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It was a grey and gloomy morning when Harriet woke up shivering. Her girlfriend had already slipped out of the communal sleeping tent, and their sleeping platform felt big and empty. All around her, other Safe Haven residents were quietly slipping out of hammocks and sleeping bags and going about their morning routines. The air was filled with a hum of whispered chatter, the smell of salt, and the cool dampness before rain.
Harriet sat up, removed the kerchief that kept her dreads neat while she slept, looked out to the grey strip of sea that could be seen beneath the tent roof, and felt gloomy. She’d been in a funk for the past week. It was hard not to be, when it was the anniversary of her entrance into Maze B. That day had brought her over two years of suffering until she finally got free.
She was mentally bracing herself just to get through the day when her eye fell on Sonya’s pillow. With a jolt of surprise, Harriet realised it wasn’t empty after all. Perched on top was a large white seashell, likely from a mollusc of some kind. Harriet hadn’t been here long enough to be able to distinguish seashells; she was happy just to eat whatever the fishing crew dumped into Frypan’s cook-pot.
But on closer inspection, this shell was quite pretty. It wasn’t pure white, but had stripes of varying pale colours — tan, cream, and even a soft pink. When opened up, it blushed softly pink on the inside too. And nestled amid the two detached halves was a note in Sonya’s handwriting. It read, “Surprise! Come up the hill and find me. Love, Sonya.”
A small smile quirked Harriet’s lips. Getting out of bed, she prepared for the morning with much better spirits, excited to see what Sonya had cooked up. After lacing her boots and throwing on her favourite jacket, she left the tent and made her way out of the Safe Haven, up past the treeline and onto the bare, rocky hill above.
With no brush or vegetation to obscure her, it wasn’t long until Harriet spotted Sonya. She was sitting on a blanket on the ground, her legs tucked up beneath her and one of the Haven’s precious novels in her hands. Sometimes when Sonya read, she could get so absorbed in the page that she couldn’t hear anything around her. Not so today. As Harriet approached, Sonya’s eyes flicked up from the book. As soon as her gaze landed on Harriet, she hurriedly put a bookmark in and got to her feet, smiling broadly and bouncing on her toes as she waved.
“Harry! You found me!”
“’Course I did,” Harriet said, panting a little as she jogged the remaining few feet up the hill. When she reached the blanket, Sonya threw her arms around Harriet in a huge hug.
“I wanted to make a scavenger hunt for you, but I didn’t have the time to make a whole one. So I made a picnic for us instead.”
Harriet glanced down at the blanket and saw a plastic container, a small waxed cloth bundle, and a large thermos sitting beside Sonya’s book.
“Isn’t it going to rain soon?” Harriet said. Only then did she think to look up. To her surprise, she saw that the morning sun had burnt away much of the humidity, and was now visible through a golden crack in the fast-fleeting clouds.
“No. I listened last night when Vince passed on the forecast,” Sonya said, winking. “You do like it, right? Only you’ve been so sad recently, Harry, that I thought I had better cheer you up.”
Harriet looked down at the blanket, then back up at Sonya. How could she have been so stupid as to forget? The Maze might have been awful, but it had also brought her the best thing she’d ever had in her life: her relationship with Sonya.
“I love it,” Harriet said, clasping Sonya’s hands in hers. Sonya smiled a tender, understanding smile. She too had been hurt by the Maze, even if she didn’t always show it. Her temperament was just different to Harriet’s. But that was alright. Sometimes you didn’t need to stay down to earth, you needed to be lifted up.