[written by Mira]

Kiara lay awake, wondering all over again if she should seek professional help.

Even if she could afford it, though, some part of her knew this had nothing to do with her handful of undiagnosed neuroses.

There was no word for this experience; not that she had ever come across, at least, and she had earned a B in intro psych.

What would she tell a therapist, anyway? Love always sounded crazy, she supposed, but even so there was no denying that this was totally different. Was it love? It scared her to think of it that way.

Inevitably, they would explore her earliest memories, the heat of that anonymous Miami trailer park where she was raised.

Her mother had maintained an active social life after her divorce, mostly via telephone, but her work as a cleaner was her true passion. To Candace, everything was in harmony so long as there wasn't the slightest speck of grime to mar it. Every day she put on her polished shoes and walked to the metro station, leaving Kiara with Señor Perez, the park manager, until the school bus came. By the time she came home her shoes were still pristine, though she often boasted of being the most valued employee on her team, praised for her thoroughness and work ethic.

But it seemed to Kiara that her mother wasn't obsessed with cleanliness like everyone seemed to think. In fact, she suspected the opposite was true: She simply had no time for anything in her life that wasn't messy in some way. Her phone conversations were proof enough of this, as Candace and her friends loudly hypothesized about the latest from reality TV and celebrity gossip magazines. And so, whether at school or in the trailer park, Kiara played in the dirt and deliberately spilled food on herself, adopted stray rats and avoided bathing. Her mother hated it, could not for the life of her understand this behaviour. Kiara wasn't sure how to feel about it either, but at least this way someone paid attention to her.

So far as she could tell, Candace had always been this way. Maybe that's why her marriage hadn't worked out. It wasn't that Kiara's dad was a slob or anything like that—he was in fact a clean-cut, fastidious man (which might at least have explained their first attraction). Rather, it seemed their respective, incompatible ideals of just what was meant by "neat and tidy", were the source of that fatal friction between them.

Candace was from Ontario originally, having met the future father of her child while working, predictably, as a cleaner at the hotel where he was staying on business from Florida. Maybe it was his orderly room that had alerted her to the presence of a kindred spirit, but that didn't matter anymore. Importantly for Kiara, they had exchanged numbers, kept in touch, and got married in Florida, where she was born. After the divorce, Candace, a naturalized Floridian, saw no reason to return to the country of her own birth; the tropical climate here suited her, and besides, so long as there was some mess she could sanitize with extreme prejudice, she might have lived contentedly anywhere.

When Kiara was very young, they'd enjoyed suburban comfort and a car of their own to transport them aseptically between work, school, and home. But all the money flowed from her father, and although the child support cheques came in like clockwork, trailer life was all Candace could afford once her modest cleaner's wage became their primary income.

Kiara started on at the same company as soon as she could legally work, when she was 14, and soon discovered she did not share her mother's passion. Some things she encountered, however, revealed to her the degree of filth that was possible in the world, and were enough to convince her that the repulsion they inspired in her was no less severe than the average person's.

She had no other choice. Moving in with her dad wasn't an option; they had never been close, and her step-siblings treated her like, well... dirt. It was clear she had to work, and while she lived with her mother that meant either cleaning, cooking, or retail. She quickly grew to dread the prospect of looming decades of the same. This would not be her life; she simply refused.

Any kind of education after high school was prohibitively expensive and thus out of the question, until one fateful day near the end of her senior year. She and her friends were bemoaning their respective futures, when one idly mentioned the idea of studying in Canada, where tuition supposedly cost a fraction of what it did in the US. Kiara's heart began to beat very fast and the rest of her friend's words blurred into the background noise. She had her ticket out.

When she got home that day she asked her mum about dual citizenship, knowing she had it herself. Where Candace was unhelpful, the Internet readily yielded the answers she sought. Discovering not only that Canadian tuition was even more affordable for citizens of that country, but that she herself already belonged to that very demographic, she immediately began browsing schools.

The University of Saskatchewan had been the first to accept her, and that's all it took to win her commitment. When Candace learned her daughter would be moving to Canada, she was unexpectedly tearful.

"Deep down, I always knew this day would come," she confessed, her makeup running as she sloppily sobbed. "On to bigger and brighter things. I've never been to Saskatchewan, you know. It's going to be a new adventure for our family. It gets cold up there. We're going to have to find you a winter coat."

