Paper Candles

[Juneberry Hawthorne]

The morning broke on Juneberry’s fist.​

The alarm clock went flying across the room, squealing in protest, until it hit the opposite wall with a resounding clang! And blessed -if slightly wobbly - silence filled the air. Juneberry groaned. Then the pain hit her.


Hissing, Juneberry clawed her way upward from under her bundle of quilts to hold her stinging hand to the morning light. Her knuckles were split open. A bloodless injury, though the lavender skin was turning a sharp blue around the edges.


“What the-” Groggy curses spilled out of her mouth as she rolled out of bed. Juneberry kicked aside clothes, and springs, and stray wooden knick knacks till she could forge a way to the offending party and seize it by its tiny copper body.


“You,” she seethed. Stupid thing. Aside from, y’know, breaking the first law of robotics, it had functioned perfectly - it's monstrously large button on the back had hit the far wall, shutting it off, and Juno could feel the plush belly where her fist was supposed to land with no resistance. “Dumb idiot, stupid piece of garbage-”


But when she turned it over, what was there but a single curled vine, a thorn jutting out like a defiant middle finger. Juneberry furrowed her eyebrows. And then it hit her.


“Oh,” she said. “Go figure.”


Juneberry slogged over to her desk, letting the clock roll off her fingers to clatter onto the cluttered surface. The desk had been grown by Juneberry herself, some sandy pale amalgamation of the junkyard dirt, the wood cut from her shack and Juneberry’s own desperation. It held up the leaking end of her shack’s roof. It would’ve been a sorry sight, but Juneberry wasn’t a moping idiot. The top of the desk had sprouted bare, gnarled branches, now lined with dirt. Glittering, crystalline plants bloomed from the makeshift planters. Juneberry let herself look up. The plants swayed in a breeze let in by the broken roof. They scattered light across her eyes, too many to count, too out of reach to try. When had the desk grown so high? . Juneberry groaned, blinking and rubbing her face. Stupid.


“Morning,” she mumbled to it, slapping a hand on the side. A panel popped open, and the whirr of gears produced a tall glass of water. On the edge, a tall, think mechanical bird bobbing its head up and down. Up and down. Up and-


“Hey!” Juneberry clapped, and the bird squawked, splattering water over Juneberry’s face. “Dude, really?”


The bird only chittered at her, its thin, plastic wings beating even the air around Juneberry in a way specially designed to annoy her. Juneberry swatted the drinking bird away. “Everyone’s a critic,” she muttered. “Go pee on some leaves.”


Reaching around the glass, she withdrew a glass bottle. Juneberry sighed as she overturned it, letting damp dirt crumble into her hand. She knelt down, sprinkling it along the roots of the desk - behind her, the drinking bird was watering the plants above. When it let the water drench Juneberry, she couldn’t even summon the energy to cuss it out.


“Hooray,” she murmured, letting her hands drift over the dirt. She let her fingers search. There. Juneberry closed her eyes, feeling the coolness rush through her, hooking her magic around the warmth until it seeped into her, bled into her fingers. She wrapped it around her hands, and she tugged.


From the dead of earth, a sprout. Juneberry opened her eyes wearily, seeing the blooming of a small, purple plant. Lavender, though it was turning blue around the edges.


“Hooray,” she said, cupping the plant’s leaves. “Happy birthday, number 365.”


Happy anniversary.


Juneberry moved away from the desk, rubbing her eyes. They were dry. Painfully so. It felt like sandpaper every time she ran her fingers over it. Stinging, even. One full pass of her home planet around her home sun, if these days were anything like the days she grew up with. But there was no way to know. Juneberry didn’t know if she could recall what sunrise and sunset looked like in comparison to the pale of Opealon.


“Stupid planet,” she said, and all the plants around her hummed in agreement. Juneberry could feel the ticking of the alarm clock in her chest, the anxious humming wings of the bird in her ear, the vomit-inducing set of colors of the leaves. They all hated this place with her. Of course they did - they were her, they were her heart. And her heart was all asking the same question.


How come you haven’t gotten us off this planet yet?


Juneberry chucked open the door of the shed. “You are trash!” she screamed to the world, in that language only she spoke. Probably. Not like she spoke to much of anyone else.


Her voice bounced off the junkyard, a lot like the door that came rocketing back into her toe. Juno shrieked.


