside me. “There’s a lot we don’t know about each other. . . a lot.” she took the water bottle out of my purse and opened it. She stared at me for a moment. “Can I help you up?”
“Okay.”
She wrapped her arm around my back and held me up. I took the bottle and drained it all into my mouth. I coughed and touched my bruised throat. A sad, gentle smile appeared on her lips. Her eyes softened.
“I’m Satmulan,” she said. I looked at her. I thought that I could never make up such a name. . . and I could never make up such a face. . . Gold– yes, I’ve seen a figure and a face like hers in so many fantastical and bombastic comic books and posters—- but this person? There was nothing bombastic about her face. It was actually quite modest compared to Gold’s goddess-esque features, but this person’s face— I said it, it was like an angel’s: modest, but her eloquent eyes made her ethereal and unlike anything, I’ve ever seen.
Stuck in my reverie, I reached out and touched her face. She stared blankly at me. Her skin felt like warm satin. She was also unbelievably androgynous. I didn’t even know if it was alright to think of her as a ‘she,’ or ‘her.’ What she emanated from her aura was so foreign that it could’ve scared me off, but I wanted to be closer to it. What an idiosyncratic feeling.
Without asking, I pushed myself into her chest. She hesitated for a moment, but then she enveloped me in her long arms. The smell of her was indescribable, but it was like something of “justified violence.” It was like what I could imagine stardust, alien blood, and sweat would smell like.
I felt heavy suddenly, and then I fell asleep in her arms. Despite all of the evidence that she was something I could never imagine all by myself, I still couldn’t believe that she was real. Sure, lots of weird things have happened in my life, but I didn’t live in a world where angels and starships fell out of the sky. I didn’t live in a world where I mattered enough for my life to be saved like that.
But Satmulan said I needed to make up my mind: do I believe this is all real, or is it a fantasy? A flashing story before I die?
My eyes snapped open. My head was resting on Satmulan’s leg where she laid the scarf so that her armor wouldn’t hurt my face too much, still hurt, though. The sky had almost completely cleared, and she was looking up at the stars. I coughed and stroked my bruised throat as I sat up against her.
“I bet you get pretty views like this all the time,” I said. My voice was hoarse.
“No, not all the time,” she said. “There aren’t many planets that still have flora to sit amongst and with little enough light pollution to see the stars like this. Usually, I have to look at the cosmos from my ship to see it all clearly.”
“Where is your ship anyway, if that one isn’t yours?” I asked, “and who are you? What do you do?”
She regarded me with somewhat widened eyes. Then she cracked an amused smile
“I didn’t get your name,” she said.
“Oh.” I blushed. “It’s Maeve.”
“Maeve!” she said, “it suits you.”
“Mm, thank you,” I said. I crawled out of her lap and sat beside her, burying my hands in my lap. “Why?” I asked and shot her a look. Her lips parted for a moment.
“Well, I don’t know,” she laughed, “It just does. Like that dress.” I looked down at my shirt and skirt.
“It’s not a dress,” I said as I pulled up the hem of my shirt.
“Oh,” she said. I nodded.
“So. . .” I said, “why did you rescue me?” I asked. She laughed.
“Because that’s what I do. There, I answered your other question, too.”
“You save people?” I said. She nodded with a tranquil expression.
“Planets, too.”
“What if they can’t be saved? Like that ship.”
“I don’t believe in lost causes. Uh, but I wasn’t trying to save that ship, or the people on it, Maeve. Sometimes I need to fight things other than scarves to save people.”
My face flushed red with anger. Satmulan seemed to realize that she offended me. Her expression softened with guilt and she reached out her hands.
“I didn’t mean to belittle what happened to you–”
“Well, you did!” I said. I cupped my face and started to cry, “Oh! Even when something as crazy as this happens– I’m still the most insignificant factor!” I cried. I shook as I held myself.
“You aren’t as insignificant as you think you are, Maeve.”
“Yeah?” I laughed bitterly, “why not?” Satmulan smiled.
“Well, we’ll see together,” she said.
“What?” I said. She stood up and looked at the sky. “We’ll see what?” I asked. Her helmet came around her head. I struggled to gasp. “You’re leaving?!” I husked, panicked.
“Yeah,” she said. She turned around and held out her hand. “Do you want to come with me?” she asked. I stared at her hand. Suddenly, I was sure she was real, and that she was indeed bringing me to the afterlife. What an adventure that’ll be.
“If I stay here. . . will I become a ghost, stuck in limbo?” I asked.
“What? No, Maeve. I told you that’s not what this is. You’re not dead! I’m offering to bring you elsewhere in the cosmos. Somewhere you’ll find what you want.”
My skirt fluttered in the cold air. My bruised throat throbbed and my hot eyes stung.
“What do you think I want?”
“Meaning, right? Or at least to realize that you are a meaningful thing— person.”
“Why me?” I asked.
“Didn’t I tell you I understood what it’s like to have friends and lose them? I don’t actually come across many people like you, Maeve,” she replied.
“Really?”
Satmulan nodded. Her hand was still held out. Back then, I assumed she meant people she didn’t come across often were people hanging from trees. I assumed that humans were special and that suicide was something unique to us, something profoundly beguiling to her. But that wasn’t it. No, not at all.
I slipped my hand into hers. As she led me up the hill, I forgot to say that I needed to get my prescription refilled. I only had whatever was in my bag that hung as wide open as my mouth did.
*
Earth Again:
I’ve never felt such hot lacerations in my skin before. Never had I ever wanted to try to recall what went wrong so badly, but I couldn’t. I was hurt badly. I could only remain firmly in the position with my head pressed against the steering wheel. My bloody hands were clamped on the wheel as hot blood streamed over the glass hooked into my brown, blood-stained skin.
In the far background, I could hear the car hissing. I could feel myself a little upset that the airbag didn’t deploy. I could almost feel myself wondering if my skull was cracked open. The car alarm started blaring in my blood-filled ears. Someone’s hands slammed down on the glass shard-bordered window. Who was that?
“Maeve,” she said. I didn’t respond. “Maeve, we have to get you out of here,” she said. I tried lifting my head. She helped me. She opened the door and carried me out. “I can help you up in my ship,” she said. I tried to let her know I heard her and that I wanted to protest. Tried to let her know to leave me, but I was too close to slipping away completely to even take a full breath in.
There came the familiar feeling of us teleporting up into the ship. It was a tingling kind of pull. It never hurts, not even this time. Satmulan placed me down on a table. I felt her eyes assessing me. I was drifting away fast.
“Don’t worry, Maeve, when you wake up, you’ll be alright again.”
