Tactile Therapy: Volume One

Prologue

"Congratulations! It's a girl!"

Her last push was the strongest one yet, and after six grueling hours of intense labor, she finally gets to cradle the last remaining person of the Atespa name––her beautiful daughter––in her own arms for the first time.

"What will you name her?"

"Eta," she answers after careful consideration. "He would've liked Eta."

"It's perfect."

"It is ... and so is she," she can't help but to dolefully admit, even as she remains wholly consumed by this new unbounded joy she's experiencing for the first time.

This is the most Eta's mother can manage to utter as she finally submits to the overbearing might of emotion she's been trying to fight for the past six hours. This same fight that she thought would've, at the very least, eradicated the tears that she has been shedding for the past hour. A natural conclusion, considering all of the energy and hydration robbed from her during the strenuous delivery. This was the same fight that she would now continue to seek strength from to carry on, regardless of all the countless obstacles she's come to face up until now and over the past nine months.

Irrespective of her commendable fortitude to keep it together under the given circumstances, crystal droplets continue to coagulate within the concave wells in her eyes as she cradles her daughter. Perhaps, it is the sound of the incessant wailing from her newborn that lends to this struggle, considering that she, also, continues to cry even while in the comfort of her mother's arms.

It seems as if both this mother and child are destined to trade their bodily fluids, even after the birth, for all eternity. Only this time, the medium in which they exchange them is not some internal biological appendage, but within the air around them, which continues to allow both of their respective tears to meet, greet, shimmer, fuse and even dance under.

It isn't long, however, before baby Eta begins to acclimate to her mother's placid atmosphere. Understandably so, considering that the soft humming, cradling, and rocking now emanating from her mother is much too serene for even this child to resist.

"I'll leave you two to be, and I'll be back in a little while," Eta's mother's best friend tells her before leaving the room.

"Thank you. For everything," the brand-new mother responds to the one who made it possible for her to finally meet Eta––her new best friend.

It doesn't take long after her arrival and subsequent adaptation to her new environment, for baby Eta to finally open her eyes to stare at her alluring progenitor. It is here where her mother sees for the first time, the beautiful, brilliant colors that makes up the spectrum of visible light, better than any rainbow she's ever come across, present within her daughter's very own eyes. Even the roundness of her irises appears as perfect to her as discovering the last digit to the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. And yet, all this overwhelming cascade of emotion she's currently experiencing from holding her new best friend for the first time, takes a back seat to the astonishing synchronization that these two shared, before it was lost for an instant so they can officially meet. And now that it's returned, it has restored these two temporarily separated organisms back into one single, perfect entity.

Not even the heat from the lights in the room, those of which slowly grow unsustainable for a mother and child to continue to thrive under, is enough for these two to take their eyes from offone another. How pleasant is it then, that it is each other that these two see, as the last thing they'll ever see again?

It is strongly believed that had this inseparable unit been given the choice, they would've still opted for this ineluctable karma––this time and every time. For if it were at all different in any way, then so would Eta's sunrise and Eta's mother's sunset.