Echoes and Fireflies (Emi's Memories)

Chapter XX: Echoes and Fireflies

Inside the Memory Cabana, Emi sat cross-legged on the old plank floor, her six arms in a slow-motion hurricane of nervousness. One upper hand twirled a piece of her hair into a coiling, doomed ribbon; the other upper hand gnawed at a thumbnail with teeth so delicate the nail would never stand a chance. The middle set of arms hugged her waist, as if she could stitch her ribcage together by **** of will. The lower set traced uncertain arabesques onto the whitewashed walls—over and over, never quite satisfied, never quite leaving a mark.

Dawn sat behind her on the bench, legs folded sideways, hands in her lap. Her two hours finished, she had yielded control to Emi, but the six-armed dreamer had not yet used the Cabana’s smoke. Dawn had recovered somewhat from her ordeal. She had not meant to show so much, but now that she had… she felt as if a weight had been lifted off her chest. She didn’t know if Andy had watched everything, but she found she wanted him to know. He needed to understand what he was getting into. And Emi… her friend… had been there for Dawn. She had known the girl for barely a week, but already Dawn could find a place for her in her own heart.

If Dawn noticed Emi’s barely-contained panic, she didn’t let on. Emi’s hug had anchored her when she was spiraling, earlier. So she just waited, watching Emi with the gentle interest of a nurse waiting for a child to name a pain.

They listened to the silence for a minute, the only sound a faint, uncertain fizz from the candle in the center of the candelabra. The blue flame was steady, but the smoke rising from it wavered, as if the memories it would reveal were not quite ready to coalesce.

Dawn leaned in. “You can do this, Emi,” she said. “Just swirl your hand through. It hurts, Emi, but you feel better, after.”

Emi blinked at her, then at the smoke. She had watched Dawn do this a dozen times in the last two hours, seen the way Dawn’s memories would bloom into solid form, then fade back into fog, each vignette a little sharper than the last. But Emi was sure that when it was her turn, something would go wrong. The wrong memory, or the right one at the wrong time. Or she would say too much, or too little, and it would all fall apart. Or she would witness that day. And if Andy was watching… she did not want to hurt him.

She flexed all six hands, then, with a deep breath, let the upper right one dip into the smoke.

The sensation was… slippery. Not cold, not warm, just a brush of static, a half-forgotten TV channel. The smoke stuck to her skin, swirled around her wrist, then—pop—a flicker of color and sound filled the air before her.

A scene formed, this one inside a cramped, cluttered bedroom. Emi, perhaps eleven years old, sat at a child’s desk, sketching with a pencil stub. Her hands moved quickly, sketching a cartoon rabbit that looked both brave and frightened. There was a knock on the door, and her mother entered—a tall woman, black hair pulled back, wearing a loose blouse and linen pants. She carried a paper bag, which she set beside Emi with a proud smile.

In the memory, Emi’s mother took out a jar of glue, a rainbow of paper scraps, a packet of markers. She sat beside Emi, and together they made a patchwork rabbit from the drawing—glued scraps for the ears, pink marker for the nose, a black thread for the whiskers. Emi’s mother watched her daughter with absolute delight, as if every second was a marvel.

Emi stared at the scene, tears in her eyes. “She wanted me to be an artist,” she said. “Said it was a way to live forever, if people loved what you made.”

Dawn squeezed Emi’s hand, but didn’t say anything.

Another flick of the wrist, another memory. This one, Emi a little older—maybe twelve, thirteen—sitting at the kitchen table with a book of origami and a stack of colored squares. Her mother was beside her, folding a crane with crisp precision, but Emi’s cranes were always just a little off: the neck too thick, the wings uneven, the folds never quite matching the photos. Still, her mother kept every single one, stringing them along a cord that ran the length of the kitchen wall. When Emi frowned at a bad fold, her mother would pretend to be delighted, then hang it in the place of honor.

Dawn watched all this with a look that was part envy, part awe. “You loved her,” Dawn said, simply.

