Maika woke, head clearer than it had been in years.

The mountain air? No, they'd not felt this way last time they were in Switzerland. The quality of bed? There was something to be said for that, as a theory. Half the time they didn't even make it to a bed. Fell asleep on the couch most nights.

As their eyes floated open of their own accord (as opposed to the usual yawn and vigorous rubbing), the answer dawned on them, bright as the cool white ceiling above.

They'd actually written something they'd liked last night, and as such, had been able to fall asleep with a clear conscience.

Nah. Couldn't be all that good. They had to have been fooled by the fatigue.

Rising with an indulgent yawn and stretch, Maika shrouded their naked form with the patchwork cardigan of last night, and went to the writing desk.

Outside, mist. It had been a constant presence, an inspiration yesterday. This morning, there was something cold and confronting to it pressing against the glass. They pulled their cardigan tighter to keep out the chill, and picked up their leatherbound notebook.

At the top of the page, a title: The House by the Lake. In brackets beside it: (working title - I can do better than this!)

Below that, the word 'by', followed by crossed-out names (and with the benefit of a sober mind, they could follow their past train of thought perfectly down the page): Michael Parker - too formal, too Pākehā - Mihaere Parker - no, they'd never liked the transliteration of Michael to Mihaere, it never sounded right to them, an ill-fitting shoe or hat - Mike Parker - almost right, but Mike put them in mind of an older man, hanging out at bars and talking about sports at the bottom of his vocal register like he was trying too damn hard. Nah, not for them, not Mike. Maika Parker - close, but not quite, the last name still hanging there like the vestigial arms of a tyrannosaurus, something the rule-abiding skeleton told you was needed even though you were way past the need for such patriarchal bullshit - no way.

On the final line, unskewered by a strike-though, but one name:

Maika.

All right, yes, that was also the Māori word for 'banana'. But if anything, that only made it appeal more. They were, indeed, a silly banana of a person. Such an appelation would serve to remind them never to take themself too seriously. And the 'a' ending had a lovely androgyny to it. In Māori, 'a' endings were not gendered, not like they were in many European languages. But their brain was colonised enough to appreciate the veneer of feminisation the name produced in their mind. Not Mike. Mike-ah. Mike, with a femme twist. Like the mineral mica; delicate, loose, flaky, but in a pretty way. Maika.

Nevermind they'd lived with the comfort of the name for the last decade. It made them happy every time they used it. Every attempt to wear the old clothes of other names was in vain.

They moved on to the text itself, done with amusing themself with the pride of a name well chosen.

A page passed, then another, words slipping across their eyes with fluid grace.

The text... was good.

It was good.

The tale was solid, stirring, had a mauri all of its own. Maika paced the room as they read and re-read it.

This was the best thing they had ever written.

Go figure. For the first time in a long time, they had ignored the siren song of alcohol in favour of simply enjoying the act of writing in and of itself. Apparently, that had resulted in good quality wordsmithing.

They couldn't wait to see the others. To be seen. To share their words.

But no. Tonight. They had to harbour this secret joy until then, and let it surprise the others too. Deliver the words unassumingly, let them stand on their own, without a preface of 'Hey guys, this might just be the best thing I've ever written'. Too easy to get shot down that way.

They got dressed, loose-fitting jeans and a black tee, the patchwork cardigan on top again. It was a look they were trying out. What did someone wear when they were neither a man nor a woman? It was all very new to them. They wanted to tell the others, but Chad would take the piss, definitely. Ginny... Ginny might understand. Maybe she'd even have some tips about how to experiment with gender, though she was quite settled these days in her femininity. The one Maika was most unsure about was Kirsten. She'd accept them, right? Or would she roll her eyes at them? In the past, she'd done her fair share of both. Probably depended on her mood.

She'd not been in a good mood lately. Hopefully some sleep would have solved that.

Maika's puku grumbled. Time for kai. Ah, but... they still had not set up their stash. They'd been so taken by the Muse last night. The poor plant was wilting already without the proper setup.

The plant deserved some kai first. It had waited long enough.

Half an hour later, Maika was done. They had not followed the instructions perfectly, getting confused in the middle of Christian's neat-but-tiny handwritten notes. But they had done their level best. The wiring wasn't exactly as the guide said, but it was working, wasn't it? Within the closet, under the halo of a small lamp, their personal stash sat pride of place, finally able to suck up some aqua vitae through the roots. Not too long, and it'd be ready to harvest.

Maika brushed off their hands, and went downstairs.

Chad was in the kitchen when they got there. "'sup, bro?" he hailed, not even bothering to look up from his laptop screen.

