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It’s not super uncommon that you and Marl get into something you’re not supposed to, which either gets you in trouble or gets you hurt and in trouble. With Riebeck both spending more time helping out around the village and preparing to go to space, there’s not much they can do in the hatchling’s cabin aside from sleep and sometimes babysit the newly-hatched when there isn’t an actual adult to do it. They’ve started moving out anyway, to the cabin that all of the travelers share, which gives you and Marl and Hal some more space. And less supervision.
Hal’s always been the goodie two-shoes to go along with Riebeck’s anxiety, and to combat your and Marl’s bad idea of fun, but it takes three to keep the two of you out of trouble, and the other side is down to one. You’re the smallest hatchling batch that there’s been in a couple generations, where it’s just the four of you in a cabin that’s been suited for seven, but you’re one of the rowdier ones. Thanks to you and Marl.
It’s not like you and Marl get along super well—Hal is your best friend, and you stick together like pine resin glue—but they’ll hop on board with the bad ideas you come up with. Of the two of you, it’s mostly you who comes up with the worst things, like sneaking out of the village in the middle of the night to play hide and seek in another crater, or playing waterspout despite how dangerous you know it can get. Those were your ideas. You like adventure, and danger, and you want to be just like Feldspar, because they’re the coolest hearthian ever who gets to do the coolest things ever.
Not to say that Marl hasn’t had some bad ideas either. You nearly broke your ankle when you decided to play tag on the rooftops of cabins, despite having just gotten scolded for that by Silt (and Gneiss.) You nearly cracked your head open when you fell from the log lift to the creek that ran through the village, and Hal bent their arm wrong and needed a sling for a few weeks after that. You had a close call with the ghost matter patch while playing red sign, green sign, just barely grazing the tip of your left ear, only saved from falling face first into the freezing cold fog by Tektite, who’d decided to watch you three when you got that ever so slight bit closer to the patch. All of those were Marl, not quite you.
And, this too, was Marl. You two pressured Hal into coming up into the big tree with you, and you actually convinced them to join you. You ended up reassuring them that you wouldn’t go too high, and if they wanted to just sit on one of the lower branches that was alright, and that’s what got them to cave. So up they followed, with dumb and dumber, as Slate liked to call you two (though you’re not sure who is who,) into the tree and up a little further.
(You’re opting to calling them dumber.)
Hal stays close to the relative safety of the newly constructed ledge while you climb up after the apprentice botanist, eyes seeming to narrow as you climbed further up. Or that could’ve just been how they were getting smaller as you got further away. Whichever was the case, you had to look away after a near fall because you missed a branch, and keep following Marl up.
You get up there, and decide it’s far enough, which totally isn’t caused by you looking down and seeing just how tall the tree is. You lower down onto one of the branches that doesn’t shake as much when you move, and you try to spot Marl in the canopy of pines. They’re up just a little higher, but they’ve stopped as well, seeming to look for you. You’re pretty sure they’ve got that look in their eyes, but you can’t tell from the stuff blocking your vision.
“You not coming up anymore?” Marl questions, grabbing onto some other branches to get a little closer and peek their head down to you. They frown as one of the notches in their ear catches on a smaller branch, and they remove one of their hands to remedy that, then put it back.
They’ve always been a good climber—Porphy’s started having them tap the taller trees, since Limestone’s retired from winemaking to tend the eggs and Feldspar isn’t around most of the time—so it doesn’t bother you much that they do stuff like that. You shrug to them in response. You’re a decent climber, yeah, but you’re more adapted to surviving a large fall than preventing it, as you’ve found from one unlucky game of waterspout where you nearly got launched out of the crater. You’re a good swimmer, though.
“Really?” You nod. “‘Chite, you’re a minnow.”
“Am not!” You yell back, because you aren’t!
“Prove it! Get me!” And Marl pushes up to start climbing higher.
You gawk for a moment, before you start moving, despite the pit in your stomach as you look down to Hal. They’ve probably noticed the rustling and your yelling, but you aren’t going to let them stop you. And you’re totally not afraid, as you look back up to start climbing, because Feldspar wouldn’t be afraid of climbing high up. So you start, determined to get them, and you don’t really watch the branches you’re grabbing all that well.
Which is, really, fine. It’s alright, none of them snap, but they’re making a cracking noise you don’t like as you balance your weight on them, and it makes you climb faster. You’re not scared, no, because only minnows get scared, and you’re not a minnow. Marl clearly is fine, so you’ll be fine. You’re pretty darn sure. And if Marl falls, then you can just climb back down the way you came to see if they’re alright.
You’re up high enough now that the canopy of sharp pines is thinner, and so are the branches. They’re all creaking and cracking when you tug on them, but you ignore that. They’re just making noise.