Emi nodded, blinking fast. She didn’t want to do this next part. She dreaded it. But she needed it, too, and so she closed her eyes and swirled her upper right hand in the smoke, summoning a memory that was adjacent to that which she could not show Andy.

It assembled itself in the blue haze: at first, only a handful of impressions, the way scents and sounds always defined a moment before faces and words. There was river mud, warm and loamy, with just the faintest tinge of gasoline. The air shimmered with the drone of insects, the uneven pulse of cicadas ricocheting through the trees. Sunlight splintered on the water, making every ripple a blade of white. Emi, perhaps twelve, sat on a battered wooden dock that jutted three meters into the slow, sullen current of the river. Her knees were scabbed and sunburned, tucked under her chin; her arms locked around them, a makeshift shell. She wore her favorite red shorts and a thrift-store T-shirt with a cartoon fox on the front, but even that looked washed out, the fabric softened to a blur in the sunlight.

Next to her, a smaller girl dangled her feet over the edge, letting the river tease her toes. Perhaps ten years old, with long, straight black hair cut in the style of a cartoon villain. A faintly curved L-shaped scar on the girl’s jaw caught the light, ‘another gift from her dad’. The phrase floated in memory-Emi’s head, borrowed from some adult conversation overheard when the grownups thought she wasn’t listening. The younger girl looked bored, but her shoulder was pressed up against Emi’s, as if gravity itself insisted they stay together.

“Who’s the other girl?” Dawn asked, voice hushed.

“Laura,” Emi said, barely a whisper. Her heart contracted. “She was a friend.”

Emi watched herself in third person, a loop of the same scene. The way Laura drummed her heels on the sun-warmed wood, then twisted her body sideways to face Emi, lips curled in a wicked, conspiratorial smile. There was affectionate **** in the gesture, a dare you to move or I’ll push you in. Emi didn’t dare. She was content to be exactly where she was.

A voice came from behind—flat, loud, familiar. The sound startled both girls, but neither turned immediately. Emi already knew whose voice it was, and so did Laura. The footsteps came next: a scattering of gravel, a splash, the echo of rubber soles on plank as the boy sprinted down the dock, arms out for balance.

He looked about Laura’s age, with hair that never sat flat, just a permanent cowlick of brown. He wore a faded Pokemon t-shirt, a pair of shorts, and a Band-Aid on his elbow that was already peeling up at the edges. He seemed destined, in that moment, to grow into the kind of man who would never wear sunscreen, who would get lost in the woods and come back with new scars and stories every time. With a whoop that split the air, he launched himself between the two girls, sending a spray of river water everywhere. Laura shrieked and pretended to be annoyed, but never shifted, not even an inch, and her eyes laughed. Emi flinched, then smiled, then glanced away, trying not to let the smile be seen.

The boy was Andy. Even then, he was always half trouble, half apology. The girls scooted to the sides to make space for him in the center, always in the center. He collapsed onto the dock, closer to Laura, drenched in river water, looping an arm around her shoulders while propping himself up with his other hand behind Emi’s back. There was a moment of three-way balance, the kind that could tip any direction, and then Laura elbowed Andy square in the ribs. He made a show of almost tumbling into the river, but Laura’s hands shot out and grabbed his wrist before he could even fake a fall.

The memory sharpened, frame by frame. It was a perfect summer: nobody owned watches, nobody cared what time it was, so long as you returned by dark. The river did not care about the drama of children. It kept its secrets, and the dock was always there.

In the memory, Laura picked at a scab on her knee, then squinted at the river and said something, her mouth shaping words that were instantly lost in the haze. The way her lips moved was familiar—teasing, a little wicked. Emi watched her own face as the words landed, saw the way her ears turned pink and her lips bent into a **** smile. Laura’s eyes were bright, and for a second, Emi thought that if she could only reach into the fog and grab the sound, she could rescue the words, bring them across the years. But she couldn’t.