Maika chose to imagine Chad's particular choice of words were chosen in good spirit, and not just because Maika was Chad's one Māori friend. They crossed to the pantry to grab some cereal. "Nothing much, bro. You always on that thing, eh?"

"Wifi's shit in my room, so yeah, I'll probably be writing in here most of the time."

"Oh, stink."

"Is it good in yours?"

"Dunno."

"So what, you haven't written a thing since we got here?"

Maika pulled their notebook out of the cardigan's large pocket, and waved it before putting it away again. "I prefer writing by hand."

"Old school! You think you're some old fancy Hemingway guy or something?"

"Something like that." Maika poured the milk over the wheatey-biscuity cereal stuff, and went in search of a spoon. "Where the wāhine at?"

"Ginny went out towards the lake a while back. And Kirsten took the car, said she wanted to check out what the town was like, go for an initial shop to grab supplies. But don't worry, she said she'll go again this afternoon or tomorrow if she misses anything you wanted. She didn't want to wake you, in case you were hungover."

Maika chewed their first mouthful after that, mulling over the comment. It wasn't like they'd given the group any reason to trust in their attempts at sobriety over the years. But it would be nice if they were more supportive.

Nah, that wasn't totally fair. Ginny had said a nice thing yesterday. And Kirsten - the fact that she was out there on the first morning, in a foreign country, shopping for them all (classic Trip Mum!) - that was something Maika would never in a million years have the organisation skills to do, let alone the forethought to think of it. They were all lucky to have her here. Even if Maika felt waves of judgement from her every glance.

But they did want to be seen by her: to be seen this morning; right now, in fact; fresh, not hungover. Seen, and acknowledged, that they were something better than her assumptions.

Chad, that was a different story. Was there something smug in his tone when he'd delivered that final clause, 'in case you were hungover'?

It didn't bear too much dwelling on. The cereal tasted bitter with these thoughts. And Maika hadn't actually been drinking last night, much as Kirsten and Chad might have assumed. They couldn't resist adding, before their next mouthful, "Didn't drink last night."

Chad's chin went back as he stared at Maika, giving him a double chin, before he went back to looking at his screen. "Far. I take it back. You're nothing like Hemingway at all. So did you get any writing done, without your liquid muse?"

Maika shovelled another mouthful in to hide any ill reaction. Was it just their imagination, or had Chad become more snippy over the years? Once they had swallowed, they were able to better maintain their even affect. "Yeah, actually, got tons done."

"Damn. Same, but like... that's so unlike you. I remember back in our uni days, you were all like, trying to wear your Irish ancestry on your sleeve more than your Māori side. Louching about all drunken artist like, never sober, always talking a big game about writing this or that which never eventuated. Like some wannabe Dylan Moran."

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Chad whistled through his teeth.

Faaaaaaark. Maika had forgotten how much that sound pissed them off. It had been ages since they'd been around Chad for such a long period of time, enough to get annoted at him.

And sure, maybe Maika had got a bit carried away at university, copying their grandfather's Irish-born-and-bred accent because they loved the sound of it. It had taken them away from the realities of Aotearoa to the Dreamland of Ireland, with its emerald vales and misty glades - a fairytale far removed from the just-as-colonised-if-not-moreso reality of that distant island. Plus they'd picked up many a lover with that faked lilt. They had packed away the accent after university though, on their OE, when actual exposure to Europe made them feel embarrassed for that naive young pretender they had once been.

Trust Chad to bring it up. Salt in the wound - or salt the earth, if he kept going.

But Chad was not done. Almost like he was a shark smelling blood in the water, the excitement of the hunt danced in his eyes. "And now with the whole grow-your-own thing going on, it's like you're a walking stereotype, bro."

Maika finished their bowl at the sink, having made the decision to not look at Chad anymore. The fuckwit was most definitely trying to get a rise out of them. They rinsed the bowl out, making a mental note to talk to the girls about Chad's behaviour before confronting him, see if they had noticed anything out of the ordinary about him. If it was just Chad going at them and not the girls, then they'd need to have it out somehow. If it was Chad being nasty to all three of them though, perhaps all three could nip this in the bud (ha, like Maika would be nipping at certain buds later) and ask Chad to leave before things got too toxic.

Bloody rich of the guy, though, calling them a stereotype. Dude was such a typical wannabe tech-bro himself.

"Imma go for a swim."

Chad said nothing more as Maika left the room. There was no being seen by Chad. The guy had his eyes perpetually shut.

