Chapter 03 - Sonya

Day 30

I sat silently by the hatch. I was tired and completely sucked dry of emotion and tears.

The metallic screeching drew closer, and the hatch doors pulled back to reveal the metal box beneath.

Silence.

With a sigh I got up and looked down into the box. Maybe they had only sent supplies this time. Or maybe they were finally going to just let me die.

My eyes fell onto a hunched over figure. Long blonde hair covered the back of the person sitting with their arms wrapped around their knees, facing away from me. The usual boxes and bags of supplies were scattered messily around the newcomer.

"Hello?" I called.

The head of blonde hair slowly turned around. Hazel eyes, red and puffy from crying, looked up at me.

"Please." Her voice cracked. Clearly, she had gone through her phase of screaming and crying during her trip up like I had. "I…I tried to help her. B-but the boxes fell on top." She stammered through her words and she held up whatever it was she had been protecting in her lap. "I didn't know what to do. I could barely see!" Her tears started up again.

The small grey tabby cat in her hands mewed gently. One of its back legs was bent in a way I was certain was unnatural, and its neck was hastily bandaged up. The cloth had been taken from the girl's own shirt since I could see that hers was ripped away at the bottom. Blood was slowly seeping through it.

"P-Please help her!" stuttered the girl. I could tell her stress was at its limit. A terrifying box ride into an unknown environment, along with a dying animal in her hands, was probably taking its toll.

I jumped down into the box. She was shaking, but continued to stare at me. I took the cat in one hand and extended the other to her.

"We'll help her," I said. "And I'll help you."

She nodded and took my hand, letting me help her up onto her feet.

I climbed out of the box—with a bit of difficulty since I had the injured cat in one hand—then helped her out. She followed me silently, making startled jumps with every new noise and sound.

I probably wasn't the best person for the job, but I did the best that I could. I brought the cat to the lake and washed the gash on its neck. It wasn't too deep, and it was certainly still breathing, so that was good. The new girl watched the cat as I ran back to the supply shack to grab some materials. With some twine and the straightest branch I could find, I managed to create a makeshift splint for the cat's broken leg.

When I was done with my work, the girl continued to hold the cat close to her. We sat in the center of the Meadow, at the fire pit I had messily constructed during my first month here. I got the flames going. Even though it was day, the sky had remained dark from the previous night's rain. It wasn't the warmest of weathers.

I sat beside her

"Do you remember your name?" I asked.

It was alarming how fast she began to cry. I was startled as tears suddenly began to well up in her eyes, still red and puffy from her trip into the Meadow.

"I-I don't know!" she exclaimed, salty tears falling onto the cat in her lap. "I don't know anything! I just—I don't remember who I am. I don't remember where I came from, I-" She began to choke on her words. "I…I…"

I put a hand on her shoulder. "It's okay! It's okay…breathe…" I said, trying to steady her breathing. "It's fine. I don't remember anything either. You can think about your name later."

She looked at me, sad and confused. "Is that normal?" Her expression was so overwhelmingly disheartening that it made me want to do everything in my power to make her comfortable.

I gave her a smile.

"Nothing's really normal here," I said, "But I'll try to make it better."

She swallowed down hiccups and tried to hold her breaths back so she could speak.

"Th-thank you…"

I held my hand out to her once again.

"For starters, my name's Harriet."

The new girl was quiet and meek. Most things scared her, but after explanations about what everything was, she grew calmer. She spent most of her time caring for the cat that had come up in the box with her, resorting to just calling her Cat. She said it'd be rude to name an animal when she couldn't even think of her own name.

To be honest, she was a convenient distraction for me. Every moment I had alone before she arrived, I was thinking about Joan, but now my mind was preoccupied with new tasks every day to teach the new girl about the Meadow.

My relationship with her was much more back-and-forth than it had been with Joan. When it had just been Joan and I, we both somewhat knew the same things, and didn't know the same things. With the new girl, though, she had different types of knowledge.

She knew how to properly keep the crops alive, and the most efficient ways of irrigating water to them. She knew how to care for the animals; what they liked and didn't like, and what they needed to live more healthily. Most importantly, she knew how to throw in different types of ingredients together to make something much tastier than the raw fruits, vegetables, and charred up animals I had been surviving off of.

All of these things, she taught me, and in turn I taught her my knowledge. I showed her how to catch fish and make a hammock. I coached her through daily exercise regimens, worried about her slim figure versus her new environment. I felt important. I felt depended on.

On the 14th day after her arrival, she finally remembered her name.

"Harriet."

I rolled over in my hammock, ignoring the nudge at my side. The sun had already risen but it's not like we had any particular schedules to stick to.

"Harriet!"

I felt something soft, but dense, drop onto my stomach. Tiny pricks made their way through my shirt. Small paws kneaded into my skin.

Dumping Cat onto each other had become our impromptu way of waking each other up.

"What…" I murmured, eyes still closed. I scratched Cat behind the ears, lifting her slightly so that her claws detached from my shirt.

"I remember my name."

I opened my eyes to look at her.

"It's Sonya," she said.

"Sonya," I repeated, still staring at her. Cat leapt off my stomach and onto the ground beneath the hammock.

She started to cry on the spot, but with a smile on her face.

"I-It feels so good to be called by a name!" she exclaimed through her tears. She wiped at her eyes with her sleeves. "I don't feel… s-so lost anymore!"

