Lily Mossway

Lily Mossway has always been very good at noticing the things people hoped nobody noticed.

The hand squeezed a little too tightly around a bag strap. The laugh that came half a second too late. The person who said, “I’m fine,” while very obviously being several kilometres away from fine.

Milo used to find this incredibly inconvenient. He is Lily’s younger brother, and when they were little, Milo believed every difficult situation could be solved by finding the correct path through it. A better trail. A safer stone. One more look at the map.

Lily usually let him. Until the afternoon he couldn’t find one.

They had been walking home when a thick bank of fog rolled across the trail. Milo stopped at a fork and stared at the ground. Then at the trees. Then back at the ground. He picked one direction. Changed his mind. Picked the other. Changed it again.

Lily watched him grow quieter and quieter.

“Which way?” he finally asked.

Lily had absolutely no idea.

This is important. Lily was not secretly holding the answer. She did not suddenly discover a hidden trail. She did not produce a brilliant older sister solution from underneath her enormous mushroom cap.

She sat down. Right there. In the dirt.

Milo stared at her. “What are you doing?”

“Not knowing yet.”

Milo was horrified. Lily patted the ground beside her. So they sat. For eleven minutes. Lily knows because Milo counted every single one.

At minute four, he was still trying to solve the entire journey home. At minute seven, he stopped talking. At minute nine, a breeze moved through the trees. At minute eleven, the fog shifted just enough for them to see the old blue trail marker they had been standing practically beside the entire time.

Milo never forgot it. Neither did Lily. Because that was the afternoon she learned something she has carried ever since.

Sometimes people do not need you to show them the way out. Sometimes they need someone willing to sit beside them while the fog is still there.

On the walk home, Lily caught the front of her overalls on a branch and tore them. Milo felt terrible. Lily did not. She patched the tear with a blue heart. It is still there. She refuses to replace it. She says things that have survived something should be allowed to look like they have.

Milo still watches the path. Lily still watches Milo. He notices loose stones, sudden turns and places where someone might stumble. She notices when the person walking beside them has gone quiet. Together, they make a surprisingly effective team. Although Lily would like it officially recorded that she is older. Milo would like it officially recorded that this has never once stopped her from getting lost. Both statements are true.