Choking On Sapphires

86 Love Interruption

Life without the fog of influence from Morphine was much different for Genevieve. She lets it work out of her system, a nasty process she suffers through, feeling as if she were being punished for the blindness it caused to her behavior. She'd spoken to Claire and Aggie on very intimate levels, demanding they not hold back or be dishonest. She realized she'd been suspended in a dream. Somewhere that wasn't reality and time had kept passing by without her being involved. She knew that wasn't how she wanted to live. She wanted her life back. She wanted to be herself again and that self was now someone who had been through something terrible but she couldn't change it now. She knew it was time to stop living in the past where the pain was. It was time to move forward and leave that old version of herself behind and rise anew.

She and Alfie were not the same people they had been before. She had a lot of thinking to do as to how to approach a relationship with him now. Everything was kept at a surface level while she detoxes and reflects. They share polite conversation in the evenings most nights, but nothing of substance. She wasn't sure how to even bring up what they had said and done to each other. It wasn't a subject she wanted to discuss, and it loomed over her like a cloud, always threatening to burst. She knew he was tense from the experience, but she didn't feel any ill will towards her now like she had before. There wasn't anger when he met her eyes, nor was there disappointment. Only a carefully calculated endearment that kept them both in their own space, merely cohabitating together.

What Gen didn't know was that Alfie's hesitancy to embrace this new version of herself came from his own pessimism for it. He was holding his breath, waiting for something else to happen, something bad, a relapse always on the horizon in his mind. It kept him tense and unapproachable. He thought it was to save Genevieve the hurt of his anger and disappointment again when it happened, but it was really to save himself.

With the withdrawal effects fading from her system, Gen had begun to feel rather poorly one morning. It didn't incite the lust for the relief from medicine and she was grateful, but she did succumb to an indulgent nap. She sleeps soundly, as she had since ridding herself of the toxins. She does something she hadn't done with clarity in some time, she dreams. With an array of everyday mundane events, a maze of her own home twisted into a dreamscape she finds herself in her garden again. Surrounded by large blooms, larger than her head that makes her feel happy. In the center of this Eden with its four fountains and golden hour sunlight, an unlikely prospect emerges. One she hadn't seen in weeks now. One of the children from the Morphine fits stands smiling.

"Hello, Mum." she greets sweetly, a low and steady voice like Gen's, the same long black hair and olive skin. Alfie's eye color and lips. She runs to embrace her, and unlike times before she does not disappear. She holds her as real and solid in her arms as any living thing.

"My darling, my love, my angel...are you real now? Have you come to me finally?" she asks, kissing her hair and holding her face in her hands as she cries.

"No." she answers with the same soft inflection. Gen's heart drops. "I'm only what you want to see. I'm what could've been What could still be." she adds with a wise mind that is far beyond the teenage years she appears.

"What do you mean, child?" Gen rasps, touching her face and trying to memorize every feature.

"You're a mother. You always will be." she says supportively with a subtle smile.

"I'm...I'm not..." Gen shakes her head in confusion.

"You know it to be true. You've seen me. You've seen us." She puts her hands over Genevieve's and gives her a sympathetic smile. "Don't cry. There's no reason to. Only good things to come, mum. Only good things."