We're watching a movie, ma and me. I'm curled up beside her, too big to sit on her lap. She's not really watching, she has the numbers on her hand. Checking her bets. I don't care about numbers, maths is rubbish as far as I'm concerned.
It's a dumb movie, that's what ma said, mainly because she doesn't understand it. The dinosaurs sing a song near the end of the movie, about working together and everyone putting each other ahead of themselves. There's tyrannosaurs and utahraptors who usually eat the littler dinosaurs, carrying the baby triceratops on their back, so they can all find a cave to live in and survive the meteor.
Ma doesn't understand that it's an important movie, and it's trying to teach a lesson about us now in the present, she thinks it's just about dinosaurs. The song starts and I nudge her.
"Ma listen, this is the best bit."
She sighs and puts her hand down, and watches the song with me. I keep looking up to make sure she understands, but it's hard to tell.
The song finishes, and she smiles and looks at her hand again.
I snuggle up against her, and she puts her other arm around me.
"I like how they all look after each other," I say. "Even the carnivores."
I'm too old for the voice I'm using. It doesn't melt her like it used to, it just makes her cringe a little, like she knows exactly what I'm doing.
Heck, we're identical; she probably used to do the voice herself. She knows I chose this movie and I'm being all clingy and naive because she shouted at me this morning, and when I was little she said I made her believe in good, which is something you say to babies, if only I were still a baby.
She nods. "Yeah, it's really something."
The movie ends. The dinosaurs emerge from the cave, ready to start life in a new world as friends. For the first time, the scene doesn't give me goosebumps. I'm just annoyed at the soundtrack, for being all triumphant and saccharine.
"Do you think we're going to survive?" I ask. My voice shakes.
I don't know how she answers. That part of my memory is blank.
She looks at me, and hugs me tight. Her arms are stronger than I can possibly imagine, and I know, because we're identical, that I will be that strong too when it's my turn to face the world alone.
YOU ARE READING
Cherry Jubilee
Science FictionThere is a problem in Afterlife, a problem which only forensic technopathologist Dr Mary Anaphora can fix. Her reward: eternal life, and all the limited subscription souls she can eat.