From around the corner, the scrapyard exploded - a sheet of tin shredded through the air until it hit the opposite wall. Juneberry looked up in time to see that onyx black monster of her own creation thundering towards her.


Passiflora skidded to a stop before her, whinnying with as much mechanically distraught horse voice as she could manage. Juneberry sighed.


“Good morning, girlie,” she said, reaching out to press her hand against Passiflora’s forehead. The horse snorted. “Fine, fine. Morning.” Juneberry ran her hand up Passiflora’s face and then down her back, until she reached the built-in saddle. Padded, same as the target on her alarm clock, but there were no hostile thorn waiting for her. Passiflora’s anxious hum wasn’t looking down on Juneberry. It was saying Let’s go.


“Yeah,” Juno gripped the edge, swinging herself up and over. “Let’s.”


The junkyard wasn’t the prettiest of places to live. Or the healthiest. Juneberry tucked her mask around her face, feeling tightening the screws on it till it fit snugly over her nose. Pollution. Even in the mask, Juneberry could taste the metallic tang of the scrap metal around them. Not like home.


Every so often, Juno would get the urge to clean, to grow, to make it feel like some semblance of the utopia she came from . But then a day would pass and a new shipment from some upper island would get dumped onto the rim of it. At some point, the artificial foliage ended, and the actual junk in the yard began. One could actually tell where she’d given up. Most times it left Juneberry feeling sad. Today, though, it felt like escape.


“You find anything good today?” she asked. Passiflora whinnied. “I’m gonna take that as a yes, you know.” Juneberry let the reins go slack in her hand, letting the cool ocean breeze ruffle her hair, run over her cheeks. “I was going to restock things today, but everyone back there is giving me attitude.”


Passiflora shook her head as if to say Tell me more. So Juneberry did. Her whole morning, her creation’s frustrations, until the knot in her chest came undone and her hands were off the reins entirely.


But Passiflora listened.


“...You’re the only good part of me,” she said, finally. Juneberry leaned forward to press her face into Passiflora’s mane, and let out a muffled scream. Passiflora snorted. I know.


When Juneberry pulled back, Passiflora had trotted to a stop. Her only movement was the slightest shimmy, as if to say Get off.


Juneberry dismounted.


But Passiflora pawed -could a horse paw? - around the dirt anxiously. Juneberry knelt down. “What, here? I hate to break it to you, but this is dirt.”


Passiflora deadpanned a look.


We live in literal trash, Juneberry could imagine her saying. Sometimes she wondered if she really was imagining it, or if Passiflora was just a little too much like her.


Passiflora pawed at it again, and then nudged Juneberry’s hands. “You want me to grow something? Fine.” Juneberry rolled up her sleeves. “But if it attacks me, I’m feeding you to it first.”


The dirt here was not unlike the dirt in the rest of the yard. Nondescript, barren, vaguely sandy in comparison to the rich earth Juneberry was used to. But when she let her magic seep in, there was something familiar. Something warm.


When Juno opened her eyes, there in her hands lay a delicate flower. Paper-thin; maybe even thinner, already wilting in the Opealon sun. White like paper, too, but blue around the edges. From its center stood, straight and tall, a thin rod not unlike a wick. A candlebloom.


“Dang,” Juneberry murmured. “I completely forgot.”


Passiflora nosed her shoulder. I didn’t.



Juneberry reached into her pocket, rummaging around till she could find her lighter. When the candlebloom caught, Juneberry felt something stir in her that quieted the rage, till she knew - without looking - that her shack had gone still. The ocean breeze made the candlebloom dance. It looked like it was waving goodbye. The embers ate it up, spiraling and exploding in the tiniest, most spectacular sparks. When was the last time she burned a candlebloom like this?


Last year. Right.


“Happy birthday to me,” she said, staring as the bloom faded away. Juno watched after it for a long while. Serenity took its place. Peace, on this ugly, salty, oceanic planet and its stupid, nasty, pretentious islands that were sucking the life out of her. Like they could placate her with junk. Whatever eyes were watching her, Juneberry gave two emphatic middle fingers to.


Her creations, her home - they hadn’t been tearing her down. They’d been egging her on. Birth, and life, and burning it all down. That’s what Juno was made for. She'd forgotten that. But they'd remembered.


"C'mon, girlie." Juno swung back into the saddle. "We've got work to do."