Of the Mountain
sa ka no (clownfish)
Summary:
When her world is swept away, soft-spoken Lieke Aakster steps beyond her mountain homestead for the first time, searching for what remains; of herself, and of home.
Notes:
Thank you for taking some of the time out of your day to read my work.
Good, beautiful, and amazing things will happen in this story.
Horrible, no good, and awful things will happen in this story.
Please let me know if I've made a typo.
Tags are added when chapters are written, please keep my warning in mind as I am not exaggerating or joking.
Chapter 1: 01
The morning began in fragments.
A shaft of light, pale gold and insistent, spilled in through the narrow kitchen window and stretched across the walnut floor like a long-lost cat returning home. Dust motes hovered in it, each one caught in its own private dance. Lieke hummed softly; some half-remembered melody from a radio that hadn’t worked in years. The notes weren’t in tune, but they were warm, and in the quiet, they felt like they belonged.
She cracked the quail eggs one by one into a small cast-iron pan. Their yolks were so bright it was almost comical; little cartoon suns floating in a clear sky. They cooked quickly. The trick, she’d found, was not to think too hard about it. If you looked away for just a moment, they turned out perfect. If you stared too long, they’d tighten and shrink into little rubber coins.
She grated sea salt over them; just a little, the way her grandmother used to do when she still had hands steady enough for fine work. The salt clung to the yolks like snow on a warm roof. Then she fetched a small bundle of wild onions she’d foraged the day before, still damp from their rinsing. She cut the greens with quiet, efficient strokes, the rhythm of the knife tapping gently on the wood.
Somewhere outside, a bird called out once and then fell silent.
Lieke plated the eggs on a chipped blue dish. She liked the imperfection of it. It made the food feel less lonely, somehow. She stood by the window as she ate, slowly, looking out over the field where the clothesline sagged slightly under its cotton burden. A quail darted through the weeds. A breeze shifted the trees just enough to make them whisper things she couldn’t quite catch.
The dish, now empty, was just a smear of yolk in the corner and the ghost of salt on the rim. Lieke held it lightly in one hand, her thumb idly worrying the chipped edge, where the glaze had worn away to reveal the raw ceramic beneath. It was strange how something broken could become familiar like that, like a scar you traced without meaning to. She didn’t think she’d ever throw the dish away. Outside the window, where her gaze drifted, the linens swayed on the line, drifting in slow, sleepy gestures. The mountain breeze came down soft and uneven, carrying the cool breath of pine and stone with it. The kind of breeze that didn’t belong to anyone. Not even the mountains, maybe.
She watched one of the linen sheets lift and fall again, revealing and hiding the patch of grass behind it, where the quail often dusted themselves in the mornings. They were probably there now, half-hidden in the undergrowth, their small feathers fluffed and fidgeting. She liked how they looked like punctuation marks; commas, maybe, wandering around the world trying to decide where to pause.
She sighed, not out of frustration, just habit. The kind of sound that filled a space so it didn’t echo too much.
“I still need to feed them,” she said, to no one in particular. Her voice was soft and round in the kitchen air.
And the hens, well, she hadn’t checked if any were brooding. One of the speckled ones, with the clever eyes, had been nesting deeper in the coop lately. Lieke had noticed the signs, the small changes in behavior that most people wouldn’t see. The long stillness, the puffed feathers, the way she no longer darted away at the creak of the gate.
Outside, the shadows of the linens made slow, breathing patterns on the grass. The wind picked up for just a moment, then settled again, like it had changed its mind.
She set the dish down in the sink and took a long look at the light falling across the room before continuing on her way to the door.
The screen door made its usual creak when she pushed it open; a sound that reminded her of the way some people sigh in their sleep. She stepped out barefoot, the old wood of the porch smooth and cool under her feet. The breeze greeted her politely, tugging at the hem of her linen dress like a child asking for attention. But the sun was out now, stronger than before, and it pressed down gently on her shoulders and arms with a quiet warmth that made her pause.
