This short story was published on Sunday, 1 February 2026 and is part of the Kakantiga Ultra or Cantos of the Beyond: a daily new short story or play dreamfishing and celebrating past, present, possible and future Kristang culture. This short story features the anticipated future 45th Ka-Kabesa quad and is set in Perth in June 2629.
“Don’t.”
Raunak didn’t turn around.
“Raunak, if you walk out like that, the Simon aunties downstairs are going to decide you’re either having a breakdown or starting a ceremony.”
He kept tying the cord at his waist, slow and careful.
“You worry too much, Jubayr.”
“I worry because you dress like prophecy,” Jubayr replied. “And prophecy attracts commentary.”
Raunak laughed under his breath.
The veil-shawl draped over his shoulders caught the morning light, woven with thin threads of pandan fibre and recycled silk. It was light, warm, and slightly transparent where it had been repaired too many times by too many loving hands.
Behind him, Jubayr sat on the low sleeping mat, wrapped in a wool blanket dyed with river-mud and eucalyptus ash. Their hair was still loose from sleep, curling softly in the salt air.
Outside, the wind moved through rooftop gardens and bamboo shades. Solar petals opened along the balconies. Water tanks clicked and sighed as they shifted their weight.
Perth, June 2629.
Winter, but gentle.
Cold enough to keep you honest.
“It’s practical,” Raunak said. “Blocks wind. Holds heat.”
“And shows your ribs,” Jubayr replied.
“Those are ancestral.”
Jubayr rolled their eyes.
A pedal-tram rattled past below, bells chiming softly. Someone was already singing in the communal kitchen, a low, drifting tune that braided Kristang with Noongar rhythms and something older than both.
Raunak slipped on his wrist-thread, a simple band woven from kelp fibre and copper. It pulsed once, warm against his skin.
“Relax,” he said. “It’s just a run.”
Jubayr blinked.
“A run,” they repeated.
“Yes.”
“At dawn.”
“In winter.”
“Along the cliffs.”
“With the swell warning still up.”
Raunak finally turned.
His eyes were bright. Too bright.
“You promised,” he said.
“I promised you I wouldn’t stop you from doing something stupid,” Jubayr replied. “I did not promise to endorse it.”
Outside, a long horn sounded from the river mouth. Three low notes. Tide shifting.
Raunak finished tying the cord and flexed his fingers, feeling the familiar pull in his shoulders, the quiet readiness in his calves. The shawl slid against his skin like cool breath.
“I need it,” he said simply.
Jubayr studied him.
“How bad is it?”
Raunak shrugged.
“Bad enough that I woke up before the birds.”
That was answer enough.
Jubayr stood.
They crossed the room and pressed their forehead briefly to his.
“Don’t break anything irreplaceable,” they murmured.
“I’m very replaceable,” Raunak said.
“Liar.”
They grabbed his satchel and shoved it into his hands.
“Water. Salt cakes. Fire tab. If you disappear, I’m telling everyone you ran off with a seal.”
“Cruel.”
“Effective.”
He laughed, low and real, and slipped out.
The stairways spiralled down the building’s spine like woven shells.
Raunak took them two at a time.
Past sleeping doors painted with family marks. Past drying nets. Past walls warm with stored sunlight. Someone handed him a cup of bitterleaf tea without comment. He drank it in three swallows and kept moving.
By the time he reached ground level, the sky was still half-unmade.
Grey-blue. Soft. Stretching.
The coastal path unfurled ahead of him, stitched from compacted sand, resin, and old ship-plank. To his left: gardens, smoke, voices. To his right: open water, dark and restless.
He started running.
Not for speed.
For rhythm.
Feet striking. Breath opening. Heart finding its drum.
Cold air cut into him. Salt burned his lips. The shawl fluttered like a living thing behind him.
Further down, others were already moving.
A peskadorang hauling nets with bare hands.
Two teenagers racing barefoot, laughing.
An older woman walking into the waves up to her knees, greeting the day.
Raunak ran past them all.
The path narrowed.
Cliffs rose.
Wind sharpened.
Spray leapt up and kissed his calves.
He veered off the main trail where the warning ropes had been pulled back for winter.
Down.
Over.
Across.
Hands on rock. Feet on ledges slick with algae. Body remembering routes older than maps.
His lungs burned.
Good.
His thoughts scattered.
Better.
At the final ridge, he stopped.
Below him, the ocean crashed into a bowl of black stone.
A tidal pool the size of a courtyard.
Steam rising.
Water churning.
Alive.
Raunak stripped the shawl and laid it on a warm rock.
Then he ran.
And jumped.
The cold hit like a shout. Like being slapped awake by the entire planet.
He went under.
Dark. Pressure. Roar.
Then surfaced, gasping, laughing, limbs flailing in wild gratitude.
He swam hard, letting the waves batter him, letting the salt scrape yesterday out of his bones.
Climbed out.
Shaking.
Breathing.
Grinning like someone who had just wrestled a god and survived.
Above him, the sun finally cleared the clouds.
Gold on water.
Gold on skin.
Somewhere back in the apartment, Jubayr would be making tea and pretending not to worry.
Here, on the edge of land and everything else, Raunak raised his face to the light.
Alive.
Entirely.
And not done yet.
He stayed on the rock until the cold stopped feeling sharp and started feeling familiar.
Until his skin forgot it had ever been warm.
Until the line between “inside him” and “around him” blurred into something porous and breathing.
The tidal pool kept folding and unfolding itself.
Water slid in.
Paused.
Withdrew.
Again.
Again.
Raunak traced the rhythm with his breath without meaning to.
In.
Hold.
Out.
Hold.
It was an old habit.
Older than this shoreline.
Older than this city.
Older than some of his memories.
He sat with his knees drawn up, shawl clutched loosely around his shoulders, watching light fracture on moving water.
