Prompted by #55 "You are my best friend in the whole world, okay?" on Tumblr.

The Best Friend

Lynnie first hears it, the term, the phrase, in a bedtime story with her uncle. It's a book, not an original improvised tale like what her da does, but it has pictures that are very lovely to look at and even to touch – her uncle lets her touch everything, no matter how pretty or special, except the silver tube on his belt – but it's also in Basic, which is harder, though the pictures make it easier for her to fill in the gaps left by language.

One such gap: this word, clumped up from some she knows, making her brow furrow. Lynnie wants to know: "What that is?"

"Hmm?"

"That. What that is. Bessfwien."

"Best friend?"

"Yes, sih-plait what is."

"Oh, a best friend is – exactly what it sounds like, really. Like of all-all-all your friends, the one who's your closest friend. Who you would tell anything to, do anything for – who knows all your secrets and dreams and all that."

"Bessfwien?"

"Yeah, so like – of all your amis here, which one is your favorite?"

"No favorite," she insists, and she grabs all of her friends – raggedy, grey, smelling so safe – and hugs them all tightly, possessively. "Fwiends all is – circle." Something new she's learned this week, finally clicked – pointing and touching and petting shapes, kissing her rug and whispering "rectangle, otay?" like a prayer. Delighting in her belly button because it is a circle, all round and whole, which is sort of what her friends feeling like her friends is like.

"Your friends are a circle?" her uncle repeats back, amused, eyes shining and bright like they get when she knows she's said something that makes him feel like he's a kid like her again, too.

"Yes," she whispers, blushing and suddenly shy, pressing her face back to her friends. She loves them all so much, it is impossible to imagine preferring one to any other. But also, there's something appealing and warm, almost safe, about this word, the accompanying picture of a purple alien who is holding the hand of the alien who is sunshine yellow as they splash in a big puddle. Making the puddle almost look warm, even though she knows, now, how rain, despite sounding so beautiful, can feel cold and trickly on your skin. Maybe a best friend is her yellow rainboots with all the blue dots. Could that be it?

She wants to know: who has a best friend, and where did they get one? She asks her uncle and he says her parents, which makes sense, they're the best anything she can imagine – except then Luke spends ages trying to pick one or the other and though he eventually settles on her mam, for now, Lynnie is certain she could never, ever choose. She asks her da, who answers Chewie fast and easy; then she asks her mam, who pauses thoughtfully for a long while before saying in her serious way that she supposes it would be her father. Something safe and secure, too, about the predictability of their responses – her father with an open, easy smile, confident about everything, her mother's slow, methodical explanations – Lynnie knows, by now, what they will give her when she asks. She even asks Artoo, pressing both palms to the droid's cold surface and whispering her question, but she can't really understand his response.

Her da wants to know: is there any reason she's asking about this now, baby?

She shrugs her shoulders elaborately, causing him to grin a bit. "I who mine is?" she confesses, trying not to make a big deal of it, like she hadn't felt so badly that she needed to know.

"That all?" he asks, frowning a little. "I'll be your best friend, lady," he promises, pulling her into his lap and tickling her and kissing her hair, everything that makes him her da – making her feel small in a good way, warm and safe. "Hmm? How about that?"

But she can't stop thinking about that picture and puddles, how yes her da would splash with her but also he was the person who'd make her dry after, how that felt – different, somehow.

And also: "Daddy, tu is too tall be my bessfwien."

Her mam isn't quite so tall as her da, which seems like it would make her a better candidate, except seeing her mama as her best friend is even harder for her to conceptualize if only because her mama still seems so otherworldly, so too-good-to-be-true, so much something in a faerie story. Lynnie doesn't remember much about Before but what she does remember is dreaming about a mother, her mother, who would be a gorgeous, loving vision in white and her mother is, in fact, a gorgeous, loving vision, although she wears a lot of different colors other than just white. There's something dreamlike about her though that Lynnie can't shake, something awe-inspiring and scary and so, so good. If her da has been her first friend, the person she wants in every fort she ever constructs for the rest of her life, to play every game she ever plays, her mam is the unknowable force – gravity and weight and whatever makes a blanket cling to a chair – that holds the fort together, that makes balls make beautiful arcs as they sail into hoops. The rain that fills the puddle.

Her mam doesn't follow-up in the same way, just sort of nods contemplatively and redirects Lynnie to her day at daycare – what did she learn? What did she play? What was difficult and how did she face it, what can they do different next time, did she try to talk to someone new like they talked about? She can't follow all of the questions but their predictability is a soothing relief from the difficulty of the best-friend pursuit, and Lynnie lets the loving, inquisitive words wash over her the way she likes to hold milk in her mouth, sometimes, just to feel all the sweet soft sitting there in the tiny cracks between her teeth. Hers. Sometimes Lynnie forgets to answer any of them at all – she gets too caught up in how nice it makes her feel, to be asked, that she loses track of the questions, but her mam is patient and doesn't mind if she has to ask again.

