The extra guests on the Molil weekends changed the flow and feeling of the place. The cabin felt cramped with two extra kids in the bunk room and with the B parents sleeping in the living room. Solveis found herself waking up earlier, so that she could be out of the cabin before everyone else and avoid the morning bustle.

One morning she arose early, slid down from her bunk quietly, untangled herself from Livia’s blankets (Livia had fallen asleep talking, on the same bunk as her), and sneaked quietly through the living room. Just outside the front door, she heard a very quiet noise of scratching, or maybe digging, just outside the front door. She was pleased that everyone else was asleep because it gave her the chance to see the little creature before anyone could scare it away.

In her quietest steps, she retrieved a granola bar from the cabinet and walked as silently as possible to the door. She wanted to peak out and see what little animal was making the noise, before it could run off.

Instead, she nearly dropped her snack, sighting the old man in the same spot where she had expected to see something small, cute, and furry. He was kneeling down and looking up in her eyes. How had he heard her coming, and how had he been so quiet?

“Morning! Up before the sun, sunshine?” he greeted her cheerfully.

Tiredness and confusion made her rub her eyes, smushing her granola bar into her face.

“Yeah. It’s a nice morning,” she said truthfully. It was a warm morning, and it would be a hot day, but the air was nice. The ground was covered in a layer of cool dew. The sun was about to rise, and a slightly cool breeze was filling the air. Even the coming blaze of the sun was sure to be a refreshing heat and not an oppressive one.

“I’m gardening,” the man gave her a small enough piece of information for her drowsy mind to take it in.

The information sparked a part of her mind awake. She shoved a bite of granola in her mouth. Her eyes brightened. She had been aware of the existence of the area of weeds outside the door and had wondered if it had ever been a garden, and if it could ever be so again. When the old man had mentioned gardening on the day of the play, she had been excited about it. She really wanted to learn it.

“Really?!” Solveis questioned the man excitedly, punctuating her question with a yawn.

“Help?” the man boiled his concept down to one word.

“How?” Solveis asked him. She had many questions, but her groggy mind couldn’t order them and ask them in a way that made sense. “The dirt is – uh – bad? Right. I mean, can you just plant now?”

“Good intuition. I – We – will have to weed and do a few little things first. Here, I’ll show you.”

Solveis knelt down next to him. He chatted with her about how plants grew, and about soil and bugs, and about the different kinds of plants that he planned to bring here.

Seemingly a moment later, Solveis began to feel a little oppressed, and realized it was because she was warm. The sun was fully up. Her shoulders and the top of her head were hot to the touch. When her hair got like that, it always reminded her of copper wire. Her sudden jolt of her own bodily awareness made her aware of her surroundings too. Noises were coming from inside. Suddenly, Solveis felt antsy. She didn’t want to be around the cabin during prime playing hours. She started to stand, then felt like it would be rude for her to just get up and leave. She fell back into a kneeling position.

“Go ahead. Have fun,” the old man released Solveis.

Solveis went into the kids’ dormitory room to collect her traditional faun outfit, changed cloths, braided her hair, and escaped the cabin, all in less time than it took most kids she knew just to choose their day’s outfit.

She stood outside the cabin, where the old man was still gardening, now with a hat protecting his face from the sun.

Livia was still inside with ‘For Sale’ and ‘Hen House’ – or with Sinews and Shoulders – she hadn’t decided yet which nicknames pleased her more.

Arlendr had already escaped the dwelling of the adults.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Just outside the cabin, Solveis paced in large ellipses, thinking. She was deciding between hiding out on the top of a particularly remote hopping spot or else staying around to be an abuse buffer for Livia.

Solveis’s thoughts were interrupted when a small round object rolled right across her path. Like an intrigued detective, she walked toward it and glanced back at its origin. The object was one of her little brother’s toy balls. The origin was one Girselle – Sinews seemed the right name for her for now. Sinews had apparently taken this ball from Oskar, and now she was rolling it through the filth at Solveis. Who knew what this meant? Anyway, Solveis would return the toy to her little brother.

