The embrace shouldn't be possible—I'm barely real, more suggestion than substance, a collection of glowing incantations and stubborn magic refusing to fade. But her arms wrap around me anyway, solid and warm andpresentin ways that make the void in my chest crack further.
Heat blooms where the cracks form.
Not fire, not pain—emotion. Raw and unfiltered and overwhelming after the numbness that came before. Tears form in eyes that shouldn't be able to produce them, pooling along lashes made of nothing, threatening to fall down cheeks that barely exist.
"M-Mom?"
The word escapes as a question because I can't remember if I have a mother, can't remember anything beyond the void and the flowers and this woman who looks like what I could have been if the world had been kind.
But itfeelsright.
The word settles into place like a key finding its lock, some fundamental truth clicking into position even if I can't access the memories that prove it.
I try to hold back the sob that builds in my throat.
I fail.
"It's hard up there," she murmurs against my hair, her voice carrying understanding that goes beyond empathy into shared experience. "In the land of the living, where wickedness and betrayal lurk in every corner. It's so hard for my sweet child who didn't ask to be brought into this world of power and hate."
Her arms tighten around me, pulling me closer despite my translucence.
"It's been so hard," she continues, and now her voice cracks too, maternal pain bleeding through composed words. "Your heart wishes to shield you from it all."
Shield me.
The concept resonates even if the specifics don't. Someone—something—has been protecting me. Keeping memories locked away, emotions dampened, the full weight of whatever I've experienced held at bay to prevent... what? Breaking? Shattering? Becoming whatever I was before this void made me nothing?
"I don't understand."
The words come between sobs that rack my barely-there form. I cling to her with arms that are more light than flesh, incantations blazing where we touch, and I cry.
Gods, I cry.
Tears pour from eyes that shouldn't exist, grief and pain and loneliness that I can't specifically remember butfeelwith devastating clarity. Each sob tears something loose in my chest, emotion flooding the void like water filling a vessel cracked open after ages of drought.
I cry for things I can't name.
For people I can't remember.
For a life I might have had if circumstances I don't recall had been different.
I cry like I've been holding these tears for years—centuries—waiting for someone safe enough to release them to. And sheholds me through it all, this woman who might be my mother, who definitely feels like the maternal comfort I'm only now realizing I've been starving for.
"It's okay, my sweet," she soothes, her hands stroking my translucent hair as if it were solid silk. "Cry all you want."
So I do.
I cry until the tears stop coming, until the void in my chest has been filled with something warm and aching, until the sobs quiet into hiccups and then into exhausted silence.
When I finally pull back, she seems to know the moment I'm ready—her arms loosening their hold at the exact instant I need space. Her hands find my face again, cradling my tear-stained cheeks with tenderness that makes fresh tears threaten.
She presses her forehead to mine.
The contact is electric, incantations flaring where we touch, and I feel something pass between us—not quite knowledge, not quite memory, butunderstanding. Ancient and maternal and impossibly comforting.
"Our world of wickedness is cruel to those on the surface," she whispers, her breath warm against my translucent skin. "But deep down, she yearns for love too. She's tired of the cruelty that occurs on her lands. She yearns for laughter and chaos, not misery and screams of death."
Her thumbs stroke my cheekbones, wiping away tears that are somehow still falling.