Endlessly patient, actually – Lynnie knows this deeply even if sometimes she's certain that it won't be true again, can never quite convince herself of any kind of infinity. One thing her mam does that still shocks her is let her hug her and hold her as long as she needs in the morning, when she drops her off at daycare. Sometimes this is a long time – there are days when for whatever reason she just feels a kind of shyness inside her that means she needs to be held a little longer, which her mama always accepts without question. Once she hugged her mam for what felt like forever, long past when all the other parents had gone, until one of the ladies who looks after all the kids tapped them and asked, all tight and stern, "What seems to be the problem here?" and her mam had said, voice all cool ease, "There isn't one," and stayed there, crouched and squeezing and rocking lightly, stroking Lynnie's braids with fluid, soothing movements, without hesitation. Sometimes she tries to explain to Lynnie that affection like that is like the food in the fridge: it will never, ever run out. But just like it makes her feel better to check the food in the fridge sometimes, just to make sure, so too does it feel right to hug her mama very very tight when she's going to go away. Just to be safe. It seems like her mother who is like the rain gets that without needing to be told, which is good because Lynnie doesn't think she could put the thought into words, if she had to, why security feels so suspect.

Endlessly patient also when Lynnie brings the subject back up a few days later, her mam continuing the conversation as if it had never lapsed. Lynnie wants to know: "Bessfwien can be not here or…?"

"Mmhmm," Leia says, frowning slightly and handing Lynnie her purple plastic sippie – not to drink from, but to dry, because the promise of the new baby has made Lynnie a little fanatical about wanting to Help as much as she can except sometimes her hands get slippery so she's not so good with things that can break.

(And the dripping water has left a few tiny bubbles and Lynnie wants to kiss them because they're so pretty, but then would they go away? But so will the towel – the towel will make them go away, so maybe a little kiss. That would be okay. She does so.)

"Why do you ask?" Leia asks, catching Lynnie's gaze and tilting her chin up to meet her eyes.

Lynnie gives a big exaggerated shrug.

"Are you missing a friend from Before?" Leia asks with concern, reaching out to smooth down some of Lynnie's wispy locks that have escaped from her braids. "It's okay if you are, you know. That's very normal – I wouldn't be hurt or anything."

Lynnie flicks her eyes away, thinking. Is she missing a friend from Before? She doesn't remember much about it – sometimes she thinks Before was maybe a dream she had while she was in her mama's pocket like where the new baby is, even though both her mam and da have told her more than once that that isn't true. She remembers beds, lots of beds, and that's really it – big rooms with lots of beds and, presumably, kids in them. Ladies who looked after them walking up and down the rows, checking the beds like she does, now, when she wakes up in the middle of the night and checks on her mama and daddy just to make sure they didn't go anywhere, or checks on her snacks in the box her daddy made her. She remembers her da being there, a little bit, crawling into his lap, and having to get cleaned up by standing up and water falling on her head and over her tummy and toes instead of sitting down in the bath and playing the way she does now. And now when she wants to get the shampoo out of her hair her mama or daddy just knows when and does it for her, instead of having to ask for someone to come over and inspect her hair for soaps, or bugs. She remembers also something about hair and looking for bugs? And now she has nightmares every so often of beds or bugs or both… of big itches but she doesn't remember a best friend… she wouldn't forget something like that, would she?

"You know," her mam is saying, trying to crouch as best as she can and touching Lynnie's cheek, "I had a best friend back at where I was from before. I do miss her, very often." She bites her lip, then, sighing in that sad sort of way she's been prone to recently, and tucks a lock of Lynnie's hair behind her ear. "She would've been something like an aunt to you…"

Lynnie resists the urge to press her palms to either side of her mother's face, which is an easier, language-less way of saying I love you. She's been looking like that more and more, recently – not sad, per se, but also not perfectly composed and patient the way Lynnie was more used to. Contemplative. Like she's showing a bit more of her not-so-much-a-vision-but-possibly-a-person-self than usual. Something about the new baby who would be her sister – not making her mean or sad or anything but making her feel… different.

Like the other day, when they'd all been sitting on the couch together. Her dad was on one side and her mam was the middle, and Lynnie was lying curled up on her side beside her with her cheek sort of pressed against her belly, which she liked because when the baby kicked it was almost like she could hear it, speaking the language of being underwater, of the inside of a puddle or a pocket. Her mam had always been endlessly patient with affection – Lynnie knew that other mothers were not that way, had seen other kids' parents pry them off of their leg after far less time, scold them after far fewer goodbye or good morning kisses – but with her belly it was a little different, she could get touchy, did not like stripes to be counted and always was reminding her to ask first. Which was new, but not bad. Never bad.

