Soft Hazy Blue ( Ominis Gaunt x MC )

Chapter 25: Home.

"Hi Mum," my voice rang, carried by the rippling waves of the green ocean that danced over her timeless slumber. She would love to have known that her final rest was beneath a sea of lemongrass. 

She always loved the scent of lemongrass. 

I tentatively lifted my hand and brushed it over the weathered granite slab, slowly being eaten away by time from years of neglect. Due to my abandonment of this painful place that was cursed with memories that always plagued the back of my mind.

I kneeled in front of the moss-covered tomb, slowly inhaling the mixture of stale stone and lemon intertwined with the accursed scent of my mother. Staring at her name hidden beneath plentiful green, my mouth became dry. I couldn't talk to her, not like this. I abandoned her, not visiting her for years after her death I just couldn't.  Then the words came tumbling out before I could shove them back in, berating myself for depicting what I truly felt as I let the mask fall from my face. 

"Mum, I'm lost without you. Ever since you left I've been wandering this world without a sense of direction. What do I do?" I whispered softly letting the words hang between us, allowing my hands to pick the flowing cool grass and rubbing it between my pointer and thumb as I continued my one-sided conversation.

"I yelled out home, though mum this was not the home that had originally formed in my mind. Home was...someone that has grown more than a place of comfort but as a tether that keeps me from drowning in my thoughts. I tried to pull on the tether to keep me afloat but, he disappeared. I just...I didn't know where else to go Mum. Everyone I have ever loved or came to for help is gone, so I came home to you mum," I bit the inside of my cheek allowing the metallic taste to distract me from the tears that attempted to fall. The wind slowly began to pick up, no longer the tickle of the breeze dancing around us but a raging howl that turned the rippling grass into raging waves. Reflecting the inner turmoil, I felt grow inside of me, I knew that I had to continue but not the white lies that hid the truth.

"I could never get anything past you, could I," I chuckled lightly as I rested my forehead against my mother's cool touch.

"Do you remember when I was younger, I nearly gave you a fright when I was nowhere to be found after milling our barley? I forgot my pale full of the grains near our small golden field, though when you found me I was collecting the small pieces of the grains that fell from the hole in our old wooden pale." The trees swayed in response. "I tried to explain to you that without it we would starve and become frail just as Dad had. Though instead of you praising me, you were angered by my actions."

Back then seemed so long ago now. Before I received a mysterious letter of acceptance giving Mum and me a fright when an owl flew into the cottage window, before I first saw Professor Fig walking through our golden sea of barley to meet me and train me in magic, I never knew I could possess. Back to a simpler time when working in the fields when the sun had just barely kissed the horizon was the simplest life could have ever been.

Until the rose-tinted glasses were lifted.

"I never understood why you had become so furious, though I finally realized why. Now I must do the same for someone who is just as important to me." I gripped the grass below me until the still moist dirt began digging underneath my nail bed, keeping me tethered into this present, the reality of the situation I was facing and unable to escape. I lifted my head from the stone and stared at her name once more, carved in such hurried detail that only caused the strain in my chest to stretch more.

"Why didn't you tell me to stay mum? You knew how frail you were turning without me, yet you lied to me that you were always fine. I never even received word of your passing until I came to see you were gone. You always hid your true feelings from me." I smiled feeling a sense of heaviness overcome me as the lump in my throat only grew larger. Which only made the act of breathing painful as I gasped in an attempt to keep the tears at bay, allowing the haziness to fill my vision.

Then the world became silent.