Andy said something, too—he was always trying to one-up Laura, win back the attention she so easily stole. The two of them had a rhythm, a kind of constant, unspoken game of ping-pong where no one ever kept score. Sometimes Emi felt like a bystander, sometimes a referee, but on her best days, she felt like a teammate. She wanted to belong, and—for a little while—she did.

Dawn’s hand found Emi’s and squeezed, grounding her in the present, but not enough to break the spell of the memory. “You three were close?” she asked. This time, the question rang less like curiosity and more like sympathy.

“Sometimes,” Emi said, her voice a patchwork of old sadness and newer regret. “It was always Laura and Andy, but they made room for me. Laura said she needed an audience for her stories. And Andy always had a big heart.”

The blue smoke shifted, and the memory looped again, but from a slightly different vantage. This time, Laura was telling one of her stories, arms flailing, voice animated, face alive with drama. Andy interrupted with wisecracks, but never stole the spotlight for long. Emi watched herself listen, watched herself hang on every phrase, her body angled toward Laura like a flower tracking the sun. At the end of the story, Laura pointed at Emi and said something with mock gravity, and Emi blushed so hard that even the memory seemed to ripple under the heat. She buried her face in her knees, but Laura only laughed, then draped her arm over Emi’s back in a gesture that was half hug, half ownership.

“I used to love her stories,” Emi said, not realizing she’d said it aloud, her eyes glistening with tears.

The smoke swirled and resolved into a final memory, darker. Emi, now fifteen, in her bedroom. The art supplies were everywhere: paints, brushes, stacks of sketchbooks. Emi sat on her bed, phone pressed to her ear, face blank. The phone beeped: an automated message, or a hospital, or a voice she knew was coming. She let the phone drop, then curled up, arms around her knees, cried, and didn’t move for a long time.

When she finally got up, Emi packed all her art supplies into boxes, sealed them with masking tape, and shoved them into the back of her closet. She didn’t draw again for months.

The smoke lingered on that image, then evaporated, leaving only the faint blue of the flame.

Dawn waited a long time before speaking. “What happened, in that last memory?” She asked, careful.

Emi winced, her voice rough around the tears. “She died.”

Dawn’s eyes filled with tears. “Emi…” She stood and hugged her friend. She was surprised when Emi didn’t resist, but let herself be pressed face-first into Dawn’s shoulder, shuddering out the last of her grief in tiny, hiccupping sobs. Dawn had always considered herself more of a “hug and fix it” type, but the pure, unguarded pain in Emi’s voice made her own throat contract, made her eyes prickle and spill over in sympathy.

She didn’t think about the Audience in that moment, or about how Andy was seeing all this through the haze of the Cabana’s magic. If anything, she felt his suffering more acutely now that she had seen the story behind it: the boy caught between two bright souls, the friend who had to mourn and go on, the man who still carried that loss in his every word and hesitation. It was raw, unhealed. Dawn wondered if anyone could ever really get over something like that, or if grief, like some silent parasite, simply nested inside, fed, and grew into new shapes as you did.

She felt the familiar twinge beneath her skin, the growing compulsion that told her the transformation was active. Her heart stuttered. She was supposed to make Andy comfortable, but right now that felt about as important as a scratch-off ticket at a funeral. So she gritted her teeth, focused on Emi, and made the decision to be a friend first.

After a minute or two, Emi’s sobs faded to a gentle, rhythmic breath. Dawn kept her arm around her as they sat together in the surreal hush of the Memory Cabana, both of them staring into the blue flame. It danced on the table, faint but insistent, as if it could keep burning forever on the fuel of old heartbreaks.

Dawn wanted to say the right thing, only she wasn’t sure what that was. She had her own toolbox for this sort of pain—humor, distraction, tough love—but none of it seemed right for Emi, who had just poured out the one memory she had tried hardest not to show. The silence was safe, but it wasn’t going to fix anything. So maybe she needed to mix those tools together.