*Especially because one of the new things was also her mam crawling into her bed some nights, instead of vice versa, and hugging her very close, which was just about the best surprise in the world, to wake up being held by her mother. If she could, she would hold her mother all the time. She would make all of her amis hold hands in a circle around her mother's waist so they were always hugging the new baby. But this is very difficult to do.)

But: her hair had been poofing up (Lynnie's hair, not her mam's, her mam's hair was perfect), so her da reached out to tickle her chin and smooth it, and then after reaching across her mam's belly he let his hand rest there, which led to her mam rolling her eyes and da doing his mischievous grin and making a big show of rubbing her belly quite a bit. And then her mam was pushing his hands back into his lap, laughing, so then Lynnie did what her da had been doing and then her mam pushed her hands back into her lap, which gave her da a chance to move his hands, and so on… and Lynnie was laughing, too, giggling like crazy at the silliness of everything trying to love her mam the most, until suddenly her mam was glaring at her da, pushing his hands back to his lap too harsh and snapping, "Han, enough." Enough is hard for Lynnie to understand, because: how will she know when she's reached it, and what if she's still hungry afterwards?

"Lynnie? Did you hear me?"

Lynnie definitely did not hear her, but she nods anyway, trying to give a smile with all of her teeth. She goes to touch, then stops herself and asks, "I can touch sih-plait?"

"Yes," Leia says, sighing but smiling, "And thank you for asking so nicely."

How to explain: that by not here she didn't mean far away, she meant not here… it was all so confusing. Too confusing, and it gave her a headache, made her sleepy…

Sleepy enough that she took too long a nap and was up in the middle of the night, suddenly, abruptly Not Tired. Lynnie crawls out of bed and goes to check her parents' room out of habit – only to realize, to her horror, that her mother is not there.

"Ma-a-a-ma?" she finds herself crying out, panic creeping into her features. It's like all the blood in her body has turned to ice: suddenly she's cold, so cold. "Mama?!"

She can hear her da begin to stir, and then her mam's clear yet soft voice, coming from the 'fresher: "Sh-sh-sh, in here, 'loved, I'm in here." Sweet, desperate relief.

In the 'fresher, her mama is mostly naked, sitting awkwardly under the spray of the shower and rubbing her belly and humming the bedtime song she sometimes sings, when Lynnie begs her, about a rabbit coming home to sleep. "See, it's okay.," her mam says, "See, I'm right in here."

Lynnie, still shaken, wants to know: "Why is wet?" she asks seriously, and the sound her mam makes, a real genuine, bright, exhausted laugh is like nothing she's heard before.

"Oh, your sister doesn't want to sleep and I suppose I'm trying to coax her into relaxing. And then I remembered how you enjoy the sound of rain..."

This is true, Lynnie realizes with a start – she does enjoy the sound of rain. Even the sound of the shower is threatening to lull her back into sleepiness, which she was longing for moments ago but now she's desperate to stave off.

"Is no sleep?"

"Mhm, just turning flips and cartwheels."

"Oh."

Maybe it's written all over her face, but her mam seems to know exactly what she's thinking and says, smiling that faint, tired smile, "Would you like to come sit with me and keep me company until we're all sleepy again?"

Before she's finished speaking, Lynnie is curled up beside her under the warm spray, letting the water soak through her nightgown. "I can touch sih-plait?"

"Sure," her mam says, eyes shut and humming again, already seeming to be back in her own little world.

Lynnie lets herself touch, really touch, because she seems calm and distracted enough – resting her cheek on the hill of her mother's belly and pressing a palm there beside it. "Go sleep sih-plait. Go go please please, please being nice to my Mama…" She can feel the baby's kick against her chin and jerks up, eager and thrilled. "Mama!"

"Mm, but we're trying to get her to sleep, Lyn – think calm thoughts her way, alright…?"

Lynnie tries to think calm thoughts but instead she's thinking of the puddle, the book, the rain, her da like a towel warming her up, her mam like the water drawing her out, and suddenly everything is very, very clear. "Mama," she says seriously, "no sleep par-que my sister is go play."

"Mm – go play...?"

"Is wanna play avec moi. 'Cause rain. Go play."

"She wants to play with you in the rain?"

"Yes," Lynnie says, very serious, certain that this is very important to know.

"She knows you're very fun and wants to play with you, is that what you think?"

"In rain. Je know."

"Oh, you know."

"Oui." Touching her chin back to her mother's belly, then: "I know otay?" She can feel her mother's hands tracing her soaking hair languidly, and for a rare moment in her brief life she feels very, very certain. "And we go play when here not there and go puddles and go jump? Otay?" The book, her mother, her father, the rain. Looking at her mother's belly is like looking at a puddle is like looking at a a raindrop or a circle: round and whole. "Tu mon bessfwien whole world otay? And I let you is wear my boots and hold hand like this and we go jump and, and…"

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