Gold.
Grey.
Blue.
Gold again.
Each colour arrived, lingered, dissolved.
Nothing stayed long enough to hurt.
That was good.
That was the point.
A gull cried somewhere above him.
The sound cracked open a seam.
Suddenly he was not here.
He was standing on a concrete balcony that no longer existed.
Rain threading sideways through fluorescent light.
His hands on a railing so cold it burned.
Someone shouting his name from very far away.
Or maybe from inside him.
He blinked.
The gull wheeled.
The sound thinned.
The balcony dissolved back into rock and salt.
Raunak exhaled slowly.
“Stay,” he murmured, not to anything in particular.
The water answered by continuing to be water.
He pressed his palm flat against the stone.
Warm.
Real.
Present.
Another wave of memory tried its luck.
A stairwell.
Emergency lighting.
The smell of disinfectant.
A blanket that wasn’t a blanket.
A voice saying, “Can you hear me?”
Too loudly.
Too close.
He shifted his weight.
Let the sun hit his face.
Let the wind tangle his hair.
He focused on small things.
Salt drying on his knuckles.
The tiny green thread woven into his shawl.
The way his pulse tapped softly at his throat.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Proof.
The memories retreated.
Not gone.
Just… respectful.
Waiting their turn.
Good.
He had worked hard for that.
Raunak leaned back and watched clouds drift like slow animals across the sky.
They reminded him of hospital ceilings.
Which was annoying.
So he renamed them.
That one was a turtle.
That one was a canoe.
That one was definitely an old aunty scolding someone.
Better.
His mouth twitched.
Saudadi.
Elisia.
Soft joy.
Gentle presence.
Being alive without needing to justify it.
He let himself feel it.
The warmth on his cheeks.
The ache in his muscles.
The clean, hollowed-out feeling in his chest after cold water and hard movement.
Not empty.
Cleared.
Like a swept floor.
Another memory rose.
This one quieter.
Jubayr sitting on the floor with their back against his bed.
Not speaking.
Just there.
For hours.
No fixing.
No advice.
Just gravity.
He swallowed.
The tide surged higher, splashed his toes.
He laughed quietly.
“Okay, okay,” he said.
“I hear you.”
He pulled his feet back, wrapping them in the shawl.
For a moment, he rested his forehead against his knees.
Not collapsing.
Not hiding.
Just… resting.
When he lifted his head again, the light had shifted.
Morning had fully arrived.
The path above would be filling now.
Voices.
Footsteps.
Life resuming its gentle chaos.
Raunak stood.
Slowly.
Testing his balance.
Solid.
Good.
He shook out his arms, rolled his shoulders, breathed deep.
The breath caught.
Not dramatically.
Not in a way anyone would notice.
Just… a hitch.
A tiny snag in the smooth fabric of him.
Raunak frowned and inhaled again.
The air went in.
It did not go all the way down.
It stopped somewhere behind his ribs, like it had hit a closed door.
He tried again.
Same.
A thin, quiet pressure began to gather in his chest.
Annoying.
Unnecessary.
He rolled his shoulders harder, as if he could shake it loose.
“Come on,” he muttered.
Nothing.
The ocean roared below him, unconcerned.
A stronger gust of wind tore past, snapping the edge of his shawl.
And suddenly the world tilted half a degree.
Not enough to fall.
Enough to doubt.
His vision softened at the edges.
Not dark.
Washed.
Like looking through tears he hadn’t cried.
He froze.
No.
Not here.
Not now.
Not after all that.
He dropped back onto the rock without meaning to.
His hands pressed flat against the stone.
Cold.
Too cold.
His heart sped up, confused.
Tap-tap-tap-tap.
Too fast.
He focused.
Salt on skin.
Stone under palms.
Wind in ears.
Present.
Present.
Present.
It didn’t listen.
Another memory surged, rougher this time.
White light.
Metal rails.
Someone counting.
Someone crying.
A taste of copper.
His jaw clenched.
“Stop,” he whispered.
The word barely made it out.
His breath shortened.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
Too shallow.
Too quick.
A familiar dread unfurled in his gut.
Not fear of dying.
Fear of losing the work he had done.
Of being dragged backward into that old narrow tunnel where every thought echoed and there was no room to turn around.
He pressed his forehead to his knees.
Okay.
Tools.
He had tools.
Jubayr’s voice in his head, patient and firm:
Name five things.
Five.
Rock.
Water.
Sky.
Shawl.
Hands.
Four things you feel.
Cold stone.
Wet cloth.
Wind on neck.
Heartbeat.
Three things you hear.
Waves.
Gulls.
His own breath.
Two things you smell.
Salt.
Kelp.
One thing you trust.
He hesitated.
The answer came anyway.
Jubayr.
The pressure eased a fraction.
His breathing slowed, grudgingly.
The memory receded, sulking.
He stayed folded forward, shaking slightly, until his pulse found a calmer rhythm.
But it did not leave.
It never really did.
It only rearranged itself.
The pressure slid from his chest into his throat, then into his jaw, then into his temples, where it settled like a band being tightened one invisible notch at a time, slow and methodical, as if whatever part of him was panicking had decided to be patient about it.
Raunak lifted his head.
The world was still there.
The rocks were still dark and solid.
The water was still moving.
The sky was still pale and wide.
Nothing had collapsed.
Nothing had ended.
Which, perversely, made the fear sharper.
Because there was no external excuse for it.
No storm.
No accident.
No emergency.
Just him.
Alone with a body that sometimes remembered things before his mind was ready to.
He stood again.
Carefully.
Too carefully.
Like someone stepping onto ice he couldn’t see.
His knees trembled, just slightly, and he hated them for it, hated the way they broadcast uncertainty like faulty antennas, hated the way weakness always seemed to find the smallest cracks and pry them open when he wasn’t looking.
