HONEYBEE| Sam Uley

two

Estella sighed as she looked up at the beautiful house looming over her; it was just as beautiful as she remembered, their own little slice of heaven with their surname splayed in bold capitals over their mailbox- but similarly, it was completely and utterly different. It was overgrown in every sense of the word, the nature attempting to reclaim it through the unusual heat of the day. It seemed so... Empty. There was a lifelessness about it that haunted her even as she walked up the porch steps, feeling the creak of the third step under her weight- such a familiar thing, a thing her mother had chastised her father, 'the handyman' about fixing... He never got around to it.

Every step seemed as though she was swimming downwards through water- difficult. And the three wind chimes dotted around the front of the house sang to her in a way that would once have made her smile, and now just made her stare. The shattered scattering of rainbow glass beads that sat off ribbons from the porch rafters like a stunning waterfall. She had helped her mother make them, aged nine on one particularly rainy Sunday afternoon- purely to entertain them in the storm.

And then was that wrap around porch of which there were so many memories, the rocking chair that remained outside in every weather, faded like driftwood where it sat undercovered- it was there that she first heard the stories of the Quileute tribes, a six year-old-girl with beads braided through her already-long hair, sat upon her father's knee as he told her the stories of their ancestors. And it was there that she had planned her father to one day tell her children, it was in that house that she had expected her children to chase each other in circles right around the house from that wrap around porch while she and her mother cooked all manner of things to the sweet songs on the radio- windows thrown open all around despite the probably pouring rain.

Every step told Estella of memories, and of dreams that would never come true. At it pained her, it was a pain that nothing could ever fade away, it was a parent shaped hole in her heart that she was longing to be filled. Coming home was hard, but it was right. It felt as though she should be there and so when she pushed the carefully painted blue door open, revealing the dusty interior of her family home- despite the tsunami of agony that hit her at full force, it felt like lowering herself into a warm bath. Nothing ever felt quite so warm as coming home.

The home opened right up into the large kitchen- as with many homes, it had been the heart of their house and through an archway directly to her right, was the living room that so very rarely ever got used. Estella took each step calmly, eyes taking in the shopping list her mother had stuck to the fridge with magnets, her father's old jacket slung over the back of his chair. Nobody had been there in months, and it was vaguely disheartening to see. The ghosts of her parents lingered around in the shape of the things they left behind- her fathers indent in the cushion of his chair, a ribbon tied around the door handle of one of the many cupboards that her mother had always used to tie her long hair back before cooking.

Each reminder was painful, but welcomed because for the first time in at least three months- she felt something. And it was as she was sliced through with pain that Estella realised how much she had longed for it, the reminder that she was human after all, that she could still feel, her eyes still water and throat still clog. Her hand came to rest so gently upon the coat, feeling each and every fibre of it and she knew that if only she pulled it up into her arms- she would smell the scent of the forest, the scent of crisp mint and honey that was undeniably her father.

Everything had gotten so royally messed up in just a singular night, and now she was left picking up the pieces- some of which she couldn't find no matter how hard she looked. It was as if someone had tossed a box of puzzle pieces into the air in a messy room and she had been sifting through the furniture for months, longing painfully to reunite those pieces with one another. They were at least half missing.

"Estella?" a voice cooed and she knew it so well, she heard it shouting at her son across the road, she heard it gossiping with her own mother- the best of friends from the beginning, just as their husbands had been before Joshua left. Allison Uley smiled, pained as the girl with the long raven hair turned to her and when Allison's eyes fell upon Estella's face- she only saw Katherine. As painful it was to see someone who looked so agonisingly like her fallen friend, it was also a warm welcome.

Allison pulled the younger woman into her arms and Estella- much shorter than her mother had been, melted into her, holding on for dear life. No tears were shed in the kitchen that day, only a warm reunion. Estella had lost her parents but that did not mean that she no longer had a family. The families across La Push were hers, whether bound by blood or otherwise.

"It's good to see you, Allison. How have you been? I heard that Sam was ill?" she frowned in vague concern for the boy she barely knew as she pulled back. Estella and Sam had grown up together, as much as all the others had- but where the boys all fancied adventure; cliff jumping or bike riding, hiking through the woods... Estella found warm comfort in all manner of other things- she sought comfort in baking, in blankets and gentle strolls. She had had no reason to cross paths with him, not until he started to date her cousin- Leah and Sam were very recently engaged and Estella wanted desperately to feel happy for them- but feeling miserable in the face of the world came much easier to her now.

"He is better. How are you, Honeybee?" she hummed, using the nickname her mother had always given- the nickname adopted across the rez... And although it jolted her like a sharp punch to the gut, it also warmed her infinitely.

"Better"