55
She was floating. Feeling nothing, hearing nothing, seeing nothing.
Further and further she seemed to rise. No end and no beginning. She tried to open her mouth, but no sound would come. Tried to wiggle her fingers, but couldn’t move her body.
Then, a bright light.
With a gasp, Ava opened her eyes.
Pushing herself to sit, she groaned. There was nothing around her. Everything was just…white.
She was alone.
An ethereal mist glimmered as it swirled around her, warm and pleasant. Beautiful. She couldn't help but smile as she reached out, letting it flow between her fingers.
Where am I?
Ava stood, spinning around. Searching. “Hello?” she called into the void.
Nothing.
She began to walk. The radiant vapors continued to wind around her.
What happened? One moment she was closing the portaland the next, she was…oh god. It all came flooding back. Luna whimpering, Casimir holding her, begging her not to leave. And then everything had just…disappeared.
There was no pain. Her ribs didn’t ache where Lomos had broken them. Her body wasn’t sore. But there was something hollow in her chest. She placed a hand on her heart and breathed in.
“I don’t understand…Am I dead?” she whispered to herself, staring at her hands as if they would give her the answers.
“Yes.”
Her heart froze at the familiar voice. Ava searched the fog until she found the source. A sob broke from her lips.
“Mom.” She rushed forward.
Her mother’s arms wrapped around her in a warm embrace, pulling her tight, and Ava was a little girl again. A terrified little girl who needed her mother. Who craved the comfort, the security, the reassurance. She couldn’t even speak through her weeping, letting the tears fall onto her shoulder.
As her mother held her close, Ava was assaulted with memories. When she scraped her knee outside their house and her mother sang to her as she cared for it. The time her mother waved her hand and brought a sunflower back to life on her grandfather’s farm. Baking cookies and ending up in a flour fight in the kitchen. The day her mother taught her how to make her favorite meal—ravioli. When she sobbed in her mother’s arms after her first heartbreak as a teenager. Christmas at the farm, the kitchen decorated with garlands and glitter. Her mother’s proud face in the crowd when she graduated from high school, then college, then graduate school.
The day she held her mother’s hand in the hospital as she took her last breath. The day her heart broke in two.
Her mother began to sing softly. The song she always sang to Ava when she was scared. The song Ava had sung to Luna when she first met her.
“Hush now, little bird.
Don’t be afraid.
All your fears,
Let me unlade.
You’re safe with me,
Don’t you cry.
While I sing to you,
Our lullaby.”