“Not today,” he muttered.
He took a step.
Then another.
The path up the rock face suddenly looked much steeper than it had ten minutes ago, every ledge sharper, every gap wider, every handhold less trustworthy than it had been when he had come down on adrenaline and sunlight.
Halfway up, his breath snagged again.
Harder this time.
A shallow, panicked flutter that refused to become anything as useful as a full inhale.
His fingers tightened on the stone.
Too tight.
His knuckles went white.
If he slipped now, he wouldn’t die.
He knew that.
There were lower ledges.
Soft sand.
Water below.
But his body didn’t care about probabilities.
It cared about echoes.
About falling.
About losing control.
About the sudden terrifying idea that he might not be able to make himself safe on command anymore.
A pulse of heat surged through him, followed by cold.
Sweat broke out along his spine.
He froze.
Literally froze.
One foot on a narrow ledge.
One hand gripping a ridge.
Body suspended between up and down.
The ocean roared beneath him, suddenly enormous, suddenly intrusive, suddenly too present.
“Okay,” he whispered.
“Okay, Raunak. Okay.”
The words felt thin.
A memory pressed in, uninvited and merciless.
A corridor.
A clock ticking too loudly.
A nurse asking the same question three times.
Him nodding because nodding was easier than explaining.
Are you safe right now?
Are you sure?
Are you sure you’re sure?
His throat tightened.
He tried to swallow.
It didn’t work.
Another step.
His foot slipped a fraction.
Not enough to fall.
Enough to confirm every catastrophic prediction his nervous system had been rehearsing.
His heart lurched.
Too fast.
Too hard.
He gasped.
The sound scraped out of him, ugly and small.
No.
No no no.
Not here.
Not where anyone could see.
Not where Jubayr would find out later and look at him with that quiet, careful worry that hurt more than anger ever could.
He pressed his forehead against the rock.
It was cold.
Solid.
Unmoved by him.
Good.
He needed something that didn’t care.
“Breathe,” he told himself.
He tried.
Air rushed in and out in short, panicked bursts, as if his lungs had forgotten the concept of moderation.
His vision narrowed.
The edges of the world dimmed.
Not black.
Grey.
Like fog rolling in from the inside.
He thought, distantly, absurdly:
So this is how it happens again.
Not dramatically.
Not tragically.
Just quietly, in a beautiful place, on a morning that was supposed to be good.
Anger flared.
Hot and sudden.
No.
Absolutely not.
He dug his fingernails into the stone.
Grounding.
Pain.
Here.
Now.
He forced his jaw to unclench.
Forced his shoulders down.
Forced his ribs to expand, even though they resisted like rusted hinges.
In.
Slow.
Hold.
Out.
Longer.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Gradually, reluctantly, his body began to believe him.
The pounding in his ears softened.
The fog thinned.
The ledge stopped looking like a knife.
He stayed there for a full minute, shaking, breathing, negotiating with every frightened part of himself.
When he finally moved again, it was not with grace.
It was with stubbornness.
He climbed.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Unapologetic.
Each movement a small declaration:
I am still in charge.
I am still here.
You do not get to take this from me.
By the time he reached the path, his legs were burning and his eyes stung and his shawl was plastered to his back with sweat and seawater.
He collapsed onto the packed sand and lay there, staring at the sky, chest heaving.
People were passing now.
Someone glanced at him.
Looked twice.
Looked away, politely pretending not to notice.
Thank you.
After a while, he rolled onto his side and laughed.
A shaky, half-hysterical sound.
“Wow,” he whispered.
“Still… exciting.”
He lay there until his breathing evened out.
Until his hands stopped trembling.
Until he could imagine walking back into the apartment and letting Jubayr see him like this.
Not victorious.
Not shiny.
Just… real.
And somehow, that was the hardest part.
But Raunak still did not go home.
He told himself he was just extending the run.
Just letting the adrenaline finish its work.
Just giving his body time to forget what it had almost remembered too clearly.
But really, he kept walking because stopping felt dangerous.
Because stopping meant sitting still long enough for the echo to come back.
So he followed the upper path as it curved inland, away from the sharp drama of cliffs and spray, into the layered terraces where gardens, drying racks, seed tables, and shaded benches folded into one another like a living archive of ordinary care.
People were everywhere now.
Aunties trimming vines.
Kids carrying buckets too big for them.
Someone repairing a cracked solar petal with wire and stubborn optimism.
Two elders arguing gently over the correct way to fold fishing nets.
Normal life.
Which made his internal chaos feel louder by contrast.
His legs still trembled, faintly.
His chest still felt too full, like he had packed himself too tightly and forgotten how to unzip.
Every few steps, he caught himself checking his breathing.
Too fast?
Too shallow?
Still okay?
He hated that.
Hated the way fear had turned him into his own worst surveillance system.
He passed a communal water barrel and nearly missed the cup beside it. When he finally stopped and drank, his hands shook enough that water sloshed onto his wrist-thread.
He stared at the droplets.
Annoyed.
Ashamed.
Ridiculous.
“Get it together,” he muttered.
No one answered.
No one answered.
The terraces went on being terraces.
Wind in the drying cloth. Steam from kettles. Someone laughing too loudly over nothing. The scrape of a hoe against stone. Ordinary morning, doing its ordinary work of reminding everyone that life continued whether you were ready for it or not.
Raunak stood there for a moment, feeling slightly unreal, like he was a few seconds out of sync with the rest of the day.
Then he walked.
Not toward home.
Not away.
Just… along.
Past the water barrels. Past the pandan beds. Past the place where someone always left mango peels for the compost birds. He kept his eyes low, following the line of his own shadow, because looking up felt risky, like it might invite another wave.
It was halfway along the main terrace, near the old planter built from ship-timber and coral stone, that he slowed.
Someone was sitting there, trimming leaves.
