Chapter Four: Edinburg

The flight was eleven hours long and I slept through none of it.

I tried. I had the window seat and I thought maybe looking at the sky would help settle my brain down. It didn't. instead It made it worse.

So I watched the clouds and turned Caden's watch around and around on my wrist and tried not to think about anything in particular.

Somewhere around the sixth hour I stopped trying so hard and just let myself sit with it.

I was scared. I was sad. I was exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with the flight. And I was going to a country I had never been to, to study at a school where I didn't know a single person, and I had done this to myself on purpose because staying had become something I couldn't do anymore.

But I had the scholarship. I had my acceptance letter and my student ID and my mother's careful packing and Caden's watch on my wrist. I had a plan.

That was enough to work with.

I looked out at the clouds and I thought okay. Okay. Let's just see what happens.

Edinburgh was cold.

That was my first real thought stepping out of the airport. Just cold. And grey. The sky was low and heavy and the air had a bite to it that went straight through my jacket. Everything looked old, like the buildings had been there for centuries.

I didn't hate it.

Actually I kind of liked it.

I got my bags, found a taxi and gave the driver the university address. He said something in a Scottish accent so thick I only caught about half of it but I nodded and said thank you and looked out the window as the city moved past.

It was nothing like home. No pine trees. No mountains in the distance. No familiar faces or pack scents or any of the things I had grown up surrounded by.

Just this. New and unknown and entirely mine.

The student accommodation was a red brick building a short walk from the main campus. I found my room on the second floor , Room 14 , and pushed the door open with my shoulder because my hands were full.

I stopped in the doorway.

Two single beds. One on each side of the room with a desk beside each one. The bed on the left was already claimed , which was very obvious. The bedding was white with small yellow flowers on it. There was a little string of star shaped fairy lights above the headboard, a few framed photos on the desk, a pink mug holding a bunch of pens, and a small succulent plant on the windowsill.

Someone had already made this side of the room into a home.

My side was empty. Just a bare mattress and a plain desk .

I dropped my bags and sat on the edge of my bed for a second, just taking it in. The room smelled like someone else's perfume , something light and floral ,and outside the window I could hear students moving around in the corridor and someone's music playing faintly two rooms down.

I had a roommate. A roommate who liked yellow flowers and fairy lights and had a succulent named , I leaned slightly to read the tiny chalkboard label stuck in the soil ,Gerald.

Okay then.

I started unpacking.

I was about halfway through, trying to figure out the wardrobe situation, when I found what my mother had hidden between two of my folded sweaters.

A small ziplock bag with six chamomile tea bags in it and a folded piece of paper.

I opened the paper.

Hope you get everything you wished for. Love Mom

I sat down on the bed and held the note and breathed slowly until I was sure I wasn't going to fall apart. It took a minute. Maybe two.

Then I put the tea bags on my desk where I could see them and kept unpacking.

The door opened without a knock.

I turned around and there was a girl standing in the doorway , small, with curly red hair that was falling out of a bun on top of her head and the kind of smile that made you feel like she was genuinely happy to see you even though she had never met you before in her life. She was holding two mugs.

"You're here!" she said, like this was excellent news. "I'm Isla. I heard someone moving around so I made tea. I make tea for everything, fair warning, it's just how I deal with situations." She walked in and held one of the mugs out to me. "You look like you've traveled a long way."

"America," I said, taking the mug. "Oregon."

"Oh that's properly far." She sat down cross legged on her bed like she had known me for years. "I'm from Inverness. Which feels far from Edinburgh but is absolutely nothing compared to America." She tilted her head and looked at me with those bright eyes. "Are you okay? And you can say no, I won't make it weird."

I thought about saying fine. The word was right there, ready to go.

"I've had a rough few weeks," I said instead.

"Say no more." She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped both hands around her mug. "You don't have to tell me anything. We can just sit here. I'll talk, you drink tea, and whenever you feel like joining in you can."

I looked at her for a moment. This person I had known for maybe three minutes who had walked into our shared room and immediately made it feel less empty.

"Okay," I said. I sat down on my own bed and took a sip of the tea. It wasn't chamomile but it was warm and that was enough. "Talk then."

She talked. About the university and the campus and which dining hall had the best food and which one to absolutely avoid. About Edinburgh and the good coffee shop three streets over that she had already found because finding the good coffee shop was the first thing she did in any new place. About her course and her family and her brother back in Inverness who had bet her twenty pounds she would drive her roommate away within a month.

"So just so you know," she said seriously, "I am going to be an extremely good roommate. I have twenty pounds riding on this."

I laughed.

It came out a little rough, like something that hadn't been used in a while. But it was real.

Isla pointed at me. "There it is."

She headed to the kitchen to start dinner a little while later and I sat on my bed and pulled out my phone seeing an incoming video call.

The video call connected on the second ring and immediately dissolved into chaos.

"can you see her, is it connecting…"

"Leo move, you're blocking the camera…"

"I'm not blocking anything, I'm just trying to…."

"Leo."

"Fine, fine"

They finally settled. All four of them were crammed together on the living room couch, which should not have fit all four of them but somehow did. My mother was in the middle looking carefully at the screen. Leo was on the end with his elbow on Caden's shoulder. Caden was sitting straight with his arms crossed looking like he was tolerating Leo's elbow situation but only barely.

My dad was behind them all, leaning against the back of the couch with his arms folded, watching the screen with an expression he was working very hard to keep neutral.

"You got there," my mother said. Her voice was steady but her eyes were doing that thing where she was feeling more than she was showing.

"I got here," I said. "I'm okay. The room is small but it's fine. I already met my roommate, her name is Isla, she seems really nice."

"Is she keeping the room clean?" Leo asked immediately. "Because you have standards, Elara, very specific standards about…."

"Leo."

"I'm asking an important question.."

"Leopold." My father's voice from behind them. Leo sat back.

"How was the flight?" my mother asked. "Did you eat?"

"Yes Mom."

"All of it?"

"Most of it."

She pressed her lips together like she had things to say about most of it.

"Show us the room," Leo said, already trying to see past me. "Turn the camera around. I want to see everything."

I turned the camera slowly around the room. Leo made commentary on all of it, the size, the window, the wardrobe, Isla's side of the room with the fairy lights and the flowers.

"Gerald the succulent is a nice touch," he said.

"That's Isla's."

"Can you get one? Get one. Name it something intimidating to make up for Gerald."

"I'm not getting a plant, Leo."

Caden leaned slightly forward and just looked at me. Then his eyes dropped to my wrist.

I held it up so he could see the watch.

He nodded once. Leaned back.

We talked for almost an hour. It was mostly normal, training updates, clinic news, the neighbour's dog getting into the yard again. Normal things. Home things. The kind of conversation that felt like a hand reaching across the distance and just holding on.

When it was time to say goodbye everyone said their bit , my mother told me to eat properly and sleep enough, Leo said at least seven unnecessary things, Caden raised one hand.

Then the others drifted away and it was just my dad.

He moved closer to the screen. Just him, looking at me.

"Chipmunk," he said quietly.

"I'm okay, Dad. I promise."

He was quiet for a second. "I know you are." He said it like he was deciding to believe it, which was somehow better than if he had just said it automatically. "Call me tomorrow."

"Every day," I said. "I promised."

He nodded. And the call ended.

I sat in the quiet for a little while after. Just me and the small room and the sound of Isla moving around in the kitchen and the Edinburgh cold evening air coming through the window.

I put Caden's watch on the nightstand where I could see it from the bed.

Then I got up and went to see if Isla needed help with dinner.

It wasn't happiness. But it wasn't nothing either.

And right now that was more than enough.