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Roimata woke from her snooze with a start. A chill had settled deep into her skin while the sun set, a shock from the warm sunlight that had felt like it was on her skin just moments ago. The garden was cast in shadow now, the shadows from the hills draping over the house stretching towards the beach. Over the hedges and trees, she could see pink streaks flaring outwards in a last, great, vibrant effort before the day surrendered to the night. Before the whole thing began again tomorrow.Pohau meowed. She had been petting him when she dozed off, feeling him purr on her lap, but now he was pacing back and forth in front of the wicker chair and yelling.“Alright, alright,” she muttered. “You’ll not starve if your food is a couple of hours late, you silly cat.” As she stood, her joints creaked like ancient wood, stiff from sitting still for hours – but also age. The silver takeover of her once-dark hair confirmed it; she was getting old. She stretched out her back as she straightened her spine, feeling a satisfying and all-too-frequent click-click-click, like the winding of an old-fashioned watch.She could hear the melodic wooden clattering of the wind chimes blowing at the front of the house as she stepped through the open patio door. When the breeze blew in the right direction, she could hear the waves on the shore as well, as clearly as if she was standing up to her ankles in the sea. Instead, today, she heard an unfamiliar sound.The sound of floorboards under the weight of someone’s feet.For a startled moment, she thought she must have forgotten she had a guest - perhaps someone had come around for tea and a cake and she had stepped out into the garden for a moment only to fall asleep? - but she didn’t have guests anymore. It was more likely to be some wandering creature that had slipped through the patio door while she slept, a stoat perhaps, or one of those dogs she sometimes saw being walked on the beach, slipping its leash and its owners. The creak had come from the studio, and she was imagining bright yellow paw-prints tracked across her paintings in oil paints, preparing herself for the worst as she crept towards the door.She struggled to comprehend just what kind of creature she was seeing for a moment – until she saw that it was a person, crouched to the floor as they looked through the paintings stacked against the studio’s wall.“Excuse me,” she said irritably, deciding that even if she had somehow forgotten about a guest, they should not have been snooping around in her studio. “What are you doing in here?”The intruder didn’t answer; the ends of their long, black braids, hanging loose from where they were knotted, swayed slightly as they tilted their head at the pieces. As they stood, Roimata saw that under their flowing embroidered shawl, they had a narrow frame, petite but wiry. She felt a sickening pang of familiarity that she pushed down as habitually as she breathed. Pohau walked past Roimata and started circling the stranger’s feet and meowing at them, rubbing his side against her ankles. She scowled at him, trying to inform him that he should not be looking for pets from trespassers and burglars.The stranger turned, and Roimata saw her features one at a time. First, her round cheeks, and the soft bridge of her wide nose. The round glasses that rested on it. The hazel green eyes that weren’t at all obscured by the shine of the lenses. The different parts of her face came together to make a face that was much too young. And relaxed. And alive.“Hello, Roimata,” Claudia said. She said it so casually, as if she had run into Roimata at the market. As if she’d never been gone.How many times had she wished that she would unlock the door of the Cornwall house and find Claudia in the kitchen, burning pasta because she had suddenly been enlightened with an idea and needed to sketch it? How many times had she wished to see an undiscovered painting appear in a gallery that Roimata, alone, knew she couldn’t have painted more than a month ago? How many times had she wished for a letter through her door from some far-off place where artists were gathered in harmonious solitude?And yet never, not once, had she imagined that her first words to Claudia would be, “This isn’t fair.”Claudia laughed. A laugh like the joyous peeling of bells, with the shadow of a cruel edge. She laughed like she was getting away with something. Like she knew something you didn’t. It hadn’t changed in ten years – but then she hadn’t aged in ten years, either. Roimata didn’t feel in on the joke when she smiled and said, “No. It is not. It scarcely ever is.”Over the years, she had tried to imagine what she would say to Claudia if she ever returned. Sometimes the words fell away and all she wanted to do was kiss her. Other times, she would rather give her a slap. Neither impulse could win out when she was presented with the actual opportunity; her rage and her elation clashed horribly. It was ugly splatters of paint on canvas, done carelessly and in extremes. The colours overlapped and blended into a horrible churning sensation in her stomach. In every scenario she had ever imagined, whether a tender embrace or an all-out brawl, Roimata had always made contact in some way. The stick of a slap or the gentle slide of one hand into another. Instead, her feet stayed rooted to the spot, her arms at her side, and nausea rose in her throat at the thought.