I raised my arms in her direction and smiled.

"Come here, Sonya."

She stopped trying to wipe away her tears and threw herself into my arms. The hammock creaked in protest and we swayed dangerously back and forth.

We stayed in my hammock for a while. She began to chat excitedly about how she heard her name while she was sleeping—like someone was calling to her. I told her that I found my name in a similar fashion.

We were both happy that I could finally stop calling her "new girl" all the time.

After Sonya discovered her name, I felt like she gained even more personality. She might not have actually changed that much, but I think finally being able to put a name to a face made her stand out that much more to me.

We weren't very similar in personalities, but I felt like she was now a part of me. I felt she was someone I had always needed in my life. She was my anchor, and whenever I felt my thoughts wander to some dark and depressing place, her presence grounded me back to who I was supposed to be.

I hadn't actually known her for that long, but I felt like we had known each other for a lifetime. A full lifetime, that is; before this one.

We talked about everything. We matched up our knowledge on what we knew the world should be like to make sure we had the same facts. We discussed what we'd want our ideal rooms, houses, pets, even school classes, to be like.

I thought we had talked about everything possible, until she asked me something new.

Sonya pulled up weeds besides me, working in silence as I shoveled up dirt. We were working on planting some new vegetables.

"Who's Joan?" she asked suddenly.

"Hm?"

"She was someone important to you, right? Before I got here…"

I began to shovel with more force.

"Next question."

"Harriet, we literally only have each other in this place. There's no point in keeping secrets," said Sonya. She had become much more assertive ever since learning her name.

"I don't…" I mumbled a bit, trying to keep my emotions in check, "I don't want to talk about it."

"There's a rock by the tree that marks the garden," she continued, crouching down beside me and continuing to talk instead of pulling up weeds. "The name 'Joan' was scratched into it. I actually found it a while ago, but I didn't think it was the right time to ask."

I should have just hid that rock.

"Now's not the right time either," I replied.

But she continued her interrogation.

"Does she…have something to do with the maze?"

I tensed up. Sonya knew I never talked about the maze; not since she came up in the box and I let her look through the peephole and told her to stay away from it. All she had to know was that it was an unsolvable maze, it was full of monsters, and it was dangerous. I had flat out begun to act like it didn't exist.

"Is she the reason why we never go in it?"

I thrust the shovel into the ground and put my head in my hands.

"Sonya, I-"

She patted the ground next to her, motioning for me to sit.

"I really don't want to talk about this."

"There's only you and me here," she said, looking up at me. "I know almost everything about you—everything there is to know, really. We've basically spent our whole lives here since we don't know anything before it."

I slowly sat down besides her, conceding to the conversation.

"You literally know everything about me. Everything that makes me who I am happened after I came up in that box and met you." She rested her head on my shoulder. "But there's a you that I don't know—a you from before I got here. And I know that's blocking me from knowing a big chunk of you."

I leaned my head back against hers.

"You know everything you should know."

"Don't keep secrets from me to protect me," said Sonya. "If you keep secrets, I'll get curious, and I'll go out into that maze. Tell me, and I'll understand. I won't have to look for myself."

"It's not that…I know I can trust you with anything; you're smart enough to make your own decisions," I said, closing my eyes. "It's just…it's just me trying to block out guilt."

She sat in silence, urging me to continue. She probably knew that if she were to interject any time soon, I'd stop talking about the subject.

"Joan was the second girl here," I explained, "I was alone for a month, and then she came up. She was amazingly strong and brave. She wanted to go into the maze, so we did. She's the one that made that hole in the wall."

I began to remember Joan. It hurt me vividly.

"She became fed up with being here, and I let her go into the maze alone after the doors closed. I found her the next day completely messed up. She had been attacked by those giant Demons, and whatever it was they had in those stingers changed her." I furrowed my eyebrows, trying to hold back tears. "She kept trying to kill me. She said everything was useless, and that we were all dead—that there's no point to anything. I think… I think she knew something about why we were in here. I think the sting made her remember something terrible."

"She was like that for three days. I tied her up, but she kept trying to kill me. I had eventually given up on everything—I actually wanted to die with her. When she broke free, I thought I'd just let her kill me. But then-" My voiced pitched higher, and I swallowed back sobs, "She killed herself. She…she came back for a moment, I'm sure of it. She killed herself before she could kill me."

I let the tears fall. If anything, they were long overdue.

"It was all my fault. I let her die. I should have stopped her from going in. I should have gone with her—maybe the two of us could have done something. I could have helped her…"

I looked down. The dirt was completely covered in the pattern of my fallen tears.

"When she was gone, I wanted to go with her."

I felt Sonya intertwine her fingers with mine, and I turned to face her.

Tears rolled down her face as she held my hand.

"Why are you crying?" I asked, still crying myself.

"I'm just sorry you had to go through that," she said, "I can't make you feel like it's not your fault, but if it was me, and you were the one that died…I don't think I could have went on. You're very strong for continuing on."

"It's not strength. I was just doing what I was told," I said.

"What do you mean?"

"Before she passed…she said 'Take care of the rest.' I told myself that if no one came up in that box the next day, I'd join her. But luckily you did."

I squeezed her hand.

"I had to take care of the rest."

Today was day 30. Someone new was going to be sent up in that box tomorrow.

Sonya squeezed my hand in return.

"We'll take care of rest."

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