𝘣𝘦𝘢𝘶𝘵𝘺 {𝙘𝙝𝙤 𝙘𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙜/𝙤𝙘} ⚢

xii.

“媽媽 (mama),” i had looked into my mum’s obscenely vitreous, ebony eyes. i’d only ever seen her cry one other time in my whole life; my grandmother’s passing when i was still only five. she’d forever been resilient beyond measure.

i’d known, then and there, i needed to make the most of the time i had left with my mother, and the clock was taking and ticking like a time bomb ready to explode.

“cho,” she’d murmured. “my beautiful daughter.” she’d barely ever given me compliments in my short life. it made me cry, because i knew what it meant (it was the denouement; the finale in her own play!).

“媽媽 (mama).”

“i want happiness for you,” my mum, mei, had admitted. “you find joy, pretty girl, please.”

“媽 (ma—)”

“i want you to find 快樂 (happy), cho.” my mother barely ever spoke to me in english. she understood the language perfectly, even if she didn’t know how to find her words with ease.

“i will,” i’d admitted. “if it’s what you want, i will find it.”

“no.” my mum had slowly moved her hand to my beating, pulsing heart. “for you, find. for you. you do not find for me.”

tears had streamed down my face, more and more with every second that passed by. they were uncontrollable and inevitable. this pain could never be duplicated (not even by bao!).

“promise me, cho,” my mum had begged. i was lost, but i, mustering up everything i had left to give, shook my head up and down; a promise.

“i promise,” i’d voiced.

my mum, having heard my sacred pledge, had closed her orbs, and my heart, as broken as it had been (as it still was!), went adrift in what i would one day know as bao’s lifeless, onyx sea of death. my mother had only closed her eyes to rest, but i remember wondering how long it would be before it was completely over; before rest was ever-endless?

before rest was death.

i thought of lian’s words. it did matter if steven only loved yan now. love-- true, unconditional love --wasn’t supposed to be transitory. it was supposed to last, and it was supposed to be kind.

it was my mum’s dying hand on my pounding, thrashing chest (the chest that avidly pumped and pumped blood to the rest of my anxiety-stricken body!). it was cedric promising we’d leave the only country we’d ever known to get away from everything as soon as hogwarts ended. it was lian asking me if i was okay when i’d managed to lose touch with our conversation and her too-tight hugs. it was sweet plum jam, soon-to-be given.

“mum,” i’d whispered, waiting for a sign of life from her frail, aching body before i began. “i will make it to yalong, and the frothy sea, and the marts that board the shores of your hometown. i will learn of my culture and its people, the language (she’d forever wanted me to be completely bilingual!) in its entirety and the places you loved as a little witch.”

she’d found my hand, my stunning, mercurial mother (the matriarch embodied in a body!), and had given it a squeeze; the last of her life-- the final azalea on the windowsill, the ultimate goodbye (or should i say farewell?).

yalong-- the memories of her faded, i was here. i was in her hometown (the lionised dreamland of a place i’d always heard of!) on the beach where 奶奶 (grandma) and 爺爺 (grandpa) had brought her long, long before she’d reached europe.

but still, i was still. maybe it was in memory or maybe it was because of...

“galilea?” lian called out again, and even in the deep-dyed darkness that surrounded me, the italian witch’s eyes, lambent grey and blue like the moon, shone bright.