Blue headscarf. Faded shirt. Bare feet hooked lightly around the bench leg. A shallow bowl beside him already half-full with neat green cuttings.
The Forty-Fifth Ka-Kabesa Ostros.
Raunak recognised him immediately, not with a jolt, not with awe, just with the quiet awareness you had when you noticed a river had joined your path.
He had seen him around all his life.
At festivals. At river cleanings. At meetings that weren’t really meetings. Always doing something small and useful. Always somehow at the centre of things without standing in it.
Right now, he was humming under his breath and arguing gently with a stubborn leaf.
Raunak meant to walk past.
He really did.
Instead, his breath hitched again, tiny and traitorous, and he stopped without quite deciding to.
Ostros glanced up.
Not sharply.
Not searching.
Just… noticed.
“Bong pamiang,” he said.
The words landed softly, like a hand on a shoulder.
“Bong…pamiang,” Raunak replied, a beat too late.
Silence followed.
Not awkward.
Working silence.
Scissors snipping. Leaves falling. Wind moving through shade-netting.
Raunak stood there, unsure why he hadn’t kept going.
His chest still felt tight.
His thoughts still felt crowded.
He stared at the bowl of cuttings.
“They smell good,” he said finally, because saying nothing felt worse.
Ostros smiled faintly.
“Yeah. Keeps the mosquitoes polite.”
He tipped a handful into the compost.
Another pause.
Then, without looking directly at him, Ostros said,
“You’ve got cliff-water in your hair.”
Raunak lifted a hand, touched his temple.
It came away damp.
“Oh.”
“Mm.”
Ostros set the scissors down.
Not dramatically.
Just… done for now.
“You want to sit?” he asked, nodding at the empty space beside him.
No pressure in it.
No expectation.
Just an opening.
Raunak hesitated.
Then, quietly, sat.
The bench was warm from the sun.
For a few seconds, that was all there was.
Warm wood.
Moving air.
Two people breathing at different speeds.
Then Ostros spoke again, gently.
“Rough morning?”
Raunak watched a leaf spin slowly in the compost bowl.
“Kind of,” he said.
Not a lie.
Not the whole truth.
Enough.
Ostros nodded, as if that answered something important.
“Yeah,” he said. “Those happen.”
And somehow, for the first time since the cliffs, Raunak believed that they could happen without meaning anything had gone wrong.
Ostros picked up the scissors again and began trimming another stem, slow and unhurried, as if the conversation had not paused so much as found a more comfortable rhythm.
Raunak sat with his hands folded loosely in his lap, watching the small green crescents fall into the bowl. His breathing was still a little uneven, but it was no longer fighting him.
For a while, neither of them spoke.
Then a shadow crossed the bench.
“Oi, you’re cutting too much,” a voice said mildly. “You’ll stress it.”
A man with a purple headscarf had come up from behind the planter, carrying a coil of shade-net and a needle threaded with bright fibre. He crouched beside Ostros without ceremony and peered at the plant.
Indros.
Raunak recognised him just as easily. Everyone did. Indros had the reputation of noticing what everyone else missed and saying it out loud in exactly the tone that made you listen.
Ostros tilted his head.
“Only the outer leaves,” he replied. “It’ll bounce back.”
“Mm,” Indros said, unconvinced. “Still. You’re in a generous mood today.”
He glanced at Raunak, then back to Ostros.
“Oh. Morning, Raunak.”
“Morning,” Raunak replied, surprised to hear his name said so casually.
Indros smiled briefly and returned to mending the net, fingers moving with practiced ease.
“Careful,” he added, not looking up. “You’re sitting like you’re about to apologise to the bench.”
Raunak flushed.
“I’m not.”
“You are,” Indros said. “It’s fine. Happens when people forget where their weight belongs.”
Ostros hid a smile.
Raunak shifted, experimentally, and found that Indros was annoyingly right.
A few minutes later, a low hum drifted over from the other side of the planter.
Not singing.
Not exactly.
More like someone thinking out loud in melody.
The man leaning against the post had a red headscarf and a sketchpad balanced on his knee. He had been there the whole time, Raunak realised, quietly drawing and listening.
Sintetos.
He looked up suddenly.
“Hold that position,” he said.
Raunak froze.
“What?”
“Too late,” Sintetos replied cheerfully, pencil moving. “Got it.”
Raunak leaned over despite himself.
On the page was a loose, gentle sketch: him on the bench, shoulders slightly rounded, head tilted toward Ostros, eyes half-lost in thought.
It was uncomfortably accurate.
“That’s… me,” Raunak said.
“Currently,” Sintetos agreed. “Not permanently.”
He flipped the page and went back to humming.
Raunak felt something loosen in his chest.
Like being seen without being pinned down.
Then someone knelt in front of him.
He looked up.
A man in a green headscarf was arranging tools beside the planter, setting them in neat rows, wiping soil from their handles before placing them down. He glanced at Raunak through thin-framed glasses.
Vadros.
“Drink more water,” he said calmly, holding out a bottle. “You’re still dry around the mouth.”
Raunak took it automatically.
“…thanks.”
Vadros nodded once and returned to his tools.
No commentary.
No follow-up.
Just care, delivered like fact.
They fell into a shared quiet again.
Ostros trimming.
Indros stitching.
Sintetos sketching.
Vadros tending.
Around them, the terrace went on breathing.
Raunak realised, slowly, that his shoulders had dropped.
That his jaw was unclenched.
That he had stopped counting his breaths.
He watched Ostros work for a moment.
“You all… always do this?” he asked quietly.
“Do what?” Ostros replied.
“Be… here,” Raunak said. “Like this.”
Indros chuckled.
“Unfortunately, yes.”
Sintetos added, “We’re very boring.”
Vadros looked up.
“Reliable,” he corrected.