“You can not do this,” she said. “You don’t get to be here. Not you.”Claudia tilted her head to the side wearing a smile of light bemusement, and leaned the back of her legs against the worktable. She looked so at home in the studio, like it was her own, like she would take it as she’d taken the works and lives of so many other artists. Like she’d taken Roimata’s heart as if it belonged to her. “And who should be here in my place?” she asked.Childishly, stupidly, Roimata’s instincts responded my mother. That imaginary soul who’d given her a name and then disappeared. Who’d never wanted to give her up, not really, she was sure, and if only the world was different would be all too happy to wait by her side before the journey to Te Pō. There was a part of her, she realised, a buried immature part of her that had kept holding onto the idea that her family had been watching over her all along, that she would meet them somehow, someday. Even if it was the day she died. She wouldn’t be separated from them forever, not really. When the time came, they would be there.Not Claudia. Not the woman who’d stolen her heart and disappeared with it, who’d treated it like she treated art – beautiful, and free, and ripe for the taking. Who she’d idolised and adored for so long, through all of it, even despite her more difficult quirks. Who she still loved, when she was really honest with herself, in a sickening throb of her stolen heart.For the first time since coming inside, her thoughts went to the garden. The body in the wicker chair, slumped and cold. Alone.She wasn’t supposed to be alone.As Claudia looked at her expectantly for an answer, she thought of every person she had ever pushed away. Everyone she had left behind when she moved to this little cottage on the shore of Aotearoa, who she’d made no effort to contact. All the neighbours she’d ignored, who had long-since stopped knocking on her door with friendliness in their hearts. The family she’d been denied by a society that thought peace was achieved through loneliness.Pohau mewed and trotted back out of the room, towards the garden. She watched him go. The only loved one she had left was a cat. Did a cat count?“Why did you have to be so impossible?”Claudia smiled.Impossible to love. Impossible to hate. Impossible to understand. Impossible to hold onto and impossible to let go.She held out her hand. Calloused hands; artist’s hands. “Take the plunge with me, my love,” she said. “Our time is done.”Roimata looked at her. Her eyes were inviting and her smile was mischievous, lighting a spark in her heart, that old trick of hers. The knack she had for making everyone feel welcome and included, the openness she encouraged in others. It was as tempting to indulge as it ever was. The anxiety of Claudia’s life, of how she was going to be received and loved, had melted away in death. She was bolder, now – she could see it on her face and in her shoulders. She had learned to jump, to fall, to feel the thrill and fear of diving into the unknowable vastness of wilderness and tranquillity.“I waited for you,” Roimata said, “now you wait for me.”Her smile fell. “Mata—”She turned away. She wasn’t sure she was ready to return to the garden, to see herself there, lifeless. But she had to be. If she looked at the heartbreak on Claudia’s face for a moment longer she would cave. “I have to stay with my body, Claudia. I can’t leave until it’s found and dealt with.”“I see.”Meaning she didn’t. Claudia was a chameleon, and though her grandmother had sent her letters about the culture she had been forced to leave behind… well, Claudia had never seemed to yearn to be a part of it. She was a socialite and an artist - she didn’t want for a culture or a community. Not the way Roimata did. Claudia had never researched her own culture with a ravenous hunger, had not had to be reprimanded again and again at school for engaging in the rudiments of tribalism. Roimata had always scoffed; she could hardly succumb to tribalism without a tribe.“Roimata… you will be here a long time,” Claudia said apprehensively. She recalled the six years of hoping that Claudia’s body would not be found. How selfish she had been, waiting until she washed up as chunks of rotting flesh and broken bone to say the words. To say goodbye.“I know.”She was silent. The weight of her feet on the floorboards lifted, and although she didn’t want to, Roimata turned her head and saw the empty studio. Her traitorous heart felt the stabbing pain of losing her again.Claudia would meet her in Hawaiki - or in the stars, or in oblivion, or wherever it was wairua ended up - when it was time. Roimata had never really had the chance to decide what she believed in - just scraps of old stories and beliefs she could piece together. But that old conviction about Claudia returned: This was not the end. This was not goodbye.Drawing in a shaky breath, she strode back out to the garden, where Pohau was batting at a butterfly as he stood vigil for her body.She couldn’t look at her own face, so she sat down in the grass, prompting another complaint from her joints, and let the tears fall. Pohau headbutted her hand, and she stroked him head-to-tail until he climbed into her lap and curled up to sleep. Roimata let out a long sigh. All that was left to do was wait for the grass to grow up around her.