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The night air still smelled of ash, of burnt wood that should've brought up memories of roasting marshmallows over a fire. It would've been a bitterly ironic memory, of softness mixed with the reality of the ruined wood before Mabel. But Mabel's parents weren't really into doing fun, parent-daughter activities like that. And when she was with her grandmother the allure of marshmallows seemed so far away.
All the trappings and goodies of modern life seemed so far away when she was with her grandmother, just the two of them and nature. Now it felt like her grandmother's warm touch was fleeting and then lost for good when Mabel sacrificed that old jacket to try and save the forest. But her grandmother's words and her voice still rang true in Mabel's head.
Mabel still called her grandmother's voice mail every so often, just to hear her voice again in a mundane way. A snippet of her grandmother’s everyday life that was not captured in video form. It'd feel like a knife to the gut if the phone company ever got around to disconnecting that number.
Mabel looked over the destruction that the fire brought as it scarred the land and proved that it would've taken away many animal and human lives without hesitation. It felt a little ironic that pond rules, which she initially dismissed as unorganized and dumb, ended up saving everything. It was not completely as the fire left its mark but it meant something. She did fix something that wasn't completely broken.
Still, she needed the quiet right now. It was comforting and yet disconcerting, to know that the animals wouldn't be able to come back for a while as the forest recovered. When she walked back with George to safety, it felt like they had walked through an apocalyptic wasteland. Though thankful that they were both alive, for a few seconds Mabel realized what her anger and hasty actions had wrought and she wanted her grandmother so badly in that moment that it felt like her stomach would be torn apart.
Her grandmother would have hugged her, made a joke about how a simple broom wouldn't be able to clean up this mess, and she'd rub away Mabel's tears to tell her that everything would be okay.
She really needed to hear her grandmother's voice right now. Not just in video and an old recorded ghost on the phone.
Mabel made a soft noise as George nudged against her side as he climbed onto the rock beside her. She smiled wryly that he really did smell like vanilla, though she'd practically devoured every animal book she could get her hands on as a kid so it was easy as breathing that information on beavers would spring into her mind so quickly.
They couldn't speak to each other but his soft eyes said enough. Her friend lay beside her and joined her in the quiet meditation. For someone who never quite fit in with humans, it seemed only natural that her first real, best friend was a beaver. For a moment his presence washed away the guilt that still stuck in her mind.
Mabel breathed out slowly like a gentle breeze. She closed her eyes and listened to her surroundings, feeling her place in the entire mechanism of the world within humanity and the animals and yet beyond them too. She thought of what she would've said to her grandmother if she was still here.
"Hi, grandma," she started in her mind.
"There you are. I saw what you did to save the glade."
"Yeah... I'm um... I'm sorry for... for destroying your jacket." Mabel's throat constricted for a few seconds as she mourned its comfort.
"Oh, Mabel, I don't care about that," her grandmother would have warmly said. "I'm just glad you're safe. I'm glad that your animal friends are safe. It seems that you've done a great deal of good for them."
"I... I really screwed up along the way, I... if I hadn't..."
"You are a force to be reckoned with," her grandmother would've gone with to soothe over the pain Mabel felt. "Sometimes our best intentions don't always lead to what is best for us or others."
"Sometimes it feels like all I do is screw up," Mabel replied.
"But you know what matters, Mabel? You stayed. You tried to right what went wrong with everything that you got. That's who you are inside," her grandmother would've reassured her. "A lot of people would've turned tail and left others to deal with their horrible mess. But you didn't. When it really counted, you were there."
"Well, I can't really turn tail now, I don't have one anymore," Mabel joked. She chuckled for real when George made a squeaky snuffle sound and burrowed himself closer to Mabel's side.
"And you can't turn tail because that's not who you are," her grandmother would've said. "I know that no matter what it takes you're going to do everything that you can to help and to make things right."
"What if... what if it's not enough? What if I'm not enough?"
Her grandmother would have put an arm around Mabel, would've let her take a moment to breathe. And Mabel knew exactly what she would've said next.
"Do you remember the story of the girl at the beach?"
Mabel did. But she said anyway, "Kinda. Remind me?"
"At the beach the tide is rolling back and forth. And there are hundreds of starfish that are strewn along the beach, too far away to make it back by the ocean. There's a little girl there throwing them back," her grandmother would've recited.
"What happens next?"
"A woman is walking along the beach and sees the girl. It seems futile to throw back all those starfish when there are hundreds of them," her grandmother would've continued. "So she tells the girl, 'What are you doing? It doesn't make a difference, it doesn't matter. You can't save all of them.'"
"That's pretty rude."
"It is. But it doesn't matter to the little girl," her grandmother would've said. "She throws another starfish into the ocean and says, 'It mattered to that one.'"
"Do you think the woman would've joined the girl?" Mabel asked.
"I don't know. I think the question is, are you the sort of person that would've joined her? Ah, I don't have to ask," her grandmother would've chuckled. "I already know the answer."
"I'll keep on making you proud."
"You already do."
The meditation ended. The world was still silent, save for Mabel's breath and George's soft breathing as he was a warm presence against her side. Mabel smiled, letting herself be immersed in the world.
She didn't have to do all this on her own after all.