he will bring (jin's eulogy)
Sun plays the music of the island with the way her eyes are shaped and lips frown. These are neither bad things. It has been days since Jin went away, and still her gaze is only on the horizon, searching for the last glint of the craft. Waiting for one's husband is never a bad thing.
To protect herself, Sun shines in the day and hides at night. The others don't notice her brilliance in daylight and miss her shadows at dusk. The rocky paths of the shore dissuade others from following in her steps as she follows the coast before her like a surveyor of land and sea. It is her widow's walk, and no architecture born of man's mind could be comparable.
She is frozen in time and heat. The warmth of the heavens drips on her, and she in turn gives to the island, a medium between gods. The sweat of her brow or the piss of her body, it does not matter how it was given. Always in it there is a prayer and tiny slivers of hope. The barricades she put up are like sieves, and tears and other small things could sometimes get by.
Words are small things. Just as she had told Claire, she now tells herself, he will bring him back. He will bring with him -- what, though? With him he will bring more, and with them they will have things. Things (noun plural): blankets and bug spray; soap and fresh water; brushes to comb out the knots in her hair; food.
The way the island's taken her sanity, anything looks good to eat now. She begins to feel an ache and generalized discomfort. Sun finds clay on her fingers and grit in her teeth. Good enough to eat had said one of her old English workbook, and certainly was the island. Locke looks at her with piercing eyes that he seems to have borrowed from Walter: endless, depthless, soulless. She looks away.
Fingernails dirty, Sun borrows into her task as she can never have buried into the earth. To attend to her husband is her greatest wish, and she desires nothing so simple as to wait upon him on his return. She believes their reunion with the sort of honest hope that she had thought lost to her years ago. For now, she lingers on the edge of the beach in expectation of his return.
When he comes, she says softly to Claire, he will have with him a hundred men and more. They will take the island fortress, release her captives, and have gladness to share among the castaways. The men will be strong, American men who have never heard of anything so marvelous as a land infected. Beasts will they slay, because as cowboys they have strong guns and sure aims.
Sun knows that he cannot bring everything for which she yearns, but there is really only one thing she wants, and sometimes she tells Claire of how empty his hands will be when he reaches for her (when she reaches for him). Claire sighs and says things like, "And you will have him back."
Yes, but how much had Sun had him beforehand? To protect her was his mission; to have him is hers. She fears that neither will ever be fully realized, and for him her heart breaks. To herself and the thick air, she explains that all she ever truly needed in the form of safety was Jin by her side. She cannot have him if he is standing before her and shielding her from all that he deems dangerous. And upon her congregant Sun bestows the warmth of a smile.
Sun beats on her flesh, and she thinks that ache in her belly is a different sort of hunger. She borrows from those on the raft; of Sawyer, she takes cunning and lonesome; with Walter's innocence she views her future; Michael's ingenuity and perseverance prompts her to keep a fire of smoke blackened by fish oils burning constantly; from Jin, she protects herself.
Of fish, Hurley offers his catch first to her, then to Claire. This does not change in all the days that he stands waist-deep in treacherous waters and stabs at its inhabitants. To the wife of the former provider he shows respect that she did not know Americans were taught; to the mother there is a tenderness that all stranded have adopted.
"Don't worry," Claire says, touching lightly with her fingers Sun's wrist. "He will return."
Sun has known this, but she must keep watch nevertheless.