“You know,” Dawn said, voice thick, “all those stories you showed me about your mom, about Laura…”

Emi’s head jerked up, eyes wide. “Please don’t tell anyone. I mean it, Dawn. That last part… Andy doesn’t need to see it. I can’t…”

“I won’t,” Dawn promised, and she winced, realizing Emi had forgotten what Arabella had said, that Andy would be watching. She squeezed Emi’s shoulder, her own voice suddenly steady and calm, the way her mother’s had been in emergencies. “But I do have a theory, if you want to hear it.”

Emi looked at her through a curtain of black hair, face streaked with tears. “Is it a theory about how to stop people from dying?”

Dawn considered that as seriously as she could. “Not yet. I’m still working on that one. But I think maybe you got so used to being the background in other people’s lives that you forgot you’re allowed to want things for yourself.”

“That’s not true,” Emi said, a little too fast.

Dawn smiled, a flash of her old self. “I’ve seen you, Emi. You’re always watching, always listening, but you never push in. Even your art—half your drawings are of other people, and the other half are…what, origami animals and fantasy girls with wings and extra arms?”

Emi blushed, then scowled in a way that was almost endearing. “I like wings. And extra arms are efficient.”

“Exactly!” Dawn grinned. “That’s my point. You could be the whole stage, if you wanted to. Hell, you already have the raw material for it. Six arms? That’s a superpower. If you stopped hiding, you could be the main character. Not just the supporting cast.”

Emi eyed her, suspicious but intrigued. “Is this supposed to make me feel better, or just weird?” Dawn was on a roll now, the old energy coming back as she built herself a case.

“Think about it,” said Dawn, leaning in eagerly. “You literally have the ability to make anything out of nothing. Art, stories, actual origami cats that could probably kick my ass. And what do you do? You fold yourself into the smallest possible space, like you’re scared you’ll take up too much room.”

Emi didn’t answer. She was breathing through her mouth, staring at the blue flame as if it might offer a rebuttal.

Dawn realized she might have overstepped. She reached for Emi’s hand, careful this time, and held it gently in her own. “I’m sorry, I’m not saying you have to change for anyone else,” she added, softer. “But I think you deserve to be seen. For real. Not just as Andy’s old friend, or the girl with the six arms. But as yourself, Emi. And I think you are a beautiful person.”

For a moment, Emi looked as if she might cry again, but instead she laughed—a brittle, surprised sound that thawed the air between them. “That’s the cheesiest thing you’ve ever said to me,” she said, wiping her eyes with the heel of her palm.

Dawn grinned. “I haven’t even started. Wait until I tell you my pep talk about being a ‘bright, beautiful butterfly’.”

Emi made a face, but it was a real smile this time. “I’m not a butterfly, Dawn. I’m a bug at best.”

“But you’re our bug,” Dawn shot back. She nudged Emi’s shoulder with her own. “And the whole world is going to see how cool you are.”

Emi’s lips pressed tight. “Do you think Andy will notice? If I…if I do what you said?”

Dawn’s eyes gleamed. “He already does. He just needs to see you show it off, not hide it. What if you made your transformation the centerpiece? Instead of painting yourself like a wallflower, you could be…” She waved her arms, searching for the word. “A living storybook. Like those illustrations you loved as a kid. You could make yourself unforgettable.”

Emi pondered this, letting the silence settle between them. In another life, she would have laughed it off, but here, in the blue-lit hush of the Cabana, it sounded almost possible. Instead, she said, “What if I don’t know how to be magical?”

Dawn nudged her, playful. “Start with the arms. I’ll bet you’re the only person in the world who could hug someone and make it feel like home.”

Emi smiled, shy and real, for the first time since the session started. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll try.”

They sat in the hush a little longer. When the blue candle finally burned low, Emi stood, stretching all six arms overhead in a slow, theatrical arc.

“Ready to face the painter?” Dawn said.

Emi hesitated, then nodded. “If you go first.”

Dawn did, opening the door and letting the sunlight pour in. Emi followed, feeling lighter than she had in months.

As they walked down the path, Dawn said, “Thank you. For showing me.”