Maika changed into their swim shorts, kept their cardigan on with notebook in one pocket, cellphone in the other, and left through the French doors on the lakeside of the house. The fog was still out, thinner than last night, luminescent in the morning sun which had to be there even if they couldn't see it. They saw the water before they saw Ginny, huddled up like a light-blue rock on the pebbly beach.

"Mōrena," Maika called.

"Mōrena," Ginny called back in her soft, singsong voice.

Maika glanced over her shoulder as they passed. She was scribbling in her notebook. They looked like just odd notes, rather than proper prose. But on the large boulder at her feet, weighed down by a stone, sat some typewritten pages full of words. Ginny peeled these up as if to hide them, and gave Maika a wan smile.

Fair enough. They'd do the same.

They shrugged off their cardigan a few metres away from her, and jogged down to the water.

Under the blanket of fog, the water was still and chilly. The mountains' reflections were not to be found. A shame - they wanted to know by sight to whom these people belonged, which of these maunga were their ancestors. How could anyone possibly choose, in a country like this, with such a plethora of maunga to choose from? Still, they supposed, you'd need a plentitude of maunga to make up for the distance from the moana.

They turned back to the house, and shuddered. How had they perfectly pictured the back of the house last night, when they were writing, before they'd come out here this morning? Well, logically, it didn't look all that different from the front of the house.

Still, for a split second there, Maika had felt something dire.

They gripped their pounamu manaia on the cord around their neck. It felt like their ancestors had wanted to speak, and had been silenced by the weight of the fog before the message had quite come through.

So far away...

What was this feeling? Go back to the house? Don't go back to the house? Return home?

Maika stood in the water, chilled into stillness, frozen not by the touch of water once from glaciers on high mountaintops, but by the lake's reflection in the windows of the villa.

A ray of sunshine burst through the clouds to illuminate the house, obliterating the reflections.

It was just a house. All was well. Maika laughed aloud, feeling ridiculous.

"You all right?" Ginny asked from her perch.

Maika laughed again, and emerged from the water, coming to sit between Ginny and their cardigan. It was a bit too chilly for a long dip anyway. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just felt this uncanny feeling for a sec, then it went away." They shook their hands out. The last of the lake water fell from them, though it would take longer for their shorts and legs to dry off.

"I know what you mean," Ginny murmured. "The fog, the quiet... uncanny's the word for it. Not to mention, the feeling of that other word again... 'lockdown'."

Maika laid back and let the brief window of weak sunshine wash over them. Lockdown had been real hard on them last time. Alone in a shabby flat with no company but the booze cabinet... nah. No use looking back. This time would be better, with good company.

"Let's not talk about that, eh?"

"So what do you want to talk about then?" Ginny asked. Maika glanced sidelong at her, getting a hint of flirtation in the way she dragged out the word 'do', in the way she leaned a bit closer.

Flirtation? Maybe that was wishful thinking.

Wishful thinking, eh? Hmm, now there was something to dwell on later. Did Maika wish that Ginny was flirting with them?

But there was a topic which came straight to mind. "Ahh... nah. It's nothing."

Ginny blinked, then looked back at her notebook. Then she narrowed her eyes, peered at Maika, then looked away again. Finally, she put down her notebook. "Hmm. I get the feeling I know what this is. You're not the first person who has come up to me to talk and then gone strangely silent."

"I'm not?"

"Nope."

"What do they usually want from you?"

"Permission or encouragement to transition, usually."

"Oh!" Maika nearly jumped. Well, that had been pretty close. Accurate enough, in its own way. "Funnily enough - I'm not wanting to transition to a woman, if that's what you think. But I did want to tell you, I'm trying on non-binary."

"Ah, I did wonder." Ginny gestured vaguely at Maika. "The name change, the new fashion choices being kinda androgynous..."

"Yeah. I'm not sure if non-binary's the exact word for what I am, but you know... just as I've been reclaiming my heritage, I learnt something that sorta resonated with me. In te reo, there is no 'he' or 'she'. Just one pronoun for all sentient beings, 'ia'. And when I learnt that, I just felt so... I dunno, 'relieved' I think is the word I want?"

"Or seen?"

"Yeah! Seen. Exactly."

"Well that's great." Ginny reached over and rubbed Maika's shoulder. The way she bit her generous bottom lip as she did made Maika glance away quickly. It brought back memories: Maika had thought her lips to be her most attractive feature, back before she was she. They'd forgotten that - the little crush on Ginny before her transition, never at all followed through on because Maika had not been ready to admit any queerness of any sort back then. "So, what are your pronouns now?"

"I'm trying on 'they'. It's going... interestingly. I mostly have it down in my head now. Like I'm thinking of myself as 'they', I mean."

"I sense there's a 'but' here..."