She closed her eyes, and for just a moment, everything stopped; the wind, the low rustle of the orchard below, even the hush of her thoughts. She stood still in that small sunlit pause, as though she were not a person exactly, but a leaf, or a rock, or the idea of warmth itself.
Then the breeze returned, and the linen on the clothesline snapped lightly like sails catching wind.
Lieke walked to the line, her fingers brushing over the edge of a drying pillowcase. Still clean. No sign of dew or dirt, no night creatures had taken liberties. Sometimes the outdoor beasties would brush past, their little hands curious and unrepentant. But not last night. The sheets swayed and folded in on themselves, cool to the touch, the scent of soap and mountain air clinging to them.
Satisfied, she moved past the linens, toward the hutch beneath the alder tree. The grass gave way to packed earth, scattered with dandelions that hadn’t yet opened for the day. The hutch sat where it always had, like a forgotten drawer at the back of a long, quiet room. It was small, handmade, and a little crooked; built from salvaged wood and good intentions. The latch clicked softly when she touched it.
She crouched, listening first.
The sound of rustling feathers. A soft, inquisitive trill.
“Morning,” she greeted.
Inside, the quail shuffled and blinked at her with their small dark eyes. A few of them were already waiting near the feeding pan, like commuters on a train platform. She smiled without thinking. She liked how quail always seemed to be in the middle of a thought. One of the hens, the speckled one, lingered in the back of the nesting box, still and round and heavy with silence.
Brooding, just as she suspected.
Lieke reached into the grain tin that was kept beside the hutch and began to scatter the feed, the gentle rhythm of seeds on wood and soil falling into the quiet between her thoughts.
The sound of the grain falling; like dry rain, or sand slipping through an hourglass; was enough to rouse them. One by one, the little quail emerged from the corners of the hutch and yard, their round bodies low to the ground, legs moving with an odd, deliberate urgency that always made Lieke think of wind-up toys.
They gathered without speaking, as birds do. First the pale one with the dusky cap, then the smaller one who always walked slightly sideways, as if the world tilted differently for her. A soft rustle of feathers. A flutter. A trill. Then a dozen tiny bodies converging on the scattered feed like dancers drawn into a slow, wordless choreography.
Their feathers were a patchwork of quiet browns and stormy grays, each pattern distinct, like fingerprints. Beaks tapped against the earth in quick, rhythmic bursts. Sometimes they bumped into each other, but never with malice; just the absentminded way old friends might brush shoulders on a familiar street.
One of them: bold, or maybe just hungry, hopped closer to where Lieke’s hand was still spilling a few last grains. He blinked up at her once, then resumed pecking at the ground with sharp, precise motions. She watched them work, the way their tiny heads bobbed and their feet shuffled, stirring the dust into little halos beneath them.
Lieke stood slowly, her knees crackling in protest despite her young age, soft and papery like old leaves. She brushed at the dust that clung to the hem of her nightgown; smudges of soil and straw gathered while crouching, as though the earth had tried to hold her there a little longer.
The breeze tugged at her again, warmer now, carrying the smell of sunlit wood and dry grass. Somewhere nearby, a bee drifted past, too absorbed in its own mission to notice her.
She walked back toward the house, the morning light laying itself down in long, golden sheets across the yard. Her nightgown flared slightly with each step, catching the wind like a sail, though she didn’t move fast enough for it to matter.
On the porch, just to the left of the door, sat her basket; oval and well-worn, with a handle polished smooth by years of use and oil from her palms. It waited patiently, as it always did, like a quiet companion. She picked it up, feeling the familiar weight of it, the soft creak of the woven reed shifting under her grip.
