Water and Wind

Chapter 40

Nimue

She stands, facing the lady stolidly. Her feet are planted, her stance firm. She is not ready to run, but she is not prepared to cower either. She has been waiting for this. It's what she saw in the candle. She draws in one deep breath and tips her chin up.

"Hello Mama."

The spirit stays motionless, floating and taking in every part of her. The honey hair that was darker in childhood, the eyes that are still the same, lightened from brown to blue with age, but every bit as sparkly as she remembers. The sight just brings back the ache in the spirit's empty chest, hollow but still beating. Scarred but still fresh. Nimue waits.

Eventually, the spirit speaks. Slowly and carefully, like she's spent every waking moment thinking about what she's wanted to say but has no way of saying it now that the moment has come. Her voice breaks. "My child."

If the spirit could cry, she would. Nimue watches as her eyes well and silver, and she feels her own lump rise in her throat, watches as the spirit glides toward her, blinking at her with the same eyes Nimue sees in her own reflection when she looks in the mirror. It was what she'd seen in the fortuneteller's hand.

The spirit reaches one ghostly hand and gently strokes the hair back from Nimue's face. The touch is light, gossamer. Loving. Every possible emotion floods the girl's body as she stands there, breathing in the coolness. The freshness. The crisp smell of winter, though it is summer.

The hand reaches the end of her head and drops off lightly, back down to her side. A dozen different emotions have filled Nimue, all vying for attention, yet one is persistent. Completion. Love. A full circle.

She's never lacked it - the family in the forest was more than enough for her. She had brothers, sisters, aunties, uncles. But no parents. No father to sweep her up in his arms at the end of the day. No mother to brush back her hair and kiss her on the forehead. What you don't remember, you don't know, and it isn't until she clicks the missing piece of the puzzle that she wonders how she could ever live without it.

But there's something else.

She's intensely cold, the white fog wrapping in ribbons around her body. And the deeper it penetrates, the more bone chilled she gets. She looks up at her mother, eyes wide, and knowingly, her mother pulls back, if not somewhat reluctantly.

She's breaking her mother's heart.

"You can't come with me." Her mother whispers this knowing what is running through Nimue's mind. "You have a family. A life, waiting back for you in the forest." She gives her a bittersweet smile, and Nimue's mind flashes back to her family on the podium. In the chains. Arian. Her siblings. Their final show. Their kiss. She freezes, blush warm on her cheeks.

"I can't leave you." Nimue's own heart is breaking. To find her mother, and then to turn her back on her when this woman has walked the ends of the earth for her. To break the circle once she's finally slid the missing piece in, dissolve the whole puzzle into ash. No. No. No. She can't.

The fog swirls faster around her, biting into her sides, nipping her ears and neck and throat...

In the end, she doesn't get a decision. In the end, no one gets a decision. No one stops guns. No one stops bullets. No one stops the inevitable.