“Morning,” Solveis greeted the old man as she approached him. She picked up the hose. “May I?” she asked the old man.

He turned the spigot on so that she could rinse her little brother’s toy ball clean. Then she dried it on her tunic, leaned into the door frame, made a funny cooing noise, and tossed the toy to her little sibling.

“Morning,” Solveis said again, in a more genuinely cheerful way, speaking only to Livia.

“Morning Sulvi!” Livia greeted, and then did a cheesy smile that made her mouth fill most of her face, and made both of her eyes close. “Ghi Ghi said maybe we could do kayaking together.”

Ghi Ghi, fantastic. Another good one.

Kayaking was a pretty transparent scheme to cause trouble. There were 3 kayaks, and 5 kids, and a painfully cold fjord. Solveis thought of a counter scheme. She said, “ok” to her little friend, and then sprinted off in the direction that she imagined Arlendr to have gone. She skidded in toward him, up on the west hill, sprinting and already speaking a flow of words at him. She tried to prep him for the coming assault, to inform him of Zhi Zhi’s bad plan, and to get him in a mind to face the difficult situation.

“The intruders want to share your kayak, or maybe the mother’s canoe,” Solveis informed her brother quickly, in their mumble language.

“What! No!” He jerked his head toward her in disgust.

She had succeeded. When they came here to suggest their plan, he would squash it. Settled in her success, she was in a mood to chat with him until the others found her and him. “What are you staring at?”

He walked preoccupied away from her, into the trees. He stood at the cliff over the north beach. He hid himself just behind the trees at the edge of the cliff so that any watching parents wouldn’t be able to spot him. Solveis just watched him, confused. “What’s your problem?” she asked. He still didn’t respond. He looked as if he really didn’t hear her, and not like he was pretending. “What!?!” she shouted at him in genuine concern.

He was stomping his little left hoof over and over into the ground, accidentally unearthing the root of a tree and shredding its top surface. Solveis went to where he was standing. She positioned herself behind him, leaned over his shoulder and looked to see what he was staring at.

“Oh,” Solveis uttered in understanding.

“My earth,” he barked angrily. He turned to look at her, grabbed her arm firmly and repeated, “My earth.”

“They put a horrible impediment in our earth. A spike,” Solveis uttered. She was looking out toward the cabin, which was east of them, a distance away. Just north of the cabin, like literally Solveis’s height away from the cabin, they had put posts into the ground. They had disturbed the earth of the play place.

That was where Solveis and Arlendr had played, when they had been too little to really wander the island. Now, it had four horrible metal posts, describing a rectangle about twice the size of the cabin.

“Pike are for heads,” Arlendr vocalized angrily. “Put heads on pikes. Dance around head pike.”

Solveis understood her brother’s sentiment. She was seized with a desire to know what it meant. Were the pikes as bad an omen as they seemed to be?

Before Solveis had much of a chance to dwell anymore, she was interrupted by Ghi Ghi.

“Hey! Arlendr!” Sinews greeted Arlendr excitedly. “I have a scheme for you. Can you be our captain! We need a warrior to head our battalion.”

Arlendr silently turned and stared his furious eyes through her. Then, he turned back to the pikes, where now his own father, as well as Girselle’s, were doing some kind of construction. He re-commenced his attack on the exposed root.

“What’s his problem?” Girselle questioned Solveis.

Solveis just pointed to the implements extruding from the earth.

“Yeah! Isn’t that cool!” Girselle danced a little in excitement.

“Your parents and ours are going to make a second cabin. They said they’ve been wanting to for a while, and my dad offered to help, you know,” En explained. He halted when Solveis’s expression didn’t soften and Arlendr didn’t cease his stomping. “I’m sure they told you. They’ve been talking about it.” Then he took on the posture which made Solveis want to call him Shoulders.

Girselle, seeing that Arlendr was unreachable, directed conversation to Solveis. “Can you get him to come play with us? Let’s go do something.” When Solveis just stared at her, she taunted, “We could always help the parents out. That could be fun.”

At the taunt, Solveis stomped off to a nearby tree, climbed up as high as she could, and just stared out at the offended piece of ground.