In the ensuing weeks, Candace was more supportive than Kiara had thought she was capable of. It made her feel guilty, but she had to admit she found her mum's new attitude more than a little stifling. Still, she helped Kiara find a cleaning job with the company she used to work for in Ontario, which had since expanded to operate nationally.

Income secured, it was a simple matter of finding somewhere to stay. The prospect of dorm living didn't trouble her, but she expanded her search to Craigslist just for the sake of knowing her options. That was how she got in touch with Elaine; her old roommate had moved on, and a room was available, preferably to someone young and female. Rent was slightly more expensive than any of Kiara's other options, but she felt immediately drawn to Elaine, who had advertised herself as active and ambitious—very much the sort of image Kiara fancied cultivating for herself. Their first exchange of messages was cordial enough, the subsequent Zoom tour satisfactory. Kiara had found her pad.

That was how, that very August, she washed up in Saskatoon. Life in that cute, provincial city seemed charming to her, and she settled in quickly enough. Aside from a brief hiccup in which she was berated by Elaine for leaving her shoes on when entering the apartment, Kiara felt at home in time for her first week of class. It seemed everything was going to work out smoothly.

Then November came. Kiara discovered how drastically her mum had understated the severity of Canadian winters. The jacket they had purchased in a Miami thrift store was powerless against the brutal chill of the prairies, and more than once she returned home with her toes frozen solid.

More than anything, though, she was disturbed by the brevity of daylight. Accustomed to her relatively equatorial homeland, Kiara felt as though something within her shrunk in terror as the nights grew insensibly longer. She was genuinely terrified, the moment it struck her just what was happening. Soon enough she learned about the solstice, how the worst was yet to come, and promptly fell ill.

This coincided poorly with her final exams for the term, and although she managed to pass, her final grades were nonetheless disheartening. This only exacerbated her condition, and although the holidays had arrived and she now had ample time to work extra hours, she found she was in no fit state to do so.

Elaine was sympathetic throughout her ordeal, but it was clear her indisposition had put a strain on their already scanty finances. Kiara kept their predicament from Candace, not wanting to trouble her, and even though her dad had plenty of money, she wasn't about to call him and beg.

In the end Kiara was back on her feet before the new year, but although they were able to make rent, both she and Elaine were well aware of how close they had cut it. Life in Canada hadn't been what Kiara had hoped or imagined, and that month had given her a proper scare. She would have to get her act together or else move back to Florida, and a lifetime of scrubbing toilets.

Naturally perhaps, Elaine began exploring alternative income streams. One such avenue was that of generating paid erotic content online. "Apparently it pays pretty well, once you have a decent following," Elaine told her friend. "I'd never have the guts to do it, though."

Kiara shrugged, never looking up from the floor where she sat clipping her toenails. "I'd try it, honestly. We'd just need something to film with."

It all fell into place: Elaine's mum was a photographer, and more than happy to lend them some of her less expensive equipment for their "art projects". The two of them rode out the remaining months of freeze and thaw on minimum wage, taking kinky photos in their spare time. They started with the standard stuff—bondage, ASMR, wax play—Elaine working the cameras with Kiki as her model. For everything they tried, it was Kiara's feet that got them their first break. They took it and ran, developing a clientele with an oddly vocal and particular interest in muddy feet.

That was how they found their niche. By the time spring had blossomed, they already had grand plans for nature shoots, for which the surrounding land amply provided. Their efforts helped with the bills somewhat, but Kiara discovered that she truly enjoyed their outings. Where the winter nights had been agonizingly long, those of summer felt short and perfunctory—just present enough to offer brief refreshment from those hot, gorgeous, sunny days. Kiara abandoned all plans of visiting her mum, settling on weekend phone calls and minimalistic texts.

Sure, Elaine had eventually given up on their productions, but Kiara still had access to the Jeep and cameras so long as it would help with their income. And now, against all odds, she had found love! Was that the word? She wasn't sure what else to call it. She had never been more uncertain of anything in her life. All she knew was, even if her online following completely vanished overnight, she couldn't stop going out to her special place—not now that she knew what awaited her there.

Kiara rolled over, groaning with frustration. If she couldn't sleep, at least she could get ready early and leave for the bush at first light.