Deleted Scene: Cozy day trip, June’s POV

2300 words, 8 minute read.

“The last time we did something like this, we got lost and had to call your parents collect from a convenience store pay phone,” Siobhan says.

I finish clipping Siobhan’s wheelchair into the train-provided restraints and sit down in the seat beside em, slinging my heavy messenger bag into my lap. It’s mid-morning, mid-week, and we’re the only ones on board. The engineer mumbles over the grainy intercom, and with a slight jerk, the train rolls out of Fernhill Station.

“We were twelve then. Now we’re almost twenty-seven. Fifteen years has to count for something, right?” I say. I pat my bag. “Besides, I came prepared. Maps, visitor guides, cash, credit, first aid kit, water, snacks, tissues, extra socks, the works!”

Siobhan laughs. “Okay, okay, you’ve convinced me. So, we’ll just…get up and get off at whatever stop tickles our fancy?”

“That’s right.”

“And then explore whatever little corner of the metropolitan area we end up in?”

“I was thinking we should go all the way toward the end of the line,” I say. “Something farther out.”

“Not as far as [CITY]?”

“No, that’s like a three or four hour ride on the commuter line, right? Not enough time to explore after that. Maybe half as long a ride, and stick to this train?”

Siobhan pats the custom wheelchair e’s seated in. It’s electric, with wide, chunky tires. The rims are painted metallic pink, and the seat is fuchsia. It doesn’t have handles on the back, and little metal studs, the pointy kind that’s really popular on punk clothing right now, line anywhere someone might try to grab on. It’s impressively tricked out.

“Well, I’m ready. This baby can go pretty much anywhere. Except stairs and narrow hallways,” e says, with a dark, knowing chuckle.

“We’ll avoid those, then.”

The motion of the train is soothing, and we pass the next hour catching up on all the little things that have happened in the past few days since we talked. A handful of other passengers come and go, mainly parents with small children who aren’t in school yet. Siobhan waves and makes kissy faces at all of them, and the children all smile back, except a shyer one who hides behind eir parent’s legs.

Outside, the city gradually morphs into the suburbs, then into more forest and farm than houses. The explosively green Casporan spring paints the countryside in cheerful, sunny colors. The fields are full of tractors and laborers planting all the staples of a good Casporan diet: wild rice, corn, tomatoes, apples, cherries, greens, and many whose seedlings are too small to identify.

“Don’t we usually book the summer cabin around now?” I ask. “What are we going to do about, well, the Mairead situation?”

Siobhan groans. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve been meaning to tell you—I have to have another surgery on my leg in Honey Moon. I won’t be up for any kind of hiking or camping this summer. So invite em if you want, or Aeronwy wants, or whatever.”

I care a lot more about the surgery news than worrying about Mairead just yet. “Are you doing okay?” I ask. “I know you’ve been having a lot more pain lately. Is it about that?”

“Essentially,” says Siobhan, clearly not happy about the prospect. “It’s a mess in there, you know. My injured leg is slightly shorter than the other, and it’s starting to cause problems with my other leg and my back. I’m going to fucking hate the recovery time, but maybe this way I’ll be more mobile when I’m sixty.”

“I hope so.”

The train passes over the [NAME] River, and I glimpse its usually calm waters churning strangely—the springtime salmon run. The engineer announces the next upcoming stop as [TOWN STATION], an outlying historic town known for its fishing industry and traditional crafts. I haven’t been there since I was a kid, but I remember the main street smelling like cinnamon almonds and lavender.

I shake Siobhan’s arm excitedly. “Hey, why don’t we get off here?”

[TOWN STATION] opens directly into the heart of the quaint downtown district, which has wide paved streets for pedestrians and spiraling rows of traditional wooden longhouses, their window baskets and front gardens overflowing with flowers. Unlike Caspora City, with all its steeply graded hills, [TOWN] lies on the flat river delta where it flows into Seafoam Sound. It’s as leisurely a place as someone could wish for.

I walk and Siobhan rolls slowly down the main way, stopping in to whatever buildings catch our eye. The shops sell wonderful artisan gifts like handwoven cedar and redwood baskets, jellies, jams, pickles, artwork, sculpture, notebooks, handmade paper, and the sort of shiny trinkets that we joke Aeronwy would spend all of eir money on. All of the restaurants advertise the freshest fried fish sandwich in the country, and I don’t doubt they’re telling the truth.

There are also some educational spots, recreations of what life was like several hundred years ago, or even a thousand. One longhouse we step into is pleasantly warm and smells of fresh pine smoke, a fire at the center crackling merrily as the smoke drifts through a chimney above. There are historical interpreters dressed in period clothes making goat’s milk butter, smoking salmon, weaving, sewing, and even a calligrapher who you can pay to draft a short letter of your choosing.

The one historic reenactment we quickly back out of is the medical one. Most of it is fine—the interpreter is showing a small crowd how to make a salve, and herbalism seems to be the majority of what’s in the small room—but there are some unpleasant displays about amputations and cauterization during the [COUNTRY] War of 3845, before the invention of antibiotics for infection.

“I sure am glad for modern medicine,” Siobhan says. “Surgery sucks, but at least we have anesthesia and painkillers.”

“Will you need help afterward?” I ask.

We amble through the medical garden beside the building. Siobhan’s chair really can go almost anywhere, its thick treaded tires rumbling without trouble over the hard-packed dirt between the rows of plants. A lot of them overlap with plants I use in the Bindery, having uses that are magical as well as medicinal. Casporan poppies, lavender, chamomile, nettles, [PLANT], [PLANT]. Little signs give each one its name and basic uses, and the place is lousy with bees.

