There’s nothing there but herbs and the grapevine twisting and climbing the façade and, a bit further down, the slate-gray beach. Besides-” she draws a long breath, avoiding my stare “-we didn’t think you’d come back.” It hasn’t been my room for some time now. “Why not in the shed? You know…my room.” My voice catches. “Why is all this stuff here?” I gesture at the crammed space. Vases of inks, yellow, red, and purple, are placed on shelves high and low, a wooden ladder propped against the wall so she can reach them all. I leave my suitcase next to the makeshift bed she has made for me and take a look around, avoiding the curtain’s gentle sway.
Nobody from the hospital has pinged me on the BioChip yet, so I can’t excuse myself and go to the beach. I can’t face what lies on the other side of the room. She takes me to the back of the house where a linen curtain separates her workshop. Glancing at my wrist, my BioChip stays silent. “I am glad to see you, daughter,” she whispers in my ear. Still, I hug her and let the sea breeze wash over us. Yet, she has done things that I don’t know if I can forgive. When I hug her she feels so fragile in my arms, like she will shatter in pieces. I am not much bigger myself but hunched as she is by age and sickness, I tower over her like the enormous blue-striped grapevine that engulfs her house. She is a small woman, no taller than a twelve-year-old child.
She greets me with a mute smile and a small nod. As if time was frozen and only I was moving.īut now, in front of this tight-lipped woman, covered in tattoos of the heavenly waters and its beasts, the haze has scattered. It took two empty days and two sleepless nights by train to cross the vast expanse of rocky plains from Omega all the way to Tafros but it all seemed like a dream. When I heard the news, I packed a few things from my personnel apartment at the Omega hospital and booked a ticket on the next train to Tafros. I don’t realize how far apart I have grown from my mother until, upon meeting her again, I have to force myself to hug her.
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