Blackberrying

The two cloaked sisters entered the greyscale forest.

To E, the youngest, it was just the forest. A world without colour was all she had ever known.

A was just old enough to remember what a landscape lit by sunlight looked like. She had tried describing it to E many a time, but it was like trying to describe sound to a person born deaf.

In the olden days, A would say enigmatically, monochromatically, people would use filters on social media to achieve the same effect. Then E would ask about social media and A would sigh and tell her to get on with sweeping the floor of the cottage.

The cottage inherited from A’s parents, who’d died in the efforts to put out one of the too fast fires caused by the too hot sun. E had turned up in desaturated rags one day, knocking at the door with the last of her strength. They’d started calling each other ‘sister’ within months. E had been walking all night the night they met. The only time anybody could go out now without becoming a fried egg. No yolk.

Luckily the sunlight that bounced off the moon was still tolerable. Just. Enough for a few hours of fetching water and gathering logs.

On the other side of the planet, it was rumoured Great Minds were building a parasol that when launched would guarantee protection for all inhabitants. But it was stuck in construction phase. A used to joke that the blueprint was faulty, they needed to work to a blackandwhiteprint. A joke that flew over E’s innocent, moonwater-enlightened curls.

“I have been reading about moonbathing,” said E as she stepped over a large root. Blissfully unaware of A’s grimace.

“Oh yes?” said A, politely. “Whatyu learn?”

“Apparently it helps settle downs a woman’s cycle. Which I thought meant thing you ride around on but it didn’t make sense.”

A laughed, the rattling noise sending a few rats scurrying. “If anything, mine’s worse for all this moonwalking.”

E was silent. Probably wondering where A kept her bicycle locked up.

After fifteen minutes of threading their way through shadows, the sisters found Bramble Wall. A started picking up high, while E gathered kindling from the forest carpet. A compatible few moments where the only sounds were feet creaking twigs. Soft scratching of small branches in baskets. A call of a bird, erroneously reporting two ghostly female predators.

And it was true, all the moonbathing had given them, over time, an ethereal glow. A told E about how people who used to travel to get tans. E recoiled in horror as though A had been describing cannibalism, not melanism.

E came to inspect A’s berry pickings, and nodded wisely.

“The restorative rays of the moon will enhance the flavour,” said E, obviously parroting from some literature A hoped would have burned instead of her mother and father. A memory hit A suddenly: the mouthburst of sundried tomatoes.

Walking back, arms loaded, A saw a Bat. E was annoyed she missed it.

“Hey, I just thought, we’re sorta like vampires. Only safe to go out at night,” said A, laughing, although she didn’t sound amused to E.

“What’s a vampire?”

“Summat that’ll give you nightmares. Summat that will make you want to waste all that garlic we collected yesterday instead of sharin’ it around.”

E looked at her in wide-eyed, silver-dollared bafflement.

Would hanging up a string of garlic actually do any harm? Thought A. The world had already been unlucky enough in ways unimaginable. It was conceivable the next step would be vampires rising up to claim their stake. She had an easier time believing it than believing they would ever live to see the parasol in action.

“What are you thinking about?” asked E, twirling on her fingers one of the slender sticks she’d plucked from her armful.

“I’m thinkin’ do you ever stop talkin’?”

E sighed. “The moon is supposed to bring calm. But I think it does the opposite to you.”

“I’m just messin’, silly. Never stop asking questions. It’s something that sets us apart from those rabbits over there. Especially like that one there that I’m gonna get you for your dinner.”

A took in the white line of E’s smile before she set off running.

The last E saw of A was the black whip of her braid snapping back and forth as she ran to get their food.

E sat on a mound of soft ashy moss coating a nearby silver rock. And waited.

And waited some more.

She waited until the very last minute it was safe to do so, when the loudspeakers began urging forest wanderers to get back to their bases, it was nearly time for sunrise. Lucky for E that the loudspeakers had even been working that day, as she’d fallen asleep.

It was a month before E happened upon her sister’s charred remains.

E kept her promise. She never stopped asking. Never stopped questioning. After about a decade had passed, she’d gained enough knowledge to be asking about solar engineering. She experimented. She designed. She came up with a way of sending rockets that would manipulate particles to coat the sun in a protective shell.

The stream of accolades poured down on her. But she always found a means to escape the attention long enough to go blackberrying in the moonlight, the only berries she deemed of good enough quality to leave at A’s grave.

Walking back after performing this ritual one evening, a conversation with her sister replayed in her mindreel.

E: “Tell me again. What you like best about being my sister.

She remembered A smiling despite herself.

A: “The company. I’d go mad if I just told the moon all my secrets instead. That’s why she’s so full tonight, she’s full of everyone’s secrets. So full that she sometimes spits them up…

E: “Gross!”

A: “…and they turn into stars!”

E: “Wow, cool!”

The fickleness of youth, thought E, as she found a familiar mossy rock to stay and watch the sun rise.