“The good thing about living in a convent is you’re never alone,” Siobhan says. “My Siblings will be taking care of me for the most part, but I won’t say no if you want to stop by with some [COUNTRY] takeout.”

“I can do that, easy.”

“Even if I ring you up at four in the morning with a craving for [FOOD] that just won’t quit?”

“I don’t think the restaurants are open at that hour, but I could try making you some. I’ve always wanted to expand my cooking skills to other cultures, and I’ll probably be awake anyway.”

“You’re the best, Junie.”

Soon our journey takes us to the edge of the [NAME] River, which is broad and shallow. The water is incredibly clear, which means that the salmon swimming upstream are very visible. I squat down on the grassy bank and watch them fight against the current, following an impossibly faint scent from their life out in the ocean all the way to the mountain pools and ponds of their birth.

All I can smell is the water, which has a minerally, green algae smell that I’ve always loved. Sometimes the fish leap fully out of the water in their quest to get where they’re going, splashing us with diamond-like spray. The river gurgles over its rocky bed, swirling around boulders at the shore and creating small, calm pools where some of the fish huddle, presumably taking a break. If fish know what taking a break is.

“I wonder how they know where home is,” Siobhan muses.

“I read somewhere that it’s an extraordinary sense of smell,” I say. “They can detect just a few molecules of the exact water where they were born.”

Siobhan snorts and says, “Just like you. Are you secretly a salmon, Junie? Will I find your cast-off scales somewhere, and if I steal them, you’ll have to grant me a wish before I give them back?”

“Maybe,” I say with a grin and a wink. “What would you wish for?”

“An endless supply of potatoes? Never to have to pee again with no weird consequences? An infinite supply of sexy bedmates and the ability to have multiple orgasms in one session?” Siobhan tosses out eir ideas like weird breadcrumbs.

“Can’t argue with those.”

The grin on eir face fades just a little. “The obvious one would be to wish for my family back, but we’ve all read how that goes in the horror novels,” e says.

I drop my gaze to the water, where my reflection stares back at me, laid over top of the fish like a double-exposed photograph. Which reminds me to pick up the camera from around my neck and snap a few shots.

“If I were a magic salmon, I’d find a way.”

“You did find your way home after a whole decade.”

“That’s true,” I say, thoughtfully. “It does feel like I’m home, mostly.”

“Mostly?”

I fall back onto my butt to give my ankles and knees a rest. I should probably get more exercise since my job keeps me at various desks and such all day. I stare out at the sparkling river, the strange fishy eyes set into red and green hooked faces, the tall and dark line of conifers on the opposite bank. Overhead, giant cotton balls float across the sky from one ridge of mountains to the west to the other in the east. The volcano looms on the horizon, a quiet sentinel.

“Mostly. I’m working on it,” I say. “Definitely feel like I’ve been swimming upstream these past two years. I’m not all the way done yet, but I’m taking a breather.”

“Good,” says Siobhan. “How do you feel about breathing and lunch at the same time?”

We find a cute restaurant with outdoor seating and a stage, on which is a bluegrass band playing guitar and fiddle and mandolin, with a double bass in the back. The layering of strings whets my appetite, which is already considerable after so much walking.

While we’re waiting for our food, I take out my notebook and the pen Aeronwy gave me. I said I’d keep it at home, but I like having it with me, as if it’s some sort of good luck charm. I use it to write down the basics of everything that’s happened today, including bits of our conversations which I clarify the wording of with Siobhan. Before I know it, our food arrives.

“Sorry, I didn’t realize I was writing for so long,” I say, putting the notebook away. “Was I ignoring you?”

“I’m used to it,” Siobhan says. “Much as I love being the constantly adored center of everyone’s attention, I know you need to check out every now and then to think or write furiously. It’s just who you are.”

I think about that while we eat. I wonder how many minutes—hours?—a day my note-taking adds up to. My actual journaling these days takes forty-five minutes at least, often twice that, my hand in cramps by the end. I’ve been saving up for a personal computer with a word processor just to solve that problem, and the one of storage. According to the ads I’ve seen, apparently I could fit several notebooks worth of material on one floppy disk the size of a coaster.

I’d have to get better at typing. I have an electric typewriter, but I rarely touch it, because I hate having to make corrections or start all over again when I inevitably make mistakes. It makes the journal process take even longer. No one else I know takes even remotely that long to record their day.

Siobhan leans one elbow on the table. “Whatcha thinkin’ about?”

“Something scary,” I say. I poke at my potatoes. The fish was excellent, absolutely as fresh as advertised, but the rest of the dish has gone cold now.

“Oh?”

“Not writing everything down. Not writing things down…at all?” I venture, wincing at the thought of the latter.

“I think your record-keeping is amazing,” says Siobhan.

“Thanks. It’s useful, but I just started to wonder,” I say, “what else I could use that time for. Even just some of it. Especially during the day, with other people. I don’t really want to keep ignoring my company.”

“I certainly won’t say no to more of your attention,” Siobhan laughs, “but that’s because I’m a greedy bastard.”

I give Siobhan my attention for the rest of the trip, and try not to think about how I’ll describe certain sensations, sights, or sounds later when I write about them. Stepping back from my constant stream of thoughts to look at the whole of the stream is fascinating and weird. Do I really draft my journal entries in my head hours or even a full day before I actually have the pen in my hand? Is that healthy? How much am I missing out on by honing in on specific descriptions instead of just—being in the moment?

And what if I forget? The anxiety nags at me like a case of hiccups, popping up every few minutes to remind me that nothing is truly permanent. It’s enough to make my hands itch, so I pull out the cherry blossom pen and press the clicker on the end over and over until I feel better.