From her slumber, Ottilie crept heavily, heavily along the path parallel to the bay; its black ocean tongues licking gently at the homestay walls as it lulled the rock crabs to sleep. A deep smell of Frankincense slithered alongside her caressing the hairs on her neck and swallowing any awakeness she had left whole. Drunk on her freshness, it journeyed on to further passageways where the hustle and bustle of activity flicked on and off, on, off, on, off. Ottilie looked drowsily to a point on the ground just in front of her toes, watching them swish in and out of view like window wipers of the first car she ever owned. Memories of mid-afternoon stuck moistly to her bare shoulders still damp with mattress sweat; her secret lover for many years. Those first few meters along the path to the café were often quiet at this time of evening and triggered Ottilie into her habitual check-in after a long afternoon nap. Pai, the guy who ran the homestay, passed greeting her with that kind of hello that gets swallowed by a shy smile. They met with a ‘morning’; short, sweet, exactly what was needed. Pai carried on his way to check the toilets, only the moon watching over the trailing memory of his budget Bollywood gait. Somehow, with his slicked-back hair and even slicker muscles, he seemed either too naïve to be sexualised or on the other hand, his understanding of the world landed him with a mature attractive thud. It was difficult to tell, and at times even harder to know whether his physique was solely the result of necessity, earnt through sweeping verandas and carrying water, or whether it was now creeping into the years of vanity ready to be exploited. 

Ottilie walked on through the pathway behind a restaurant, faced with boy after man after boy, man, boy confused at where their coming of age defined them. Eventually, she fell into the shy luminescence of her favourite night-time café. Everyone had their own style when entering the café; some waiting to be acknowledged, expecting it, and others sitting like props hoping they would go unnoticed. Storage weathered lampshades tilted along the plastic tables with the angles of the surf, their light bulbs flickering beneath like runaways who had escaped from their factories in the broad daylight. As she scanned the room for those she wanted to avoid, Raffa walked up from the opposite side up the tower-like steps, her head bobbing along with the pace of fellow napper. The two sat at the same table, agreeing that tonight was a together night without the need for words; just feelings and movements. Melting into the smooth plastic of the chair, Ottilie’s liquid limbs slipped through the friction her clamminess and the plastic created. Raffa sat opposite on the dense sandy sofa of a table-level ledge, cross-legged, back upright, with that half-held smile on her empathic face. Evening moods meeting nighttime sighs, smashing up routines, tying up time. 

Ottilie’s chest deflated. “I just feel so guilty when I sleep during the day,” she said rubbing her eyelids. Familiar faces becoming familiar blurs. She had always thought it was the ultimate sin for the Sun to see you sleeping. “It just gets so hot here in the afternoon and I’m not trying to make excuses, but it does, and I feel so exhausted lately”. She palmed her flushed cheeks, her fingers swollen with the humidity. “I feel like I should be doing something instead, y’know? Ugh who knows? No one knows…” her voice petered out of the café, down the stairs, and onto the black-lit sand. “Never mind, I’ll deal with it. How are you anyway?” 

Raffa held the silence in the way we all wish to be held, absorbing the woman in front of her, considering her puffy eyes and the cracked ginger curls jutting out from her crown. And she said, cutting the silence in half, “What do children do when they’ve grown enough that day?”.
Ottilie jerked her head back with the wind of her assumption that she knew that answer. “What are you on about?” she asked half asleep half startled. 
“I’m on about… what I just asked you”, Raffa returned, “What do children do when they’ve grown enough for the day? When they’ve climbed enough trees? Or when they’ve cried enough, exhausted from wrestling with their emotions like toys they are learning to share? Or when play is not so fun anymore and curiosity has spilled out onto the carpet from a bottled tantrum? What do they do?”.

Raising her face to the fabric canopied sky of the indoor come outdoor café, Ottilie pursed her lips hoping their wrinkliness would bring her wisdom. “Ermmm, they have a strop?” she answered through stretched-out gritted teeth, an awkward laugh leaping from her nostrils.
“… and what do their mothers or fathers tell them to do when they’re having… as you English put it… a strop?”
“They tell us to pack it in” Ottilie chuckled, “Sorry I mean they tell us to go to bed”.
“Yes exactly, it’s not a trick question,” said Raffa. “They go to bed to sleep it off because they need to rest. So, they nap, and sometimes they do this for hours at a time. They have to nap otherwise the strop will become a mood and moods become well… deeper”. Hearing Raffa say the word strop made Ottilie realise how funny a word it was. 

Raju, the café owner, crept into the backdrop of their conversation placing the menus they knew by heart onto the checked tablecloth. 
“Errrr Raju” Raffa raised her pitch gently so the voices of their current conversation could linger undisturbed in the air. “Good fish today?” 
“Mmmmm No. No fish coming today, tomorrow tomorrow possible” he answered.  
“OK,” she said with a thumbs up to show what kind of OK it was. 

“But Raffa” Ottilie continued, “As much as I want to be, I’m not a child and neither are you. That’s the whole point of being an adult, you’re not a child anymore. Being a child has an expiration date and being an adult has to go on forever.”  
“As an adult, you don’t grow anymore or play either? Is that what you are saying?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re sure about that?” Raffa had this way of speaking where every sentence sounded connected despite the first or last words, who spoke in between them, or the silence that filled the gaps. 
“It’s not something to be sure about Raffa. It is what it is.” 

At this point, Ottilie was oblivious, and those who had encountered this lesson before, whether through the ages of their souls or bodies, lounged contentedly looking back at their afternoon naps, late mornings, early nights, and all-day sleepouts, knowing that not only were they necessary but could also be enjoyed far more so than they could have ever dreamt.

And as Ottilie waited for that cold and concrete night in her home country where she would fully understand what Raffa meant that day she instead perused the menu. Confused at what Raffa was getting at, and turning her mind to matters of curries or pizzas. What did she fancy? Which one to have? Healthy or not? Cold or hot? What did she really want? And underneath it all, which would fill the empty space inside her tired ever-growing, ever playful body?

In sleeping,
Charlotte