To growing up too fast

‘It’s just a story, Noria,’ she said. ‘Fishfires are colliding particles caused by the closeness of the North Pole. An electromagnetic reaction, no more exciting than a light bulb or a glow-worm. There are no dragons living in the sea, no shoals of fish following them or the flashing of scales in the dark sky.’ She picked up a blue-lotus cake and tasted it. ‘These were better last year,’ she remarked.

Itäranta, Emmi Memory of Water: A Novel (pp. 108-109).

This was a very dreadful part of the book for me. Throughout the book Noria mentions of times when her and Sanja would sneak away to the plastic grave, these parts speak of a more jubilant Sanja and Noria un-phased by the hardships that they have to face and the world they are living in. Yet in this section of the book I couldn’t ignore the fact that both Sanja and Noria are still young girls that progressively have to mature in a brusque manner. Sanja for example, although she does not reveal the stern reality of her family’s situation, Itaranta hints much of Sanjas situation to the reader so one can discern that Sanja is under an enormous amount of stress. Noria now has cope with the death of her father and the internal battle she has with herself as a result of keeping the spring a secret. I feel that this notion is embodied within the quote above, where Sanja expresses that she no longer sees the ‘Fishfires’. Right after having said this Sanja also remarks on the not so sweet taste of the lotus cake which makes one think that perhaps it is not that things are changing, perhaps it is the way that Sanja and Noria see things that is changing. Sanja clearly sees things in a much more bitter way, not as sweet or innocent as the year before. After her fathers death, Noria, like Sanja I believe will no longer see the fish fires or taste the sweetness of lotus cakes.