Happy Birthday - Lara(/Sam) - SFW

By Asynca, in 51 minutes.

When I was little girl, no matter where we were in the world when it was my birthday, my parents would always make it special.

The night before, Dad would always take me out to dinner somewhere so Mum could make me one of her cakes for me. It didn't matter where we were – New York, Thailand, Kazakhstan – we'd always do it. It was our tradition.

Once, when I was turning eight, we were in the edge of Nepal and Dad took me up one of the nearby hills. I can remember it so clearly: there were storm clouds rolling in from the east and down in the valley where the village was, multi-coloured prayer flags fluttered in the rising wind. There was such a sharp contrast between the dark under the clouds and the light from the setting sun in the west. I couldn't appreciate how beautiful it was, though, because I was upset.

"It's going to rain on my birthday," I had told Dad, my bottom lip quivering.

"That means I can't work," he had reminded me. "Your mum and I will just be forced to spend the whole day with you. Won't that be awful?" He was smiling.

It started to rain before we made it back to base camp, and I remember Dad and I were running down the muddy foothills, laughing and getting absolutely caked in sopping mud.

That birthday, the cake Mum made me was in the shape of a prayer wheel. She'd used licorice for all the symbols and I didn't really appreciate it then, but looking back, she would have brought all of that with her from England. She'd been planning it for weeks. Thinking about what I'd like, imagining how I'd react. The anticipation on her face when she'd given it to me; I can remember it so clearly.

I'd loved it, of course I had. But not half as much as I loved getting sick on it the following day in the tent while the three of us played board games together. It was my favourite part of my birthdays: terrific cakes and board games with Mum and Dad.

On my tenth birthday, Mum had made me a cake in the shape of dig site – complete with multi-levels of sediment and then encouraged me to carefully eat each slice. When I bit into a piece I understood why: she'd cooked it like a Christmas pudding with silver shillings all buried in it.

"Bet I can find more of them than you, Lara," Dad had said as he'd starting stabbing at his slice. "I am a professional, after all."

"You'll break the artefacts if you do it like that," I'd primly told him. "You need to brush across it like this." I demonstrated.

The pride in his eyes. God. You just don't forget that. "You're going to be a great archeologist one day, Lara," he'd said, forgetting the cake. "I can't wait to sit in the audience of your first plenary. I'll wear a t-shirt that says, 'That's my daughter, that's my Lara', and I'll tell everyone that asks that you're amazing and I always knew you'd do it."

We'd laughed about that silly t-shirt. Mum had even threatened to have one made for my graduation.

It never happened, though.

Because as I watched their empty caskets being lowered into the ground five weeks before my fifteenth birthday, I realised I'd never get to see Dad wear it. He'd never be at my first plenary. He'd never tell everyone I was his daughter, he never tell anyone how proud he was of me. He was my father, but now he'd never be anything except gone.

Roth tried. He did, he was a good man. For my fifteeth he went and had a cake made for me at some artsy cake shop in London. It was a tower cake in the shape of a mountain, and it was nice, I suppose. The icing was too thick and the cake was a bit dry, but that wasn't the real problem. The real problem was that no one who loved me with all their heart had spent weeks dreaming about it or hours making it. It was just a store cake. Someone made it, gave it to Roth, and then went home to their family.

His eyes were swimming as he presented it to me, though. "Happy birthday, Lara," he'd said in that northern accent of his. The house had been so very big, and so very quiet. His voice echoed off the walls.

I didn't really eat any, I just sat beside it and cried. Mum would never dream up amazing birthday cakes for me ever again, and the three of us would never sit together getting sick on them and playing board games. It was over. They were gone. I was all that was left in this big house, alone.

Sam tried, too. God, I love her, she tried. On my nineteenth, Sam had gone one step further than going to an artsy cake shop: she'd hired some fancy cake designer. The resulting cake was this amazing replica of feudal Japan. All the figures in it were made of sugar and edible. I almost didn't want to; it looked like something that should have been studied itself. I hadn't eaten it because I didn't want to ruin it. Yoko, Sam's Dad's housekeeper, had thrown it out a few weeks later when it was starting to get moldy.

Things changed so much since then, and I didn't want to blame Yamatai, but… well, they'd changed. My twenty-second birthday was so different.

I didn't know where Sam was. It was eleven, and I didn't know where she was. It was eleven at night on my twenty-second birthday and I didn't know where she was. I knew she probably felt bad about not arranging to have a cake made this year for me. It hurt, but I understood.

It was silly being all mopey on my birthday, though, so tried to make myself a cake, instead. I was and adult, now, right? I'd never been that much of a baker, but I'd Googled some cakes and decided an angel cake might be nice. Unfortunately I'd set the oven all wrong and when I'd taken the cake out of it, one side was flat and the other side was burnt. Well, I'd tried my best, and a cake was better than no cake.

I sat down at the kitchen table with this ugly, butchered cake and stuck half-melted candles from last year into it. I lit them with Roth's old cigarette lighter. The light from the candles was almost brighter than the bulb in the kitchen.

It was so quiet.

There were no amazing cake designs this year. There was no stuffing myself full with my family and no board games. It was just me and this ugly cake, alone in the dim kitchen light of my London apartment.

I felt five years old again.

And I tried not to, God, I tried not to, but wanted it all so much. I wanted Mum's crazy cakes. I wanted Dad and I being silly together as we ate them. God, I even wanted Roth's endearing and misguided attempts at being a Dad to me when Dad was gone. I wanted Sam here, holding me. Loving me while I try to eat this ugly, horrible cake that will never look anything like Mum's.

I wanted people singing and smiling and laughing and singing, "Happy Birthday, Dear Lara…" I wanted everyone I loved around me and hugging me and celebrating the fact that despite Yamatai, I was alive. I wanted everyone alive like I was. I wanted them here, now, eating this cake with me.

I wanted anyone, but there was no one else here.

Happy birthday to me.