Sasha
At the sound of a loud thud near the front door, Sasha rose from the porch swing, Freya still asleep against her chest.
“Angeni?” she said.
As she came through the door, she saw Angeni sprawled out on the wood floor. Sasha held Freya with one hand and used her other hand to shake Angeni’s shoulder.
“Angeni?”
When she didn’t move, Sasha placed her hand in front of Angeni’s mouth, confirmed there was breath coming out of it. She was alive.
Freya roused and, absorbing the tension of the scene, began to wail.
“Aurora? Erik?” Sasha called as she made her way through the house and then to the backyard.
She called for them again as Freya wailed louder. Aurora was the first to come.
“What’s wrong?” Aurora asked, panic all over her face as she put her hands on Freya, likely assuming something was the matter with the baby.
“Freya’s fine. She just woke up. It’s Angeni. I think she passed out again,” Sasha said in a rush of words.
Aurora ran inside the house, and Sasha followed behind. Aurora said, “Oh my god” as she knelt next to her friend.
Erik came through the door with Matt and Jer behind him.
“What happened?” Erik asked, joining Aurora on the floor next to Angeni.
“Should I call 911?” Sasha asked.
Before coming to the island, Sasha would have said she wanted Angeni Luna to suffer. But being here, next to her unconscious body on the floor, Sasha was genuinely worried. It wasn’t that she had come to regard Angeni as a special human being deserving of care and concern; it was simply that she had come to regard her as human, period.
“I’ll call,” Matt said, pulling his phone from the back pocket of his jeans.
But just as he did that, Angeni stirred, raising her head from the floor.
“Ang?” Aurora said.
Angeni looked around the room, noticeably disoriented.
“What happened?” she asked.
She put her hand to her head.
“Are you hurt?” Erik asked.
“You passed out,” Aurora said.
“My head,” Angeni said, rubbing at a spot near her temple. She must have hit her head when she fell.
Angeni pressed up to her knees, and Erik placed his hands on her shoulders.
“Wait, babe. Take it slow, okay?”
Angeni’s eyes settled on Freya.
“Is Freya okay?”
“Freya’s fine,” Aurora assured her.