If you were a bit less hellbent on chasing your friend down, you might’ve remembered a thing or two about trees from the times where you’d climbed after someone, like when you’d followed Gabbro up a taller tree to fetch a sheet of metal that had flown off their ship in a rough test flight, or when Gneiss needed you to grab some dry strips of cloth from the branches so that they had something for Tektite's foot. Scoria, one the person in the village that seemed to have experience with every injury despite probably being one of the more tame folks, always told you that branches make weird noises when they’re about to break, and, naturally, they pulled off their hat to show you a scar on the side of their head that they’d gotten from landing on some rocks after falling out of a tree. Those cracking sounds probably aren’t the best sign, honestly. (In the future, you’ll remember this and think to yourself: Maybe I’m dumber.)
It’s when the cracking comes to a crescendo and your hand slips that you realize this. Marl, who is just out of your reach, realizes this too, as you hear some rather scary sounds before the branches around you shake, and your friend is halfway down to the platform where Hal is watching. You don’t have much time to think about it before you’re also falling. The two of you, dumb and dumber, though you’re not sure who is who, tumble through branches and fall to the platform.
You slam your stomach into a larger branch, and that breaks your fall enough for the rest of the tumble to not hurt you that much. It’s not like you particularly enjoy it, as you keep falling, but it saves you from a lot of harm as, luckily, you hit the platform. Marl hits a moment later, and there’s this loud noise that makes you realize how just lucky you were. Sure, you’re winded, and gasping for air, but you’re pretty sure arms aren’t supposed to bend like that. Neither is Marl, it looks like.
Marl seemingly isn’t deterred by the way their arm is bent, and they stand up, brush themself off with their normal arm, before they grab their arm close to their chest and start screaming.
You’re in big trouble, you’re aware, as Rutile and Porphy show up to check the two of you before they send you three off to Silt. They take one glance at Marl’s arm and decide that the scolding you three were going to receive could be delayed, and they escort the two of you back into the village angrily. It kinda stings when Porphy pats you down with a rag that probably has alcohol on it, so you bat them away.
Hal isn’t exactly exempt from the scolding, once you and Marl are checked, and the three of you are sat in wooden chairs in the cabin that Silt and Nickel call home, and you’re being told just how reckless that was. The three of you are grounded, and Silt tells you that they’ll figure out a more suitable punishment for you and Marl with Rutile. You’re kicked out and sent back to the cabin, but you swear you can half hear them saying something about grounding Tektite for not being on firewatch.
Marl is extra mad the next day, angrily staring out the window as the big tree while you and Hal keep tiny Arkose occupied, since that’s one of your things to do until the next campfire where you might get ungrounded if you’ve been on your best behavior. So, you and Hal are trying to play with the new hatchling, and make sure they don’t eat anything bad, like fireflies, or woodchips, or a whittling knife. Hearthian stomachs are strong, yeah, but not that strong, so you have to rearrange everything that is within potential reach for this little thing that can’t even walk.
Currently, Arkose has decided to throw things around the cabin and laugh when they hit something else. Which, really, isn’t too big of a deal, because Hal moved all the lanterns to their bunk, and then had to move all the other fragile stuff to their bunk as well. Nomai pottery that belongs to Riebeck, some little wood sculptures that belong to Marl, and some of your and Hal’s shared belongings, like neat rocks and a fragment of a nomai wall with some of their weird text on it.
No, no, the problem isn’t with all the fragile things that Arkose was throwing little wooden blocks at. It’s that Arkose is throwing them at you and Hal, and, once, at Marl. They’re cute, at least, so you can cope with the embarrassment of your best friend laughing when you get smacked dead in the forehead.
Gneiss comes to the rescue in the form of a large water bucket and some soap, and they scoop the hatchling up to get them ready for bed. They’re not old enough to stay in the hatchling’s cabin one hundred percent of the time, still only babbling incoherently, but they’ll get there in about a year. You can’t wait. (That’s sarcasm.)
When you three are released from the confinement of being grounded (Hal two days earlier, because they weren’t really responsible for it) you’re handed a bunch of chores. Clean the tree taps, which entirely falls on you because Marl can’t, skin some littlefish, help Porphy start a new batch of wine, sort some of the books in the library (which is the worst ever because nothing is properly titled), help Spinel fish, get some new cloth for Scoria to craft into work clothes—the list goes on. Most of it comes onto you, since Marl’s arm is strung up in a sling, but it’s better than being locked in the cabin for another week and hatchlingsitting Arkose.
