[BL] Olomana

The wind howled like something ancient and hungry, rattling the windows of the small house perched on the mountainside. Rain lashed sideways through the banana groves, bending the broad leaves until they snapped like whips against the night. But inside his simple bedroom, Alika Aiona lay perfectly still beneath his worn quilt, his weathered face peaceful despite the storm’s fury. His breathing was shallow, labored—the wet rattle in his chest spoke of an illness that had been growing for months like a tide that wouldn’t turn. But in sleep, he was somewhere else entirely.

In the dream, he was young again, his legs strong and sure as they carried him up the steep ridges of Mount Olomana. The trail beneath his bare feet was slick with rain, but he moved with the confidence of someone who had walked these paths for seventy years, who knew every root and stone like the lines on his own palm. Ahead of him, barely visible through the mist that clung to the mountain’s three peaks like the breath of sleeping gods, a figure beckoned.

His grandmother. Long dead now—forty years in the ground—but in dreams she remained as she had been in his childhood: tall and graceful, her white hair flowing like water down her back, her dark eyes holding the wisdom of generations. She wore the traditional kapa cloth that the missionaries had tried so hard to shame away, and around her neck hung the carved bone pendant that had been passed down through their family for countless years, its surface worn smooth by loving hands.

She didn’t speak—she never spoke in these visions—but her meaning was clear as water, urgent as wind. Follow. Come higher. See what must be seen.

The climb grew steeper, more treacherous, until Alika found himself clinging to exposed roots and jagged rocks as the wind tried to tear him from the mountainside. His chest burned with effort, his fingertips bled where they scraped against stone, but still he climbed, driven by a compulsion he didn’t fully understand but trusted completely. This was important. This was why she had come, why the ancestors had stirred from their eternal rest to visit an old man’s dreams.

At last, near the highest peak where the clouds gathered like old gods in council, his grandmother stopped and turned back toward the valley spread out below them. Alika followed her gaze and gasped at what he saw, his breath misting in the thin mountain air.

There, in the terraced fields of his family’s land, a man worked alone in the silver light of dawn. He was young—perhaps thirty—with the lean build of someone accustomed to physical labor, though his movements carried an awkwardness that spoke of recent learning, of hands more familiar with books than soil. His skin was pale, paler than it should have been, as if he’d spent too many years away from the healing sun that was his birthright. But there was something familiar about the way he moved, something that made Alika’s heart recognize him even from this impossible distance.

Kaʻumana. His sister’s boy, the nephew he hadn’t seen in twenty years. The child who had been stolen away to England by a mother ashamed of her own blood, raised to be someone else, taught to forget where he came from as if heritage were a sickness that could be cured through education and careful breeding. But here he was, returned at last, his hands deep in the sacred earth of their ancestors, his face turned toward the mountain as if listening for something he couldn’t quite hear.

The vision shimmered, wavered like heat rising from hot stone, began to fade. But just before it dissolved entirely, lightning split the sky above Olomana’s peaks, and in that brilliant moment of illumination, Alika saw his nephew’s face clearly. The boy had become a man, marked by years of exile and longing, lines around his eyes that spoke of disappointments and compromises. But his eyes—his eyes still held the spark that had made him special as a child. The ability to see sideways, to hear what others couldn’t hear, to serve as a bridge between the world of the living and the realm of the ancestors.

Thunder crashed overhead, shaking the house to its foundations like the footsteps of giants, and Alika jerked awake with a gasp that turned into a violent coughing fit. His chest felt like it was filled with broken glass, and he could taste blood on his lips, copper-sweet and warm. But the dream—the vision—remained crystal clear in his mind, more real than the storm raging outside his windows, more urgent than the pain that clawed at his lungs.

He reached for the oil lamp beside his bed with trembling fingers, his breath coming in short, painful gasps that echoed in the small room. In the yellow glow, he could see the wooden chest where he kept his most precious possessions—the family genealogy written in his grandmother’s careful hand, the land deeds that proved their connection to this place, the pendant that had been waiting for the right person to claim it, growing heavier with each passing year of solitude.

Soon, very soon, he would need to prepare. The ancestors had spoken with voices that carried the weight of mountains, the authority of endless time. The one they had been waiting for was finally coming home.

Three thousand miles away, across an ocean that stretched like a blue eternity between worlds, Dr. Kaʻumana Poret stood at the tall window of his Bloomsbury apartment, watching the gray December rain streak down the glass like tears. Beyond the water-blurred panes, London stretched out in its endless expanse of sooty brick and chimney smoke, a maze of narrow streets and crowded squares where he had lived for fifteen years without ever feeling like he belonged.