The crab apple tree stood just a little ways off, casting a dappled shadow over the grass. Its limbs were heavy with fruit, the tiny apples clustered in groups like small lanterns, skin dappled red and yellow and green. She always thought they looked like they were trying very hard to be cheerful. A few had already fallen to the earth, scattered like forgotten coins. She approached the tree slowly, brushing one of the low branches with the back of her hand. The fruit was cool, firm. Ripe. The kind of ripe that waits for no one. She smiled, just faintly, and began to pluck them, one by one, the sound of each apple dropping into the basket soft and final, like the punctuation marks she pictured her quail as.
The apples came easily.
Their tiny stems snapped with a muted tick, the sound small but certain. Each fruit she picked had a slight weight to it, enough to remind her that even small things carried gravity. Her basket was slowly filling with them; little orbs of tart color, cold from the night but warming in her hands.
Around her ankles, the quail had followed.
They moved without hurry, in loose, wandering loops. One of them pecked gently at a patch of grass near her heel, another darted forward as if it had just remembered something important. Lieke watched them with the corner of her eye, careful not to step on any of them. It was as if they had mistaken her for something larger than she was; some slow-moving tree that bore food at irregular intervals.
“You’ve already eaten,” she murmured, crouching slightly to pick a cluster of apples lower to the ground. Her voice was quiet, just enough to break the morning’s spell.
The quail didn’t answer, of course, but one chirped in that small, half-questioning way they had, tilting its head up at her like a child unwilling to believe dinner was over.
She moved around the tree, the basket on her arm growing heavier with each lap. The branches rustled above her, and once, a breeze dislodged a single crab apple, which fell with a gentle thud at her feet. One of the bolder quail rushed to inspect it, then, unimpressed, wandered off toward a cluster of clover.
The sun was rising properly now, stretching the shadows across the grass like long fingers. Her nightgown caught the light and shifted slightly with each breeze, a pale flicker among the leaves and birds. There was something peaceful in it; the movement of small creatures, the repetition of her hands, the soft, round weight of the morning pressing gently on everything.
The door creaked again as she slipped back inside, the air cooler in the kitchen than it had been outside. The light had shifted since morning, sharpening just a little, falling now across the walnut floor like the spine of an open book. Lieke paused a moment on the threshold, adjusting the basket against her hip, and then stepped over the sunlit stripe and into the shadows.
She set the basket on the kitchen table with a soft, weighted thump. The apples inside shifted slightly, settling among themselves like sleepers changing position in a shared bed. She ran a hand through her hair, brushing it back behind one ear, and looked around the room as if reacquainting herself with its stillness.
From the cupboard she pulled out the sugar; rough and golden, with a faint scent of molasses. The bag had been folded tightly and sealed with a wooden clothespin. She liked that clothespin. It had a little yellow cloth ribbon tied on the end in a bow.
Next came the pot, thick-bottomed and slightly dented, and the long-handled spoon that always lived in the drawer with the mismatched forks. She set them on the stove with the calm efficiency of someone who'd done this dozens of times before, maybe hundreds. In a way, marmalade was less a recipe and more a ritual.
The jars were waiting on the shelf by the window; seven of them, small and squat with their lids stacked beside them like hats set down at a polite gathering. She brought them to the table, lining them up like soldiers, and turned each one slowly in her hands to check for cracks. There were none. She was glad. Sometimes the glass split without warning, as if rejecting its purpose.
As she measured the sugar, her thoughts drifted; soft and slow, like moths in lamplight. She’d thought, once, about making apple wine instead. Letting the fruit ferment, grow strange and potent. Wine could trade well in the village below, especially when winter was starting to hum in the distance. Salt, flour, dried lentils. Little comforts that made the lean months feel less sharp.
But marmalade… marmalade stayed.
People remembered her for it. Brought back the jars like borrowed books, sometimes filled with notes or seeds or tiny hand-written dreams they didn’t know where else to put. She liked that. The quiet way her marmalade moved through other people’s lives.
She emptied the basket, selecting the firmest apples and setting them aside. The room filled with the scent of fruit and sugar and slow, deliberate intention.
Soon the pot would begin to simmer.
