The lava tube breathed in the darkness. Sunny felt it on her skin — that slow inhale-exhale of the earth, heavy with the scent of ti leaves, mold and wet stone. She was seven, or maybe eight (she couldn’t remember exactly), tracing the tube’s glassy walls with fingers that knew every ripple, every ancient bubble frozen in time.
“Hold up your light,” Marcus said behind her, his voice echoing off the curved ceiling. But Sunny kept her flashlight dark, moving through the memory contained in her feet instead. Left at the fallen boulder. Duck under the low spot that looked like a wave about to break. Three steps right where the floor sloped down.
“Someone’s been practicing,” Mother Sky whispered. She was Marcus’s newest girlfriend, the one who made wind chimes from sea glass and claimed she could talk to mongooses. Sunny hadn’t decided about her yet.
“The tube remembers,” Marcus said. “And so does she.” His voice carried that particular softness it got after his afternoon “medicine,” when he’d sit on their lanai solving complex mathematical equations on banana leaves with a Sharpie.
They reached the chamber at the back, where the tube opened like a mouth holding secrets. Marcus lit a single candle, and shadows danced across petroglyphs that might have been ancient or might have been carved last week by one of the vision questers who sometimes borrowed their tube.
“Tell me about my name again,” Sunny said, though she knew the story by heart. Behind her, a drop of water fell from the ceiling, its echo like a distant drum.
Marcus settled cross-legged on the smooth pahoehoe floor and pulled her into his lap. His tie-dyed shirt smelled of sage and pakalolo, and something else — the sharp tang of the ginger and tulsi he’d been brewing into tea. “You sure? It’s a long story.”
“The real one this time.”
He laughed, the sound bouncing off the walls like scattered light. “Ah, but which version is real? The one about how it rained sunshowers for three days when you were born? Or how your mother glowed like a star going supernova during labor? Or maybe…” He paused, taking a long drag from his ever-present joint. “Maybe the real story is about the day I realized names are just doors, and we choose which ones to walk through.”
Mother Sky sat nearby, wrapping her arms around her knees. Her bangles clinked like tiny bells. “Tell her about the dolphins.”
But Marcus was already somewhere else, his fingers dancing, tracing equations in the air. “Did you know that light behaves as both a particle and a wave? The greatest minds in physics still can’t fully explain it. It’s like…” He gestured with the joint, leaving light trails in the darkness. “It’s like you, little one. Sunny Rains. A paradox that makes perfect sense.”
Mother Sky leaned forward. “But the dolphins — “
“Not now,” Marcus said sharply, and something in his voice made Sunny turn to look at him. For a moment, his face was different — harder, like the basalt walls around them. Then he smiled, and he was just her father again, the man who taught physics to mongooses and read poetry to the moon.
Ten years later, Sunny stood in front of her bathroom mirror, scissors poised at the base of her waist-length dreads. Harvard’s acceptance letter lay on the counter, already worn soft from repeated folding and unfolding. She’d been “Aurora” for six months now — a name she’d chosen during a midnight skinny dip at the warm ponds, when the sky had erupted in sheets of green and purple light. A rare aurora, this far south. A sign, maybe.
But Aurora felt wrong in her mouth, like trying to speak underwater. She’d also tried Hoku (too obvious), Moana (too Disney), and Pele (definitely tempting fate). Each name had been a door, just like her father said. She’d walked through them all, trying them on like borrowed clothes.
The scissors snicked through the first dread.
Her father was out on the lanai, explaining string theory to the mongoose family that lived under their house. She could hear his voice drifting up: “You see, little brothers, reality has at least eleven dimensions, but we only perceive four…”
She hadn’t told him about Harvard yet. The acceptance letter had arrived three weeks ago, along with the full scholarship offer. She’d applied in secret, using Auntie Leilani’s address for the application materials. The betrayal sat in her stomach like a stone.
Another dread fell. And another.
Marcus had always said Western education was a cage built to trap free minds. “Look what it did to me,” he’d say, tapping his temple where a small scar marked the spot of his “awakening” during his PhD defense at Berkeley. “Nearly drove me crazy until I realized crazy was just another word for awake.”