Ostros glanced at Raunak.
”What’s on your mind?” he said.
”Death,” answered Indros immediately.
”The radiant, inexpressible elisia of the cliffs and sea,” added Sintetos.
”The knowledge that life is so profoundly transient it cannot help but both hurt and heal,” said Vadros, setting down a pair of garden shears with a “clack”.
Raunak stared. Then re-oriented himself, reminding himself that he should have expected the Ka-Kabesa to use siruwi on him.
”Yes,” said Ostros, looking intently at him, as if that answered Raunak’s thoughts. Maybe it did.
For half a second his mind did the neat, practiced thing it always did in public: straighten, smooth, pretend. It reached for a normal explanation the way a hand reached for a railing.
Shared context.
Sharp eyes.
Community gossip.
Leadership intuition.
All of which might have worked, if the answers had not landed with the exact timing of a single breath.
Not overlapping.
Not competing.
Stacked.
Like someone had arranged them carefully and then set them down in his lap.
He felt a thin, bright thread of irritation flare up, immediately followed by shame for being irritated at people who had just steadied him.
“You… didn’t even let me finish asking,” he said, trying for lightness and missing by a centimetre.
Indros’s mouth twitched.
“Sorry,” he replied, in a tone that suggested he was not sorry at all.
Sintetos tilted his sketchbook closed with a soft tap, then looked at Raunak more directly than before, not probing, not hungry, just… there.
“Do you want a boring answer,” he asked, “or the honest one?”
Raunak let out a breath that sounded like a laugh and didn’t.
“Is there a difference with you?”
Ostros snipped another leaf, then set the scissors down again as if deciding the plant could wait.
He did not look intense.
He did not look like a leader.
He looked like someone who understood the exact weight of the moment and refused to add an ounce to it.
“Talk to me like I’m just a person,” Raunak said abruptly, before he could talk himself out of it. “Not like… not like I’m a reading.”
Vadros paused with his hand on the watering jug.
His gaze flicked to Ostros, then away, then back to Raunak, so quickly Raunak almost missed it. A coordination that didn’t feel like a glance so much as a signal.
Ostros nodded once.
“Okay,” he said. “Just a person.”
Raunak’s throat tightened anyway.
He looked out across the terraces.
A woman shook out a length of cloth; it snapped in the wind like a small flag.
Two kids chased each other around a planter, shrieking.
Somewhere, someone dropped a pot and swore, and three aunties laughed like it was the best joke of the century.
Life.
Right there.
And still his body carried that other place like a bruise.
“I don’t know why it keeps… finding me,” he said quietly.
Indros resumed stitching, needle flashing in and out of netting.
“It doesn’t find you,” he said. “It lives with you.”
Raunak flinched.
“Nice.”
Indros shrugged, unbothered.
“Truth’s not here to be nice. It’s here to be usable.”
Sintetos’s pencil began moving again, slower now, as if he was drawing sound rather than shape.
Ostros leaned back on his palms and looked up at the shade-netting above them where the sun made soft, shifting patterns.
“You went to the cliffs because you wanted to feel real,” he said.
Raunak’s fingers tightened around the water bottle.
“I went because I needed my head to shut up.”
“Same thing,” Ostros replied.
Raunak swallowed.
There was a line he could cross here. He could say it. He could name it. He could turn the fog into a noun and let it sit between them on the bench like a fifth person.
He didn’t.
Not yet.
Instead he said, “Jubayr thinks I dress like prophecy.”
Sintetos smiled without looking up.
“You do.”
“I dress like I don’t want people to touch me,” Raunak corrected, sharper than he intended.
The air seemed to still.
Not the wind.
Just the little pocket of space around the bench.
Vadros set the jug down with deliberate care, as if he was placing something fragile back onto a shelf.
Ostros didn’t react the way most people did when someone snapped.
He didn’t retreat.
He didn’t soothe.
He just nodded, once, like Raunak had finally said something accurately shaped.
“Yeah,” he said. “That too.”
Raunak’s eyes stung, suddenly, with no warning and no permission.
He looked away fast, furious at his own face.
“I’m fine,” he said automatically, as if the phrase could still do its old work.
Indros made a soft sound that might have been a laugh.
“Say it one more time,” he said, “and the bench will file a complaint.”
Raunak let out a reluctant, shaky breath.
It wasn’t a laugh.
It was close enough to remember laughing was possible.
Sintetos tapped his pencil once against the sketchbook.
“What’s the worst part?” he asked, voice low, careful.
Raunak’s mouth opened.
Closed.
He could feel the answer moving inside him, not as words but as images: white light, metal rails, the taste of copper, the feeling of being watched by people who meant well and still did harm by accident.
He chose a smaller truth.
“The part where I’m doing okay,” he said, almost whispering, “and then my body decides I’m lying.”
Ostros’s gaze flicked to him then, steady and warm.
“That’s not lying,” he said. “That’s memory without language.”
Raunak stared at him.
Something in that phrasing made his chest loosen in a way the breathing exercises never quite managed. Not because it fixed anything. Because it didn’t blame him.
Vadros finally spoke again, voice quiet, practical.
“Eat another salt cake,” he said. “And then, if you want, walk back with us. No speeches. No escort. Just… company.”
Raunak blinked.
“With you?”
Indros didn’t look up.
“We also have legs,” he said. “We use them sometimes.”
Sintetos added, “And if anyone asks, we were just going to check on the pandan anyway.”
Ostros smiled faintly.
“Which is true.”
Raunak looked at them, one by one.
Blue. Purple. Red. Green.
Not arranged.
Not posed.
Just present in a way that felt almost unfairly steady.
He realised, with a small jolt, that his hands had stopped trembling again.
That he hadn’t checked his breathing in several minutes.
That the terrace noises had come back into focus: birds, kettles, footsteps, laughter, the soft hiss of irrigation.
