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ALETHEA LET OUT A soft breath and allowed her gaze to rest on the surface of the lake, not caring for the cold that wrapped itself tightly around her figure instead of a blanket. She was used to the cold, the shivering of her insides, and had begun to utilise that feeling as soon as she missed her childhood.
Her mother had been a cold woman. And it wasn't her character, not just her icy stare, which was all she'd managed after her husband's death, but her skin.
As a child, Alethea tried to rationalise it with the weather. After her father's death, they had spent a lot of time at the seaside cottage in the far north of Scotland, where even in summer the temperatures were never warm enough to spend the night without a blanket.
Her mother had loathed the smell of fire; the fireplace never provided any warmth.
Later she thought it was due to the loneliness her mother must have felt. Her husband had been stolen from her. The one person who had understood her heart without needing to have it in his own body.
The loneliness must have taken hold of her exterior as well, and the embrace of loneliness was cold.
Each of her mother's rare touches had been icy, and now, when Alethea missed her, it was pleasant to feel for a moment as if she were still there.
"What did she died of?" it asked over the wind, and Alethea reached for one of the stones on the shore, playing with it between her fingers as she searched for the words on her tongue. "The doctors said her heart had stopped. Just like that, in the middle of the night. But I don't believe it. Mother's heart had stopped beating many years before. But perhaps her body didn't realise it until her last hour."
"Did it never beat for you?" it questioned further, and now Alethea threw the stone into the lake, watching as the water swallowed it and dragged it down with it. "She was in a dreadful state the weeks before her death. The flu, everyone said. I looked after her, gave her the medicine the healers prescribed, and cared for her in a way she never did for me. All she said was that I wasn't her daughter and that her daughter - her beautiful girl - had died with her father."
"You're lonely too." It exposed her insides for all to see, and Alethea saw more of herself in that moment than in any other. "I don't have to. I choose to, just like my mother chose to. She had me, but she chose solitude. In the end, I am her daughter," Alethea said, smiling as she pulled her legs closer to her body and rested her head on her knees.
Her black hair whipped around her, distracting her for a moment. She had always liked braids, but without her hair down she lacked the protection. The protection of being able to hide behind it.
"My mother and I were cut out of the same sorrow. I don't think she wanted to do those things to me. She just didn't recognise me, but to be honest, I don't recognise myself either. Every time I look in the mirror, I see someone else."