The apartment was precisely what a successful physician should have—tasteful furniture chosen by an expensive decorator, well-stocked bookshelves displaying the proper mixture of medical texts and literary classics, a view of a respectable garden square where nannies pushed prams and elderly gentlemen walked tiny dogs. Everything in perfect order, everything carefully chosen to project the image of a man who had made something of himself in the world that mattered. Yet standing here in his shirtsleeves, still wearing the collar and cuffs that marked him as a gentleman, Kaʻumana felt like an actor who had forgotten he was performing a role.

The mirror on the opposite wall caught his reflection, and he studied the stranger looking back at him with something approaching revulsion. Pale skin that had once been bronze, softened by years of avoiding the sun that might darken him too noticeably for polite society. Hair trimmed and pomaded into submission, though it still wanted to curl in the humidity that crept through even the best-sealed windows. Hands that had once known calluses now smooth and pink from indoor work, from handling nothing rougher than silk-lined gloves and silver instruments. He looked prosperous, educated, respectable—everything his mother had sacrificed so much to make him.

Everything except Hawaiian.

The thought hit him like a physical blow, and he turned away from his reflection with something approaching violence. When had he become this stranger? When had the boy who had once caught fish with his bare hands been replaced by this pale imitation of an English gentleman? When had he learned to see his own heritage as something shameful, something to be hidden beneath layers of careful cultivation and social climbing?

A sharp knock at his door interrupted his brooding. “Dr. Poret? Your evening appointments have arrived.”

Mrs. Henderson, his housekeeper, always sounded slightly disapproving when she announced his patients, though she took care to hide it behind professional courtesy. Not because they were unworthy—quite the opposite. His practice catered to London’s wealthy elite, the kind of people who could afford a physician with exotic credentials and a fashionable address, who found it thrilling to consult someone authentically foreign while still maintaining their sense of superiority. But there was something in her tone that suggested she found the whole enterprise somehow distasteful, as if she could see through his careful performance to the loneliness underneath.

“Thank you, Mrs. Henderson. Show them to the consultation room. I’ll be down presently.”

He straightened his collar, smoothed his hair, checked his appearance one final time, and prepared to become Dr. Poret once again. The performance was so automatic now that he barely had to think about it—the slight stiffening of his posture, the careful modulation of his accent to remove any trace of island cadence, the professional smile that conveyed competence without warmth, authority without intimacy.

The consultation room was his stage, decorated with diplomas and medical texts that established his credentials beyond question. His first patient was Lady Pemberton, a society matron whose primary ailment seemed to be an excess of leisure and a shortage of genuine problems. She reclined on the examination couch like expensive furniture, her pale hands fluttering as she described symptoms that existed mainly in her imagination but were real enough to her in their power to disrupt her carefully ordered world.

“Doctor, I’ve been having the most dreadful palpitations,” she said in a voice that suggested she found her own suffering quite fascinating. “And my sleep has been terribly disturbed. I wake at the most ungodly hours with the strangest dreams.”

Dreams. The word sent an unexpected shiver through Kaʻumana’s chest, though he couldn’t say why. Something about the way she said it, or perhaps something stirring in his own memory, made his pulse quicken in ways that had nothing to do with medical interest.

“What sort of dreams, Lady Pemberton?”

“Oh, the most peculiar things. Mountains and water and… and singing in languages I don’t understand.” She waved her hand dismissively, as if the very strangeness of it offended her sense of proper order. “My physician in Bath suggested it might be something I ate, but I thought perhaps you, with your… unique background… might have some insight.”

*Your unique background.* The polite way of acknowledging that he was different, exotic, useful precisely because he was not quite one of them but could never truly be one of them either. Kaʻumana had built his practice on that difference, marketing himself as a physician who understood both Western medicine and more mysterious healing traditions. It was mostly nonsense—he knew little more about Hawaiian healing than Lady Pemberton did—but it gave his wealthy patients the thrill of consulting someone authentically foreign while still maintaining their sense of cultural superiority.

“I would recommend a mild sedative before bed,” he said, reaching for his prescription pad with steady hands. “And perhaps avoiding rich foods in the evening hours.”

The same advice any physician in London would give, delivered with just enough exotic authority to make it seem special, worth the premium fees he charged. Lady Pemberton paid with the satisfied air of someone who had purchased something rare and valuable, and Kaʻumana felt the familiar taste of self-disgust in his mouth like copper pennies.

The evening’s remaining patients blurred together in their predictable parade of wealth and boredom—a banker with dyspepsia brought on by too much rich food and too little honest work, a merchant’s wife with nervous complaints that seemed to stem from having nothing meaningful to occupy her time, a young lord who had contracted something embarrassing during his Grand Tour and needed discretion as much as treatment. Each consultation was a small betrayal, a performance of authenticity that was entirely false. He was no more connected to the healing traditions of his ancestors than they were. Less, perhaps, since at least they didn’t pretend to be something they weren’t.