He let the water bottle rest against his knee.
“Okay,” he said.
It came out rough.
But it was real.
Ostros picked up the scissors again, snipped one last leaf, and dropped it into the bowl.
“Good,” he said simply.
And then, as if it were nothing, as if it had always been the plan, the Fourty-Fifth Quad went on with their ordinary work for another minute, long enough for Raunak’s nervous system to believe he wasn’t being managed, long enough for his dignity to settle back into place.
Only then did they stand.
Only then did they start walking.
And Raunak, still damp with cliff-water and old fear, found himself moving with them like it was the most natural thing in the world.
“Tell us about it,” Ostros said, as they walked.
Raunak’s mouth went dry again, so quickly it felt rehearsed.
They had left the planter behind and were moving along the terrace path that threaded between pandan beds and hanging nets, past a line of solar petals that clicked open as the sun climbed, past the big communal cistern where the aunties were already arguing about whose turn it actually was to scrub the rim.
He heard all of it.
He also didn’t.
Because one small word in Ostros’s sentence had hooked under his ribs and pulled.
It.
He could have pretended not to know what it was.
He could have played stupid. He was good at that when he needed to be.
Instead he said, “Which part.”
It came out flat.
Not defensive.
Not inviting.
Indros glanced at him sideways, then back to his own hands, still busy even while walking, fingers worrying at a loose thread on the shade-net coil as if the world would come apart if he didn’t keep something mended.
“The part you keep stepping around,” Indros said. “Like it’s a puddle you’re worried will swallow you.”
Sintetos made a small thoughtful noise and fell half a step behind, as if giving Raunak room to choose where his own body wanted to be in the group.
Vadros stayed on Raunak’s other side without making it obvious, matching his pace with irritating precision, close enough that if Raunak stumbled he wouldn’t have to be caught in public, just… steadied.
Ostros didn’t look at Raunak.
He looked at the path.
At the way the sand-resin mix had cracked near a root.
At the way a child’s footprint had pressed a tiny crescent into the edge of a puddle.
At everything except Raunak’s face.
Which, Raunak realised, was a kind of mercy.
“It’s not a story,” Raunak said.
His throat tightened on the last word, like it wanted to turn the sentence into something else.
Not a story.
Not a legend.
Not a cautionary tale.
Not something that belonged to other people’s mouths.
Ostros nodded once, still watching the ground.
“I know,” he said. “But you’ve been carrying it like it’s poison, and you’re doing that thing where you try to keep the poison from touching anyone, and meanwhile it’s touching you every day.”
Raunak’s jaw clenched hard enough to ache.
Ahead, a pair of teenagers hauled a crate of seedlings across the path and almost collided with them. One of them looked up, registered who was walking by, went rigid with surprise, then immediately pretended the crate had become fascinating. Indros clicked his tongue in amusement.
“The seedlings don’t care who we are,” he said gently, and tugged the crate slightly to help them past. “They just want not to be dropped.”
The teens grinned in terror, and then scuttled off.
Raunak felt his skin prickle.
Being seen while fragile always made him feel like a crime.
Sintetos, as if sensing it without making a point of it, started humming again, the same almost-song from earlier, soft enough that it didn’t drown anything out, steady enough that it gave the morning a spine.
Raunak focused on the sound.
On the rhythm of footsteps.
On the smell of wet earth and crushed pandan leaf.
On the fact that his body was walking, and therefore, technically, obeying him.
“Say it,” Indros said suddenly, gentle and blunt in the same breath.
Raunak’s stomach dropped.
“Say what.”
Indros shrugged.
“The word you don’t want to say. The one your mouth keeps stepping around.”
Raunak felt heat rush up his neck.
He hated that his body still did that.
He hated that the shame still knew the shortest route to his face.
He stared at a patch of sunlight trembling on the path like a living thing.
His voice came out smaller than he wanted.
“I tried to die,” he said.
No details.
No theatre.
Just the fact, placed down like a stone.
The path kept going.
The gardens kept breathing.
Somewhere a kettle whistled and someone yelled, “TURN IT OFF, YOU’RE BOILING THE WHOLE OCEAN!”
Raunak almost laughed, and then didn’t, because the laugh caught on the word he’d just spoken and turned sharp.
Ostros finally looked at him then.
Not pity.
Not horror.
Not that careful brightness people put on when they were trying to be good.
Just recognition of the felisi.
“Yeah,” Ostros said quietly. “That.”
Raunak swallowed hard.
His hands had gone cold.
He tucked them under the edge of his shawl, not to hide, but because he needed the pressure.
“And now,” he added, before anyone could fill the space with something he didn’t want, “I’m still here. Which is… fine. Mostly. Except sometimes my body thinks it’s back there, and it punishes me for not finishing.”
The sentence landed and immediately made him want to take it back, drag it into his chest and lock it up again.
He waited for the flinch.
For the moral panic.
For the suddenly-soft voices.
For the nervous “are you safe” loop that always made him feel like a broken appliance someone was afraid would catch fire.
None of that came.
Vadros nodded once.
“Bodies do that,” he said, as if Raunak had said he sometimes got headaches. “They repeat alarms even after the building is no longer burning.”
Indros snorted.
“Also, your body is dramatic,” he added. “Which is rude, because your brain is already doing enough.”
Sintetos looked up from his sketchbook, eyes bright in a way that wasn’t cheerful, exactly, but wasn’t dark either.
“Can I say something,” he asked, and didn’t wait for permission, “that might annoy you?”
Raunak managed, somehow, to nod.
Sintetos tapped his pencil against his teeth.
“You’re not haunted because you’re weak,” he said. “You’re haunted because you survived yourself. That’s a strong kind of surviving. It’s just… not glamorous.”
Raunak’s throat worked.
He looked away fast.