When she finished, her head felt pounds lighter. Dark coils littered the floor like shed snakeskin. In the mirror, a stranger stared back — sharp-edged, undefined. A girl between names.
She gathered the dreads carefully, wrapping them in a cloth. Later, she would hike to the place where the last lava flow had stopped, right at the edge of their property. She’d leave them there as an offering, or maybe a promise.
“What did you do?”
She turned. Marcus stood in the doorway, joint forgotten in his hand, staring at her shorn head like she’d committed sacrilege.
“I needed a change,” she said.
“Your hair…” He stepped forward, the joint falling to the floor. “Those were your stories, your memories. Every dread marked a year of your life.”
“Maybe I need new stories.”
His eyes fell to the Harvard letter on the counter. Before she could move, he’d snatched it up, unfolding it with trembling fingers. She watched his face change as he read — confusion, understanding, betrayal.
“Harvard?” His voice cracked. “The same institution that tried to colonize my mind? That’s where you want to go?”
“Dad — “
“How long have you been planning this? Behind my back?”
“I’m not betraying you,” she said. “I’m just — “
“Just what? Just abandoning everything I taught you? Everything your mother believed in?”
The mention of her mother hit like a physical blow. “Don’t. You don’t get to use her against me. Not when you never even told me her real name.”
Marcus stepped back as if she’d slapped him. “Is that what this is about? Names again?”
“It’s about truth. Real truth, not just the stories you tell when you’re high. What was her Hawaiian name for me? The one she gave me when I was born?”
“You think Harvard will give you truth?” He laughed, but it wasn’t his usual warm chuckle. This was something sharp, wounded. “They’ll put you in a box, daughter. Label you, classify you, strip away everything that makes you magical until you’re just another commodity in their academic marketplace.”
“Or maybe they’ll teach me how to use that magic. To understand it. To make it mean something in the real world.”
“The real world?” He gestured wildly at the window, where Mauna Kea loomed in the distance. “This is the real world! These trees, these stones, these lava tubes that remember every footstep — this is reality! Not some concrete campus three thousand miles away!”
She gathered up the wrapped dreads, pushing past him. “I’m going to the lava flow.”
“Sunny — “
“That’s not my name anymore,” she said, though she hadn’t known she was going to say it until the words were out.
She left him there, surrounded by the scattered remains of her old self, and walked into the gathering dark.
The next morning, she paddled out past the break at Kehena, away from the drum circle gathering on the beach. The ocean rolled beneath her board in smooth swells. She’d learned to read water before she could read books — the way light bent differently over shallow reef, how the current pulled at the legs of unwary swimmers, the specific pattern of ripples that meant dolphins approaching — and how fast.
They came as if summoned by her thought. Three fins cutting the surface, then five, then a dozen. The pod circled her board, close enough to touch. One rolled on its side, fixing her with a dark eye that held galaxies, its fixed smile showing her that Love was at the bottom of everything.
“I know who you are,” a voice said.
Sunny startled, nearly falling off her board. An ancient Hawaiian woman floated nearby on a traditional wooden board, her silver hair coiled in a bun. Sunny had seen her before, watching from the shore during ceremonies, but they’d never spoken.
“Your father named you twice,” the woman continued. “Once in English, once in Hawaiian. But he never told you the second name, did he?”
Something cold slipped down Sunny’s spine. “Who are you?”
The woman smiled. “Someone who knows about names. And doors.” She began to paddle away, then paused. “Ask him about the night you were born. The real story this time. And about the dolphins — what really happened that day.”
But when Sunny looked again, the woman was gone. Only the dolphins remained, spinning through the morning light like stars going supernova.
The house was quiet when she returned, but she could smell burning sage. She found Marcus in his meditation room, surrounded by crystals arranged in sacred geometric patterns. His eyes were red, and not just from the joint smoldering in the ashtray.
“Your mother’s name was Kamalani,” he said without looking up. “It means ‘child of heaven.’ She chose it herself, the day she left her old life behind. The day she chose to be free.”
Sunny sat across from him, the crystal patterns between them like a map of stars.
