SOJOURNER (III): tmr gally

44: I should exist in purple

Ella 44

It is beginning to get brighter, but we are forced to keep walking until we can find a cave. Sonya walks with me, mostly because I present her with no other option. Her eyes are heavy, but she is conscious. Not enough to carry a conversation, but enough to keep moving.

The sun gets higher in the sky. A few of the girls around me begin to shelter themselves, taking out blankets from their backpacks and strewing them over their heads. I don't know where my blanket has gone, if I ever had one.

Thomas separates from Harriet. He catches my eye but says nothing. He finds his way next to Leo. I try to hear the two whispers, but all I can hear is the sound of wind twirling through the mountains.

It moves through the passageways we walk in. Though the rising sun is warm, the wind is frigid. It bites at my skin, taking chunks off and blowing them away. They fly out over cliffsides, tumbling down onto the ground below us.

Sonya doesn't notice that I am being dwindled down. She doesn't flinch in the sunlight, not like I suspected she would. Her body was meant for cold. Her lips are purple, her eyes are dark, her skin is pale. In the first memory I can had of her, not the first sequentially but the first that came back to me, she looked just like this. She was lying in pale white sheets, almost camouflaging. The only way to see her separately from the white sheets which covered her mattress, was to concentrate on the only feature I ever truly remembered about her; her thin and soft lips, a deep mauve, swelling in the cold.

All she ever was, was that purple. It is the colour of royalty, and of pain. Of the robes of queens, of beautiful flowers, and of bruises. Purple is the colour of mystery. It is unimaginable force, and indistinguishable calm. It is the fire that burns inside me and powers my steps forward. It is the ticking of time as I try to imagine where I came from, and where I ought to go.

"There's a cave up ahead," Harriet calls back.

Sonya sighs. The sound is mixed with the wind. I find myself looking at her. She glances back at me. Her lips part to speak.

"Where's Thomas?" Sonya's beautiful voice is interrupted by the scratching of Leo's throat. I glance over towards her.

The crowd stops. Harriet looks scans the girls. None of their faces are Thomas. He's disappeared, I guess.

"Stuck," Harriet manages. "Y'all couldn't keep an eye on him for five minutes?"

No one provides an answer, because assumingly there is none. Perhaps Leo helped him escape, although I don't see why she wouldn't sneak off into the forest with him. She abandoned me once, she will do it again. Out of all of them, I always thought I could trust Leo the most. Now, I don't know.

"He couldn't have gotten far," Saph jumps in, looking around. "I doubt he climbed these rock walls. He has to have diverged just a bit back."

"Let's pan out," Harriet suggests. "Pair in twos, come back to that cave in five minutes. No use staying out in the sun for him."

People nod and begin to pick partners. Harriet marches over towards us, glancing us up and down.

"I'll take Sonya back to camp," Harriet tells us. "Go get Leo and bring her with us. Make sure she doesn't get too far."

She takes Sonya from my grasp. My hands linger in the air, reaching after her as Harriet moves off. I can hear them whispering. It's got to be some business none of us are supposed to know about. Whatever.