The terrace path curved toward a quieter corner where the pandan beds gave way to a little open square: a low wall, a bench built from old ship plank, and a small shrine-marker made of river stone and shell fragments, not grand, not official, just… tended.
Someone had left a single sprig of something green there.
Not a flower.
Something living.
Raunak felt his chest tighten again, but this time it wasn’t the panic-band.
It was something else.
Something like grief that wasn’t trying to kill him.
Ostros slowed slightly as they approached the bench.
“We’re not asking you for the whole thing,” he said, voice low, practical. “We’re asking you for the part that still bites you in the mornings. The part that makes you run to the cliffs like you’re trying to scrub yourself clean.”
Raunak stared at the shrine-marker.
He could feel the old reflex rise: don’t be a burden, don’t make it weird, don’t spill your insides in public, don’t—
He forced himself to breathe anyway.
In.
Hold.
Out.
Longer.
He said, carefully, “The unresolved part is that everyone keeps acting like surviving means it’s over.”
Indros made a small sound of agreement, like a nail being tapped into place.
Sintetos’s humming stopped.
Even the wind seemed to quiet for a moment, as if listening.
Raunak continued, because now that the sentence had started, it wanted to finish.
“And it’s not over,” he said. “It just changed shape. It became… a background weather. And sometimes the weather turns, and I’m back in it, and I hate that I can’t control it, and I hate that Jubayr has to see it, and I hate that I’m still embarrassed, like this is some… moral failure, instead of just a thing that happened to me and in me.”
His voice went rough at the end.
He stopped.
He waited for the collapse.
Nothing collapsed.
Ostros’s gaze softened, not in pity, but in something like respect.
“Okay,” he said, as if Raunak had just handed him a tool and he was taking it properly. “That’s usable.”
Raunak blinked.
Indros lifted one shoulder.
“See,” he said. “Truth. Not nice. Usable.”
Vadros stepped toward the bench and patted the wood once, a simple invitation, the same as earlier, repeated in a new place.
“Sit,” he said. “Two minutes. Let your body learn that you can say it and the sky doesn’t fall.”
Raunak’s legs felt suddenly heavy.
He sat.
The ship-plank bench creaked under his weight, familiar and solid.
The quad didn’t sit like guards.
They sat like people who belonged to the same morning as everyone else.
Ostros beside him.
Indros on the edge of the low wall, still mending his net like the world depended on it.
Sintetos cross-legged on the ground, sketchbook open again, but his pencil still.
Vadros standing for a moment, checking Raunak’s face the way you checked someone’s temperature without touching them, then sitting too.
Raunak stared at his hands.
They were not trembling.
Not right now.
He didn’t know what to do with that.
Ostros spoke quietly, as if he was careful not to startle the parts of Raunak that were still skittish.
“You don’t have to go home right away,” he said. “But you also don’t have to keep walking until your legs give out. We can do a small loop. One that ends somewhere with tea. Your choice.”
Raunak swallowed.
Tea sounded impossible and perfect.
He nodded once.
“Okay,” he said, and this time the word didn’t come out rough.
It came out… tired.
Which was also real.
Indros grinned.
“Good,” he said. “Congratulations. You’ve been promoted from ‘alone and spiralling’ to ‘tired with witnesses.’”
Sintetos let out a soft laugh, warm and brief, like a match struck in wind.
Vadros reached into his satchel and handed Raunak another salt cake without comment.
Raunak took it.
He ate it.
The simple act felt, absurdly, like a small treaty.
And when they stood again, and started walking, it really did feel natural, not like an escort, not like a ceremony, just like four steady presences and one battered survivor moving through an ordinary Perth morning that had decided, for once, not to punish honesty.
They walked in a loose line, not tight, not staged.
Ostros slightly ahead, setting a pace that was slow without being patronising.
Indros drifting in and out of conversation with whoever passed, never quite losing the thread of the group.
Sintetos trailing a little, sketchbook tucked under his arm now, humming only when the path grew quiet.
Vadros beside Raunak, close enough to be there, far enough to respect space.
The terrace path dipped and rose gently, like a long breath.
Raunak felt himself settling into it.
Not “better”.
Not “fixed”.
Just… inhabiting his body again.
Which, today, was enough.
They passed a row of drying racks where thin strips of kelp and citrus peel fluttered like small flags. One of them snagged briefly on Raunak’s shawl and then slipped free.
He paused without thinking and untangled it.
The veil-shawl was still damp at the edges from the cliffs. Sunlight caught in its patched threads, making the repairs glow faintly: pale gold, sea-green, smoke-grey. A map of all the times it had almost fallen apart and been patiently put back together.
Sintetos noticed.
Of course he did.
“You know,” he said mildly, “that thing could probably tell your biography if it learned to talk.”
Raunak snorted.
“It already tattles enough.”
Indros glanced over.
“Jubayr gave it to you, didn’t they?”
Raunak hesitated.
Then nodded.
“After… after everything,” he said. “I wanted to stop. Felt stupid. Too visible.”
Ostros slowed half a step, listening.
“And Jubayr said?” he prompted.
“They said,” Raunak replied, voice softer, “‘You don’t get to disappear just because you got hurt.’”
Vadros made a thoughtful sound.
“Good line.”
“Annoying line,” Raunak corrected. “Effective.”
They reached a small overlook where the terraces opened out toward the river, sunlight rippling across water channels and floating gardens. Someone had hung strings of shells and seed-pods between two posts; they chimed faintly in the breeze.
Raunak stopped there, leaning on the railing.
The shawl slipped slightly from his shoulder.
Without thinking, he pulled it back up.
Ostros watched the movement.
Noticing.
Always noticing.
“You treat it like armour,” Ostros said gently.
Raunak stiffened.
“I—”
“Not bad armour,” Ostros added quickly. “Breathable. Flexible. Doesn’t pretend you’re invincible.”