By the time his last patient departed, the December darkness had settled over London like a suffocating blanket, thick with coal smoke and the exhalations of four million souls living too close together. Kaʻumana climbed the stairs to his apartment with leaden feet, his body aching in ways that had nothing to do with physical exertion and everything to do with the weight of maintaining a lie that grew heavier with each passing day.

In his sitting room, a fire burned in the grate, and Mrs. Henderson had left his dinner on a tray—lamb and potatoes and pudding, the kind of heavy English fare that sat in his stomach like stone and reminded him of everything he had lost. He poured himself a generous measure of whiskey and settled into his leather chair, staring at the flames without really seeing them, lost in thoughts he couldn’t quite name.

This was his life—this comfortable, suffocating, meaningless existence in a city that would never truly accept him no matter how perfectly he played their games. He was successful by any measure that mattered to the world, yet he felt like he was slowly drowning in his own respectability, suffocating under the weight of expectations that weren’t even his own.

The whiskey burned his throat, but it couldn’t touch the deeper ache in his chest. Loneliness so profound it felt like a physical wound, a hollow space where something essential should have been. Not just the absence of companionship—though that was certainly part of it—but something larger and more fundamental. The loneliness of someone who had lost connection to everything that might have made him whole.

When had he last spoken Hawaiian? When had he last tasted poi or heard the sound of steel guitar? When had he last felt sand between his toes or salt spray on his face? The memories were there, buried under years of English education and careful assimilation, but they felt like stories he had heard about someone else’s life, distant and unreal as fairy tales.

His mother’s voice echoed in his memory, sharp with determination and barely concealed shame: *“You will be a gentleman, Kaʻumana. You will speak properly, dress properly, conduct yourself with dignity. You will never give them reason to look down on you.”* And he had obeyed, had transformed himself so completely that sometimes he wondered if the Hawaiian boy he had once been had ever really existed at all.

The fire crackled, sending shadows dancing across the walls like spirits seeking something they had lost, and for a moment Kaʻumana could almost imagine he heard something else in the sound—not the hiss of coal but the rustle of palm fronds, not the rumble of London traffic but the crash of waves on coral reef. The sensation was so vivid, so unexpected, that he set down his glass and sat forward in his chair, his heart suddenly racing.

Come home.

The words came from nowhere, or perhaps from everywhere at once. Not spoken aloud but felt, like a vibration in his bones or a pressure change in the air that made his ears pop. Kaʻumana looked around his empty apartment, heart hammering against his ribs, but there was nothing there except expensive furniture and the sound of rain against the windows.

Come home.

There it was again, stronger this time, accompanied by a longing so intense it took his breath away and left him gasping like a man who had been underwater too long. Images flashed through his mind unbidden—green mountains rising from blue water, the scent of plumeria and pikake carried on trade winds, the taste of mango juice running down his chin sweet and sticky in tropical heat. Home. The word carried weight beyond its simple meaning, spoke of belonging and purpose and connection to something larger than himself.

But home to what? To a place that had probably forgotten him, where he would be as much a stranger as he was here? To family who might not recognize the man he had become, who might see his transformation as betrayal rather than survival? To a culture he had been taught to see as primitive and shameful, something to be overcome rather than embraced?

The rational part of his mind—the part that had been trained in European universities and shaped by English values—dismissed the sensation as nothing more than nostalgia triggered by whiskey and loneliness, the pathetic fantasy of a man who had built his life on lies. But something deeper, something that had been sleeping for years beneath his careful respectability, stirred to life like a hibernating animal sensing spring. The feeling wasn’t going away. If anything, it was growing stronger, more insistent, impossible to ignore.

He went to his desk and pulled out a sheet of letterhead, expensive paper with his name embossed in gold letters, then sat staring at the blank page for nearly an hour. What did you say to family you hadn’t seen in twenty years? How did you explain that you were finally ready to remember who you used to be? How did you ask forgiveness for becoming everything they were supposed to be proud of?

In the end, he wrote simply:

Uncle Alika,

I have been thinking of home lately, and of family. I would like to visit, if you would have me. I can take leave from my practice for several weeks, perhaps longer. I hope this letter finds you well.

Your nephew,

Kaʻumana

It wasn’t much, but it was a beginning. The first step toward something he couldn’t yet name but could no longer deny. As he sealed the envelope and wrote out his uncle’s address in Maunawili Valley, Territory of Hawaii, the strange calling in his chest quieted slightly, as if satisfied that he had finally begun to listen to what it had been trying to tell him all along.

Outside his window, London slept beneath its blanket of soot and fog, four million souls dreaming their separate dreams. But somewhere across an ocean that might as well have been eternity, an old man lay dying in a house on a mountainside, and in his dreams he saw a young man coming home at last to claim what had always been his.