“The name she gave you…” He reached for a small copper box on the altar. “I didn’t lose it. I’ve been waiting for the right moment. Waiting for you to be ready.”
“And now?”
He opened the box with trembling fingers. “Now you’re leaving. Like she did.”
“Dad, I’m not — “
“She was a marine biologist,” he said suddenly. “Did I ever tell you that? Studied spinner dolphins. The day we met, she was tracking a pod off Kehena. I was sitting on the beach, trying to solve some equation that seemed important at the time. The dolphins started spinning — not just one or two, but the whole pod. Like they were putting on a show. Your mother said they’d never done anything like it before.”
Sunny remembered the old woman’s words. “What really happened that day?”
Marcus was quiet for a long moment, rolling the joint between his fingers. “Your mother had a theory. She thought the dolphins weren’t just spinning for fun. She thought they were creating something — patterns in the air, in the water. Like a language written in motion. She said they were trying to tell us something about the nature of reality.”
“What was it?”
“That everything spins.” He smiled sadly. “Electrons, planets, galaxies — even light itself has a property called spin. She thought maybe the dolphins understood something we didn’t. That spinning wasn’t just movement, but a way of being. A door between states.”
He pulled a yellowed piece of paper from the copper box. “The name she gave you… it’s about that. About moving between states, between worlds. She said you’d need it someday, when you were ready to spin your own door.”
Sunny took the paper, her heart thundering. The characters were faded but clear, written in a hand she’d never seen before. The name felt ancient and new at once, like a star being born.
“It means ‘she who dances between worlds,’” Marcus said softly. “Your mother knew, even then. She knew you’d have to leave someday. Like she did. Like I did, though I left in a different way.” He touched the scar on his temple. “Maybe that’s why I’ve been so afraid. Not of losing you, but of you finding your way to a door I can’t follow you through.”
Sunny looked at the name again, feeling its weight, its truth. “Come with me,” she said. “To Mauna Kea. Before I leave for Harvard. We’ll watch the sunrise together.”
He nodded slowly. “Okay. But first, there’s something else you should know about your mother…”
The summit of Mauna Kea floated above the cloud line like an island in the sky. Sunny stood at the base of one of the telescopes, watching her breath steam in the thin air. She’d hiked up from the highway in darkness with Marcus, timing their arrival for first light. They’d hiked all night, slow and steady, stopping occasionally for Marcus to catch his breath in the thin air or to tell another piece of her mother’s story.
Now, as the sun crested the horizon, she understood why the ancient Hawaiians had called this place, this mauna, the piko of the world. The umbilical cord connecting earth and sky.
She held the copper box in her hands, feeling its weight. Inside was her mother’s journal, full of drawings of spinning dolphins and equations that looked remarkably like the ones Marcus was always scribbling. The final page held her Hawaiian name, the one she’d carry with her to Harvard and beyond.
She traced the letters with her finger, feeling their weight, their possibility. Then she began to walk toward the true summit, where the sun was painting the snow in shades of rose and gold, Marcus following behind her, humming an old Hawaiian melody she half-remembered from childhood.
Behind them, the telescopes turned slowly, reading light that had traveled billions of years to reach this mountain, this moment, this piko. Below, somewhere in the vast Pacific, dolphins spun through the waves, writing their mysterious language in the air. And in a small house in Puna, a copper box sat empty on an altar, its door finally opened, its secret finally free.
The girl who had been Sunny Rains stood at the summit of Mauna Kea and spoke her new name to the dawn, her father’s hand warm in hers. The name tasted like salt and starlight, like rain on sun-warmed stones, like coming home and leaving home all at once.
Different, and exactly the same.
[This story was written 98% by Claude, an AI “chatbot,” based on my prompting, of course. I found it incredible that it knew so much detail about the area where I live, without me feeding that information. And while the story lacks much plot I found it quite poignant and touching. It even made me tear up a little at times. Yes, this is just the start for superintelligent AI. No human could write this quality story in 30 seconds or so, ever. This is both highly intriguing and as I’ve written about frequently elsewhere, also extremely scary and promises to drastically change our world in the next few years.]