Raunak stared out at the water.
“That’s not why I wear it.”
“No,” Ostros agreed. “It’s why you keep it.”
Silence settled.
Not heavy.
Weighted.
Indros broke it first.
“Look,” he said, tugging lightly at one of the shawl’s repaired seams. “This bit’s from the flood year, right?”
Raunak looked down.
A narrow strip of darker silk, almost invisible unless you knew to look.
“Yeah,” he said. “Aunty Merina stitched that in. While yelling at me.”
“For?”
“Trying to throw it away.”
Sintetos laughed quietly.
“She would have killed you.”
“Psychoemotionally,” Raunak agreed. “Slowly.”
Vadros traced another patch with his eyes.
“And this one?”
“Hospital,” Raunak said before he could stop himself.
Then froze.
But no one jumped on it.
No one went quiet.
Ostros just nodded.
“Makes sense,” he said. “It’s soft there.”
Raunak swallowed.
He had never said that part out loud.
Not even to Jubayr.
That he had asked for it.
That he had wrapped himself in it in those white rooms, because it smelled like home and salt and smoke and ordinary mornings.
Because it reminded his body there was still a world outside the beeping.
“I thought,” Raunak said slowly, “if I stopped wearing it, maybe I could pretend none of that was… on me.”
Indros shook his head.
“Doesn’t work like that.”
“I know.”
“Good,” Indros replied. “Because pretending usually just makes it louder later.”
Sintetos tilted his head.
“You know what I see,” he said, “when you walk past in that thing?”
Raunak raised an eyebrow.
“Someone about to start a cult?”
“Tempting,” Sintetos admitted. “But no. I see someone who refuses to be either naked or hidden.”
Raunak frowned.
“What does that even mean.”
“It means,” Sintetos said, searching for words, “you’re visible, but on your terms. Filtered. Softened. Still real.”
Ostros nodded.
“It’s a veil,” he said. “Not a wall.”
That landed.
Raunak felt it land.
A small click inside him, like something aligning.
He looked down at the shawl again.
At the patches.
The frayed edges.
The places where different hands had left different kinds of care.
A history you could wear.
“I always thought,” he said quietly, “that it was proof I was still… fragile.”
Vadros met his eyes.
“It’s proof you stayed,” he replied.
Raunak’s throat tightened.
He turned away fast, pretending to study the water.
After a moment, Indros spoke, lightly.
“Also, practically speaking, it’s very good at stopping aunties from pinching you without warning.”
Raunak laughed.
Properly this time.
God, yes.
“That alone justifies it.”
They stood there a while longer.
Watching boats glide.
Watching kids skim stones.
Watching someone lose a hat to the wind and chase it heroically.
Then Ostros shifted his weight.
“Tea?” he asked.
“Tea,” Raunak agreed.
As they turned back onto the path, the shawl lifted in the breeze and settled again around his shoulders.
Not as camouflage.
Not as prophecy.
As a record.
As a promise.
As something that said:
I was torn.
I was mended.
I am still walking.
*
They made tea in the kitchen of their lower terrace apartment, where three different kettles were always arguing with one another about who boiled fastest.
Indros negotiated a truce between them.
Sintetos rescued a chipped cup with a painted turtle on it.
Vadros adjusted the water ratio with quiet, ruthless precision.
Ostros just leaned against the counter and watched Raunak’s shoulders slowly come back down to where they belonged.
They drank standing.
Steam fogged the windows.
Someone outside was teaching a child how to whistle with a blade of grass.
It took three tries and a lot of laughter.
Raunak wrapped both hands around his cup.
It was too hot.
He didn’t mind.
When they walked him home, it wasn’t in formation.
It was messy.
Indros stopping to talk to a neighbour about a broken sluice gate.
Sintetos pausing to sketch a cat that refused to move out of the middle of the path.
Vadros picking up litter without comment.
Ostros matching Raunak’s pace without making it obvious.
By the time they reached his building, the morning had fully ripened.
Voices layered.
Cooking smells rising.
Laundry flapping like soft banners of persistence.
Jubayr was on the balcony, pretending not to look for him.
They failed.
Raunak lifted a hand.
Jubayr froze.
Then exhaled so hard it was almost comic.
“You’re late,” they called.
“Emotionally,” Raunak replied. “Yes.”
They snorted.
The quad stopped at the base of the stairs.
No speeches.
No blessings.
No symbolic gestures.
Just presence, loosening its grip.
Ostros met Raunak’s eyes.
“You know where we are,” he said.
Raunak nodded.
“I do.”
Indros added, “And we know where you are.”
Sintetos saluted with his pencil.
Vadros gave a small, approving nod.
Then, as naturally as they had arrived, they peeled away into the terrace traffic, absorbed back into ordinary usefulness.
Raunak watched them go for a moment.
Not with awe.
With something closer to gratitude that didn’t feel like debt.
He climbed the stairs.
Jubayr met him at the door and immediately pressed a warm mug into his hands.
“Explain,” they said.
“Later,” Raunak replied, and leaned into them.
They held him.
No questions.
No analysis.
Just weight and warmth and breath.
After a while, Jubayr murmured into his hair, “You look… tired.”
“Yeah.”
“But here.”
“Yeah.”
They stayed like that until the kettle downstairs screamed again and someone swore at it affectionately.
Later, Raunak would tell the story.
Later, he would probably cry.
Later, there would be harder days.
But not now.
Now, he sat on the mat with his back against Jubayr’s chest, tea cooling in his hands, shawl folded neatly beside him, sunlight pooling across the floor like something patient and kind.
Outside, Perth went on being a city made of regreened wind, water, memory, and stubborn love.
And inside it, Raunak Estrop went on being alive.
Not perfectly.
Not heroically.
But honestly.
Which, in the end, was enough.