Raven’s Chapter 2

Life in Sulani is basically a series of negotiations with nature. I spend half my time scavenging for “ocean memories” (which is Conservationist-speak for someone else’s trash) and the other half trying to convince the Island Spirits I know what I’m doing.

The family tree is also having a growth spurt. While I’ve been cracking coconuts and filing reports, my moms—Briar and Ember—welcomed another little one back in the desert: Ximena Bailey. It’s a strange feeling, being fifteenth in line and realizing my sister is younger than my daughter. I sent a message home. (Out here, even a text feels like a bottle tossed into the sea.)

Then there’s Demario Sousa.

Meeting him felt like a sudden shift in the wind. One minute I was doing yoga on the deck, enjoying my off-the-grid solitude, and the next he was there—and the solitude didn’t seem quite as important anymore. Before I knew it, we were “romantic partners.” I’m in love, which is inconvenient when your only date-night option is watching a turtle commit, very slowly, to the breakwater. But Demario doesn’t seem to mind the sea-salted life, and that counts for a lot.

The real “tropical storm,” however, is Hana.

Hana officially aged up into a toddler this week. She traded her “Intense” infant energy for an “Independent” streak, which means she now has opinions about everything—and the mobility to act on them. My first priority as a parent was swapping the crib for a toddler bed. My second was catching Demario for a quick kiss before he headed back to the mainland.

The second priority? The Stairs.

When you live in a house on stilts, “Independent” is a terrifying word. I realized fast that teaching Hana the steps was the only thing standing between us and a very sandy disaster. She tackles them with a focus that makes the Island Elementals hover nearby, shimmering with what I can only interpret as concern.

To keep my sanity (and the reef) intact, Hana goes to the local daycare on the mainland each morning. It gives her a chance to be a normal kid and gives me a window to do the work that brought me here. While she’s gone, I’m out restoring Mua Pel’am—clearing the rot, checking the coral, and picking up the little trails she leaves behind her like breadcrumbs in the sand.

The island is starting to breathe again. And for the first time, I think I am, too.

I came to Sulani to put down the feeds and the optics, but the universe has a wicked sense of humor. To become a Land Surveyor, I had to buy a laptop. It turns out you can’t restore an ecosystem with just a coconut and a prayer; sometimes you need a signal.

So much for being entirely off-the-grid.

I leaned into my frugal roots to make it work, but since my lot is still mostly sand and salt air, I had to find a mobile office. Most days I load Hana into the boat and head to The Sand Bar—the only place I can count on a steady connection and a drink that doesn’t require me to crack the fruit myself.

The routine is usually the same: we eat, we dance to the local music, and then, once Hana’s toddler engine finally burns itself out, she curls up on a bench outside. She sleeps under the stars while I sit nearby with my screen glowing in the dark, filing conservation reports. It isn’t the simple, bare truth I pictured—but watching her breathe while I work to make her home thrive feels like a fair trade.

Hana’s world is expanding, too. She had her first taste of pineapple at the Sand Bar the other night. Her face went perfectly blank—she didn’t hate it, didn’t love it. She just chewed with profound skepticism, as if weighing the fruit’s worth against the effort of eating it.

Preschool on the mainland has been its own education. Hana may be independent, but the playground has rules she’s still learning.

• One day she came home terrified because another kid gave her a “mean look.”
• Another day, she was just a puddle of sadness because she had a heart full of emotions and no words to release them.
• My favorite, though, was the afternoon she came home sobbing because the other kids “laughed at her socks.”

I spent ten minutes trying to comfort her before I realized she wasn’t wearing socks. Or shoes. Apparently, in Hana’s world, imaginary fashion choices carry real social consequences.

While I’m navigating stilt-house stairs and toddler tantrums, the family back home is growing at a rate I can’t keep up with. My moms, Briar and Ember, have officially started the process of adopting Ty Dewitt. Between my new sister Ximena and this new brother, the weaver’s threads are getting very tangled back in the desert dust. Even Demario has caught the bug—he went and adopted a dog.

It seems everyone is finding something to hold onto. For me, it’s the realization that “living with the basics” might need to include a few more walls. Having the house up on stilts was a dream, but seeing Hana sleep on a bar bench because she doesn’t have an actual room—just a covered spot on the deck—is a wake-up call.

Turns out even a weaver has to pick up a hammer sometimes. The reef is on the mend, but my daughter needs a place where she can dream without sea spray hitting her bed.

The restoration of Mua Pel’am is slow, steady work, much like the tide itself. I spend my days between the sun-bleached sand and the cool, damp shadows of the island’s hidden places.