“I’m gonna get revenge on that tree,” Marl announces, sitting on a rock protruding out from the crater wall while you and Hal are skinning fish. “Chop it down the moment I get the chance. What do you think?”
“I think that Chert would be kinda sad,” Hal replies. You snort, and they turn to you. “What? They like that tree, they told me. They might be sad if you chop it down.”
“But what if I’m saving future generations from stuff like this?” And Marl waves to their broken arm, with a smile on their face.
“Doubt that an entire generation of hatchlings is gonna get super hurt on that tree,” You snicker, then you remember that time you got hurt playing waterspout, despite hearing it from Gabbro and Scoria that it was a very dangerous game that did get them hurt on a few occasions, and even being caught playing it by the former. You know it’s bad when Gabbro gets on your case about something. “Okay. But maybe they won’t be as dumb as us.”
“You’re calling us dumb?!” Marl shouts in an exaggerated fashion, tossing their working arm over their forehead and promptly teetering off the edge of the rock they were sitting on. “We’re not! We’re super smart, when we want to be.”
“When’s that?” Hal asks, amused. You and Marl both fall back as though you were injured, and it gets them to laugh. “Come on, Riebeck’s the smartest of all of us.”
“They’re going to space soon,” Marl says as they sit up. “So it’s just gonna be us. You’re probably the smartest outside of Riebeck, Hal. Trying to translate the nomai language and stuff.” Hal's cheeks turn purple and they nick themself with the blade.
“I—thanks. Yeah.” Hal sucks on the wound for a few seconds, before they wave their hand and get back to skinning. “But Mala’s doing a lot of translating too. So they’re pretty smart too.”
It’s your turn for your cheeks to turn purple, and you focus on the skinning. You wouldn’t call yourself too smart—at least, not as smart as Hal—because, of the two of you, you’re not doing the heavy lifting. You’re just along for the ride, really. So, instead of responding to that compliment, you say something else.
“I wanna go to space.”
Marl hops up onto the ledge again, crossing their legs, before they do a double take. Hal’s staring at you, and they nick themself again, but on a different finger. “Wait, really?” Marl asks, half shocked. Then, their face brightens. “Cool! I mean, I wouldn’t go up there, but that’s cool.”
“Mala, if this is about what they said in the tree—”
You shake your head. You’ve had some time to think about it and, yeah, you wanna go to space. Real bad, actually. If not because of Feldspar, who is the coolest hearthian in the universe, then because you figure the translator has to go to somebody, when you make it. Riebeck wouldn’t need it, since they were learning to read nomai, Gabbro was just out there to nap without someone in the village getting mad at them (you’re pretty sure), and Chert is out to stare at the stars for days at a time. Feldspar’s told you themself, clapping your and Hal’s shoulders and passing you some stone tablets with writing on them behind Hornfels’ back, that they’re out to explore, and, while they’re interested in knowing, they’re content if they don’t.
So somebody needs to go up with it. And you figure that’ll be you.
“I wanna go up there,” You say. You grab another littlefish, since you’ve skinned that one to the best of your ability, and you continue talking. “I wanna go up and see all sorts of cool stuff that we can’t get here. Like black holes or big storms.”
“Don’t forget about us when you get up there,” Marl offers you. “I think I’ll stay home. Wanna learn about the plants and stuff.” They fold their arm, almost like they’re embarrassed. “Bring home a sapling or something. I’m staying here.” Ever since Feldspar brought back pictures of the plants on Brittle Hollow for the first time, Marl’s had some sort of fascination with space plants, on top of what they were already doing. It’s weird that you can see Marl maintaining a garden too, since that’s more Hal’s thing.
Yet, aside from all that behind it, one thought prevails in your head. “Minnow!” You call, tossing your arms up.
Marl makes a sound. “Okay, you win.” Yes!
Hal looks like they’re going to tell you to sleep with two eyes open, because it’s Marl, but they instead say, “What Marl said. Don’t forget about us when you go up—especially not if we finish translating nomai before you go.”
“I won’t.”
They’ve got something else in their eyes, something far more tender, but it looks like Hal’s too shy to say it to you. Especially in front of Marl, who might use it to endlessly tease the two of you. They smile and then focus on skinning their littlefish.
Except their gaze lingers for just a little too long, and Marl notices, because they’re observant when they want to be. “Hal and Malachite, sitting in a tr—”
You toss a slab of skinned fish at their face before they can finish the rhyme, cheeks and ears turning purple. Embarrassing.
You (mostly) grow up, and the day finally comes, when you’re going to launch. The night before, actually, since you’re scheduled to leave at noon, but you don’t have that kind of time sitting around. You have places to be, things simply just won’t wait any longer, but that never stops you from keeping your promise and not forgetting about them.