𝒑𝒆𝒕𝒓𝒊𝒄𝒉𝒐𝒓 ᖭི༏ᖫྀ 𝚎𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚎 𝚠𝚒𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚊𝚖𝚜

chapter twenty five : a ten year game

[XXV]

"Meelie?"

I look to my mum.

"What's the last part, sweetheart?"

I think to myself for a moment.

"...And when the light won't lift you up, search for the butterfly!"

I clap my hands together excitedly. I know she'll be proud I remembered it. Her eyes are warm as she reacts to my skilful repetition of the mantra she always teaches me.

"That's right, lovely!"

She strokes my hair gently, and pulls out a drawing pad. Flicking to a page, she shows me a picture. It's some sort of moth, or butterfly, I'm black and white pattern, and I frown.

"I thought it was supposed to be purple?"

She smiles, and turns around on the oak desk she is carefully perched on. She pulls a draw open and hands me a purple colouring pencil from the inside.

"You should colour it," she beams, positively radiating love. I feel so grateful that she has given me a gift, that I decide I will draw in it all the time, and show her, so she can have lots of drawings from me.

I grab the pencil and set to work.

"Meelie?"

"Meelie?"

But it was now. It wasn't then, it was now.

You probably know by now that I had loved my mother with my whole heart.

We had lived in a bunker for as long as I could remember, but I was sure that when I was born I had been somewhere else. We didn't have any visitors for a while, but that was okay, because all I needed was her. Eating canned food, listening to eighties music, reading about oceans and nature and people... I could have done that forever, but my mum had other plans. By the time I was about seven, her carefree, lax nature had slightly brightened into something different; I couldn't tell what it was back then, but it was likely something akin to ambition. We ended up leaving the bunker, after much radio communication between my mum and mystery recipients. On our trek, before we reached her destination, wherever it was, we were ambushed by runners, and my mum got bit trying to save me. We played hide and seek, and I never found her.

Until now.

Now I stared a phantom in the face like it was my own reflection.

Though that would have been less strange than this.

My mind was running at lightning speed, like a bullet train through supernovas of information that were exploding like dominoes, one by one, my brain slowly morphing into cannon fodder trying to process what was right in front of me.

Her hair was still long, luscious, curly and beautiful, albeit a little grey at the roots. Likewise her face was just as wonderful and bright as it had been a decade ago, now with little crows feet forming at the sides of her eyes. She still wore hoop earrings as she did all those years ago.

But she was shorter than me now. My mum who had always been tall enough to shield me from any harm in my memory, was now this woman who barely came up to my shoulders.

"...you found me, eh?" She whispered, and that was the last straw.

I sunk to the floor, and wept.

Finn knelt down and held me as I cried like I never had before, my tears soaking my sleeves as I tried and failed miserably to catch them. I felt like my mind wasn't mine anymore, like my brain had been softened into this malleable piece of clay that wasn't able to feel more than one emotion at a time.