One afternoon, I found myself drawn to the sea cave at the edge of the reef. I was supposed to be surveying the rock formations, but then I heard it—a song like a silver thread weaving through the humid air. It wasn’t a sound you hear with your ears; it was a vibration that settled right into my marrow, ancient and beckoning.

I followed it deep into the limestone throat of the island until the light turned a dreamy, shimmering blue. There, perched on a slick rise of volcanic rock, was a mermaid. Her scales caught the dim light like wet jewels, and her voice was a lullaby that made the rest of the world—the reports, the stilt-house stairs, even the dry grit of my past—simply vanish.

When I got close, she didn’t flee. Instead, she reached out, her fingers cold as deep-sea currents. Before I could breathe, she pulled me under the water into a sudden, weightless embrace. For a moment, there was only the blue silence and the feeling of belonging to something much larger than myself. When she let go and vanished into the dark vents of the cave, I was left on the sand, breathless and strangely melancholy. It felt as if the ocean had just told me a secret I wasn’t quite ready to translate.

I headed home to Hana, my skin still cool with seawater and my mind humming with those “ancient basics.”

Thankfully, the arrival of Love Day provided the perfect emotional pivot. Even an off-the-grid weaver needs a distraction from the heavy whispers of the deep. I called Demario, and he arrived with roses and that easy warmth that makes the island feel a little less daunting. We had a proper date—romance, laughter, and “Love Day action” that definitely didn’t require an internet connection.

It was a night of unarmored truth—the kind my grandmother Noelle would have approved of—and it ended even better than it started. Demario, ever the gentleman, slipped off into the tropical dawn before Hana could wake up and demand his full attention with her “Independent” toddler energy.

But the best gift came the following morning. I received a message on my laptop (while I was back in “office mode” at the Sand Bar) that I am finally making a difference. The island’s breathing is steadier. The rot is clearing, and Mua Pel’am is officially improving.

There is still work to do, and the sea cave’s song is still echoing in the back of my mind, but for today, the progress is enough. The air feels lighter, and so do I.

While I’m busy trying to survey the land and restore the reef, Hana has been conquering a completely different kind of frontier: the potty.

Being Independent means she wants to do everything herself, and let me tell you, potty training on an off-the-grid beach lot is an exercise in both patience and local physics. We had a few rough days where she was a puddle of toddler-sadness because of a mess on the floor—the kind of “big feelings” that don’t have words yet. But then, it finally clicked.

The look on her face when she mastered it was pure sovereignty. She is officially a “big girl” now, and the pride she feels seems to radiate off her like Sulani sunshine. She’s decided that the potty is infinitely superior to the diaper, and honestly, seeing her stomp around with that newfound confidence almost makes me forget the stress of the “learning curve.” It’s one more step toward her finding her own path, even if that path is currently just a few successful feet away from a toddler bed.

Life in Sulani has a way of rewarding persistence. While I’ve been busy surveying the land and watching Mua Pel’am slowly exhale its rot, Hana has been busy conquering her own world. She officially reached the status of “Happy Toddler,” mastering the basics of communication, movement, and thinking with level 3 skills across the board. She navigates the stilt-house stairs now with a confidence that matches her Independent trait, finding her “island legs” in the salt air and sun.

To celebrate, and because my conservation reports still required a Wi-Fi signal, we headed down to The Sand Bar. The atmosphere was the usual Sulani mix of pulsing bass and the scent of grilled fruit—until the island’s rhythm suddenly skipped a beat.

One of the patrons simply laid down on the floor. In the simulation, death is often as quiet as a falling leaf, but the air in the bar changed instantly. It turned brittle and cold, the kind of chill that reminded me of StrangerVille dust I thought I’d left behind.

Then, he arrived.

For the first time in my adult life, I was standing face-to-face with my father. To the rest of the bar, he was the Grim Reaper, a hooded specter doing a somber job. But to me—the girl who grew up with shadows that leaned the wrong way—he was the figure I’d spoken to in the corners of my nursery. He was the source of the dark, angled scythe birthmark under my ear that my mother, Briar, had tried so hard to hide.

Hana, who usually meets the world at full volume, went uncharacteristically still. She watched him with those large, dark, and steady eyes—eyes that I know “watch the dark like it’s familiar”. She was shy, tucking herself against my leg, perhaps sensing the “ancient eyes” and the “blood of shadows” that link our lineage to his.

I didn’t run. I didn’t hide. In a moment of unguarded honesty, I stepped forward and hugged him. It was a silent acknowledgment of the weaver’s knot that started long before I stepped into the Sulani surf. He didn’t speak, but for a heartbeat, the bar’s coldness felt like a familiar embrace.

Once his work was done and the air began to warm again, I picked up Hana and took her home. We retreated to our empty beach lot, back to the “ancient basics” of the tide and the stars. The island is thriving, my daughter is growing, and for the first time, the shadows don’t feel like a secret I have to carry alone.