"But I wish I were thinking in te reo, you know? I wish I were thinking 'ia', rather than 'they'."

Ginny nodded slowly. Her hand had stayed on their shoulder, and she rubbed it again. "You've got an extra layer of stuff to contend with there, my friend. Gender, combined with colonialism; all that jazz."

"Yeah. Nah, I'm sorting it out, eh?"

"Do the others know?"

Maika sneered back at the house. "I kinda don't want Chad to know yet, you know? Guy's being a jerkwad."

"Oh thank God, I thought I was the only one who'd noticed."

The two of them chuckled for a spell, surreptitiously glancing over their shoulders. "Nah, I've noticed. I was thinking we should maybe talk to Kirsten about it..."

"Yeah, probably. Does she know?"

"About my gender thoughts? Not yet. I kinda don't want her to... like... dismiss me when I tell her, you know?"

To Maika's relief, Ginny nodded effusively. "I get you. Kirsten's great, but she can be a bit blunt when it comes to certain sensitive subjects."

"Exactly."

A breeze kicked up, ruffling through Ginny's pages under the stone. She pinned them down with her palm, and when the wind did not let up after a good twenty seconds, she took the stone off and gathered the pages into her snuggly poncho thing. "Sorry, I've gotta go back inside."

"Yeah, it's getting a bit cold, eh? I'll be in too, soon."

Her eyes were alive with glee. "I'm going to write some more, and get ready for tonight."

It had been a long time since Maika had seen Ginny so excited. All the years they'd known her, she had trodden gently through all aspects of life. But now she was practically bouncing with enthusiasm. "Yeah! I'm looking forward to hearing your stuff."

"Me too. Yours, I mean. See ya!" She turned swiftly and scurried up the low bank.

Ginny had seen them. That felt so nice. Maika followed her with their eyes as she left, until the house pulled their attention to it.

The house had seen them too.

Maika whipped their head back to face the lake, shuddering. Only last night, they'd written something about the house having eyes. Again, that had happened before seeing the house from this angle, as if they'd been astrally projecting to see the house from the character's point of view.

They shook off the creeping feeling off their back and gazed pointedly at the lake.

Maika stared out into the distance, trying to determine the line where fog ended and water began. The sight was unyielding, giving away nothing. After a while, they pulled their phone out to look into this lake, and this villa. They did intend to get back to writing soon. This mucking around on the internet wasn't true procrastination, not really. This was research.

They found two things during this time.

The first was that the villa was named the Villa Delacroix because it was said that the French artist Eugène Delacroix stayed in the villa one summer in the mid 1800s. But other sources said the claim was likely untrue. Nevertheless, the apocryphal tidbit persisted throughout several different accounts of his life online. Maika looked through the catalogue of the painter's works, getting lost in the drama of the compositions, searching for inspiration. Christ of the Sea of Galilee was a big contrast to the stillness of this silvery world Maika currently sat in. All the stirring romance of Delacroix's art called to Maika, reminded them there was something outside this strange bubble of time and place they presently occupied. Somewhere in the world, there had to be a stormy sky like this. Somewhere else, there were crowds of people, bodies moving in masses of sorrow and even violence... nothing like this lonely grey haze.

They weren't sure whether to be grateful for the isolation or not.

The second thing they learned was that this holiday house had some very strange reviews indeed. Some people rated it 4 or 5 stars, but others dragged the score down with 1s and 2s because of 'a presence', or in one account, "THIS PLACE HAS A GHOST I DONT CARE IF YALL DONT BELIEVE ME".

Had Kirsten not seen these reviews? Or did she not care? As they read through the reviews, Maika's mood sank. They didn't believe in ghosts, but they didn't not believe in ghosts either. There were definitely some things in this world which defied explanation.

Like how right now, their hand whipped up to their pounamu again, and their heart panged with a feeling akin to homesickness, nausea and terror.

Ancestors again? Maybe. If only they knew for certain if was that, and not just unmedicated anxiety.

Maybe there was something to the reviews. They'd talk to the others tonight, in the safety of the writing share circle. Maybe Chad would laugh at them, but Kirsten and Ginny might give their feelings credence. At the very least, Kirsten might offer to send Maika home.

Would they want to go home? It was hard to say.

But before then, they would share their writing. Maybe it would be something they wrote right now, rather than last night's work. As much as they loved what they had written then, Maika felt inspired to write even more at this very moment. With such a surge of creative soul, the word foraging could be even more potent now, in the light of day.

They wrapped themself in their cardigan and took their notebook and pen out of their pocket. It was cold here, and the stones under their arse were hard, but the moment had to be siezed.

Maika wrote.