Emi reached out, and, with all six arms, hugged Dawn so tight she squeaked.

“Anytime,” Emi whispered.

Arabella stood at the edge of the gazebo, her back to the sea, hands resting so lightly on the rail that Andy thought if she let go, she might lift off and never touch ground again. The emerald dress, all liquid angles, shimmered with every gust from the bay, but she held so still that for a moment Andy believed she’d turned herself into one of the marble columns. Even the light seemed to bend around her, **** to crowd her space.

Andy stayed in his chair longer than he meant to, letting the chill of the beer seep up through his palms. He felt sapped, but not numb. If anything, the ache behind his ribs was sharper, more urgent. Maybe it was the parade of memories he’d just watched, or maybe it was something in the way Arabella stared at the water, like she was waiting for a sign, or a ship, or a verdict.

He set the bottle down, stood, and walked to her, his steps clumsy on the warped planks. She didn’t turn, but he saw the smallest flicker of her eyelashes when he stopped beside her, shoulder to shoulder, looking out at the silvered chop beyond.

“You really can’t stop it,” he said, keeping his voice low. “The eliminations. You can’t just call it off.”

Arabella’s eyes didn’t move from the horizon, but he saw her fingers press harder into the painted wood, blanching the skin. “No, Andy,” she said. “I can’t. The rules are older than you, or me, or this place. They are… fundamental.”

Andy nodded, not because he accepted it, but because it hurt to admit how much he’d hoped for a lie.

“Why bother with all this, then?” he asked. “The talk. The games. If it’s all already decided.”

She exhaled, slow, and the motion made the whole frame of her body shimmer. “It isn’t decided, Andy.” She said, softly. “Not the way you mean. There is always a way for someone to change the story, if they’re strong enough. Or brave enough. But it has to matter. The risk must be real.”

He thought of the women, the way each one had walked to the Cabana like she was carrying her own execution order. “So the pain is the point,” he said, bitter.

Arabella gave a faint smile. “Not the point. The cost.” She turned her head then, just enough that he could see the sharpness in her eyes, the edge that cut through her serenity. “Would you value anything, Andy, if it came without a cost?”

He bit back his answer, afraid of how childish it sounded.

“Is there a loophole?” he tried, softer. “Some trick to it? Or is everyone doomed from the start?”

For the first time, Arabella’s posture slipped. The straight lines of her neck and spine bent, a slump barely visible but seismic in its meaning. Her hand went to the side of her face, and she pressed her palm there, as if holding her head together.

“I am not allowed to tell you,” she said, “but if you survive, you may find your own way.” She let the words hang, then added, “I have to believe it’s possible. Or I would not be here.”

Andy stared at her, the crack in her mask widening just enough to reveal the real shape beneath. He saw the fatigue in her eyes, the thousand-yard stare of someone who’d outlived every illusion. He wanted to reach out, to shake her or to hug her, but it was impossible to imagine how she would react. She was akin to a goddess, insofar as Andy and the women could see. Would she dissolve? Would she grow angry?

He looked down at his hands, then at the white curve of the railing, then back at the wind-tossed green of her dress.

“If you were me,” he said, “what would you do?”

Arabella let her hand drop, and when she met his gaze, it was unguarded. “I would try,” she said. “Even knowing I might fail. Because even in failure, something new can begin.”

He wanted to laugh, but it came out a sigh. “That’s some Hallmark bullshit, you know.”

Arabella’s mouth twitched. “Better than nothing. But Andy,” She added gently, “Your choice isn’t the only choice that matters. The Audience gets an equal share. You may find some solace in that.”

They watched the sea a while longer, silent except for the hiss of wind and the distant shriek of a gull. When the sun ducked behind a cloud, Arabella straightened, her composure restored, the Host back in place.

“You should go back to the screen,” she said. “There’s still time to see the others before sunset. They will need you.”

Andy almost asked her if she needed him, but thought better of it.

Instead, he said, “Thank you,” and meant it.

She nodded, and he left her standing there, unmoved and unmoving.