The island is finally beginning to feel less like a temporary landing strip and more like a home. I came here as the Fifteenth Weaver to step out of the spotlight and untangle my family’s mainland history, and for a long time, that meant living with nothing but the stars for a ceiling. But as the tides changed, so did my needs—and Key Point Shack has finally undergone a transformation.

I’ve officially expanded the house into two bedrooms with a real roof. It’s a strange feeling, having walls that actually separate us from the “salt-heavy air” and the “humming of the tides”. Our lot still carries the Oceanic Paradise and Island Spirits traits, meaning the shimmer of the elementals is never far away, and it remains a Private Dwelling, which is essential for a woman who grew up being watched by people who didn’t love her. We are still strictly Off-the-Grid, but we are a lot more comfortable while doing it.

My work as a conservationist is thriving—I’ve been promoted more than once, and I’m now a Conservation Director. The technical side of it, though, has been humbling. For weeks I had a professional canoe sitting uselessly in my possession, and I couldn’t figure out how to get it onto the water.

Apparently the island spirits find my technical ineptitude hilarious. Once I finally solved the problem, I somehow ended up with a small fleet: two canoes and a jetski. Now, when I’m not surveying the reef—or flirting with the idea of shifting into marine biology—I’m bobbing in the surf with more watercraft than I have people to pilot them.

Then came the challenge of the century: Hana’s birthday.

When you live off-the-grid, you realize very quickly that “celebration” requires logistics. I wanted to bake Hana a proper cake to mark her transition from the “Happy Toddler” who mastered the potty to a full-blown child, but my kitchen had other plans. Without a powered oven, I couldn’t actually bake the cake.

We had to improvise with what the island provided, proving once again that the “ancient basics” don’t always include buttercream frosting. We celebrated under the “rhythmic folding of the waves,” with the Island Elementals likely watching and giving us their usual “thumbs up” for our effort.

As the candles were (metaphorically) blown out, Hana aged up and revealed her newest trait: Slob.

While her infant self was “Intense” and her toddler self was “Independent,” she has now fully embraced the chaos of the island. In our sensory sanctuary of Sulani, being a slob is actually a bit of a superpower—she doesn’t mind the sand in the bedsheets, the salt on her skin, or the “rot” of discarded coconut husks on the deck.

My daughter, the child of a merman, has decided that tidiness is just another layer of “complexity” she doesn’t need. As she grows into her own, she seems perfectly content to let the island’s mess become her own. It’s going to be a very interesting ( and very sandy) road ahead.

The island has a way of making the rest of the world feel like a dream—or sometimes, a memory of a life someone else lived. I came here to find something honest and undefended in the ocean, stripping away the fame and performance that defined my mother, Briar, and my grandmother, Noelle. But even here, the “weaver’s threads” of my family find ways to tangle.

Recently, a quiet echo arrived from Del Sol Valley: Orange Bailey has passed away. He was my mother’s half-brother, my uncle, and a boy whose life once sat at the very center of the fame and stability my grandmother fought so hard to navigate. I never knew him—he was a piece of the “desert grit” I left behind—but his death marks a significant turn in the tide: he is the first of my mother’s generation to go. The shadows in the desert are growing a little longer, even as the Sulani sun stays bright.

While the past fades, the present is getting very crowded. Back in the desert, my moms—Briar and Ember—are living in a whirlwind of kid energy. My youngest siblings, Layton, Ximena, and Ty, have all reached that “Independent” stage of life. I can almost hear the chaos from across the ocean, a sharp contrast to the “Sensory Sanctuary” I’ve built here.

But Hana isn’t the only one navigating the island’s rhythms. Her father, Paka’a Uha, has been busy following his own currents, and Hana now has an entire tribe of half-siblings: Celeste and Marley Koenig, Ashley Vogt, and two new additions, Maya and Meredith Lobo-Bolivar.

Tracking down Maya and Meredith felt like pulling on a thread I thought I’d cut. They are the daughters of Bethany Lobo-Bolivar, who carried the family name through her marriage to Jagger—my grandmother Noelle’s brother.

It turns out my great-grandmother Wren left a legacy even more sprawling than I realized, with six children by six different men. The Lobo name seems to fold back in on itself no matter how far I run. In Sulani, the ocean is big enough for all of us, but seeing the Lobo-Bolivar name pop up in the local registries is a reminder that you can’t truly outrun the blood.

Hana is growing up surrounded by these “island echoes,” a child of a merman living in a house of walls I finally built for her. The island is breathing, the family is shifting, and I am still here—braiding my life into the salt and the sun.

Simmers!

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