Not the most amazing revelation, weekends were two days long. So I woke up, rolled onto my side, stared at the wall for a moment, then rolled back onto my back. A hollow thump in my chest.

If I didn’t think Neffie might have been waiting for me to have breakfast, I could have stayed there all day. There was something nice about just lying in bed. Something numb. Something I hadn’t been able to appreciate before. Like time was paused, but also passing. Nothing happened and it felt like, if I wasn’t careful, the day would end with nothing happening.

But I didn’t want Neffie to wait.

Much like the day before, it was too quiet when I went downstairs, and then it was more like yesterday, chatting a bit as we cooked and after we ate. Then I went back to my room until lunch, feeling like I should really knit, but unable to bring myself to pick up my needles and yarn. Not because Hyraj bought them for me, one of the things I’d actually spent my money on. It was just… I was still practising to knit things for her. Wanted to see if I could make… what were they called? The silly pyjama thing that was like a long jumper with a hood? I didn’t know how cold it would get, but I wanted her to stay warm while reading.

With all the free time I now had, the only other thing I had thought to do was practise magic… but even that…. I could remember her voice. Never angry or upset, at least not with me, all her frustrations with herself…. Always trying to live up to some standard I couldn’t even begin to imagine…. Her parents wanting her to be “president”? To get married and have a kid, and why? So they could boast to their friends about it?

I’d never asked her why they wanted her to do it…. Maybe would never get the chance….

My thoughts had already struggled to stay on topic, not like I’d ever had much time to myself to think about things. It was always preparing for tomorrow. Start thinking about what homework I had, then oh, Hatty needed to wash her uniform.

Today, though, my thoughts were even worse, barely making it halfway before it was too painful to continue. Well, not painful? Just that… I knew what finishing the thought would do to me, my face ready to scrunch up, tears ready to fall.

Still, I pulled myself together for the evening. Neffie had said about Mr Arl “telling her off” for spending too long cooking, so I had suggested I could help out, cook something a bit special for a change. Helped get me out my room too. She was excited about it.

Really, it was nice. Talking about cooking, sharing some of what I’d learned, having someone I could ask questions without feeling like I was getting in the way. That said, we still didn’t make anything fancy. Hard to do that without going out to buy fancy ingredients.

Simple, but special.

Hichkle covered in flour and fried, crispy and oily, paired with some hichjalt roasted until it glazed, soft and sweet, along with ousickle, lightly-fried in a wok with the basic spices Mr Arl stocked. Those were mostly my contribution, while Neffie worked on sauces and a lal soup side-dish, but we still helped each other as we went.

“Lal was Aunty’s favourite, truth spoken,” Neffie said, straining out the lumps.

“Is it that?” I said—still a struggle to know when to say it like that or “that is it”.

She hummed. “They like it in the north, my mother says. Add it to everything. A sandwich, a stew, a roast, with vegetables or grain, hot or cold.” She paused there, chuckling. “When I visited, I remember Mr Arl left the room when Aunty ate lal. My mother can’t spare the smell of it either.”

My heart ached. “Look at them now,” I whispered.

Neffie chuckled, covering her mouth, then shooed me off. “This is mild lal, like it has been half-mixed with water. Aunty’s lal made my eyes water just from the smell. But it was very tasty. Give me a spoon and I could have eaten it, just like that.”

“That is it,” I said, confident this was the right one to say now.

Honestly, I still didn’t know exactly what lal was. It had seemed like Marmite at first, but seeing her strain lumps out now made me, well, less sure… not that I even knew what Marmite was made of.

It was an interesting evening. Mr Arl and Sisi returned—and Neffie hid behind me, saying, “Louise cooked most of it!” Watching Sisi try the fried hichkle with each of the sauces, face scrunching up in a different way every time. Mr Arl taking me aside for a moment, telling me, “They don’t have to work so hard.”

And I went along with it, but knew he was wrong. I had to work so hard to be loved. All around me, in their own ways, there were layers and layers of love, woven together so tightly. How much they cared about each other, how many little things they kept in mind, so many stories to tell. Strings of love, looped around each other, making a knitted fabric that wouldn’t come loose from a bit of tugging.

Compared to them, I was just a stitch. A bit of thread that looked pretty now, but that would soon come loose, unravel, slip out of their lives forever. Perhaps they would meet another Louise one day and think of me, hoping I was well. But they wouldn’t have the same kinds of warm stories to tell, softly smiling, tenderness in their voices.

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I smiled and I laughed and I helped Sisi get ready for bed before leaving the rest to Mr Arl. I shared giggles and whispered with Neffie, talking about how well the dinner went, swapping promises of teaching the other.

Then I went to my room and closed the door, and I didn’t smile. My lips were curved up, cheeks puffed out, but no one who saw it would have called it a smile. There was no one to see it. Just me, alone in the room—like I had always wanted. No one to wake up me up in the night, no worry about my things being taken. I didn’t have to force a smile and speak softly and ignore any burst of frustration that threatened to come out.

I changed into the pyjamas Hyraj bought me, snuggled into the bed that was more comfortable than anything I’d slept on since coming to this world months ago. But there wasn’t the exhaustion that made it easy to sleep. No chance today to tire myself out, no washing to do or Sisi to entertain.

There was just me and my thoughts. Me and one thought. Because, everything that was happening, everything with Hyraj, went back to one question.

“Am I satisfied?”

It hadn’t felt real back then, still felt unreal now. I was in another world. A fantastical world I had barely scratched the surface of. There was magic, weird animals, strange plants. A place not quite like the past, but maybe not too different. Well, the most amazing part for me was I didn’t standing out. That, when people saw me and Hyraj, they stared at her like she was the weird one.

But still… why me? Look at how little I’d done, what a mess I’d made of everything, definitely people who would have accomplished such amazing things. Rather than know how to make a wind turbine, I only kind of knew how old windmills worked. A car engine was as much like magic as what Hyraj could do.

The goddess… how had she sounded? Did she pity me? Was this supposed to make up for my last life? Well, bad news for her, I was going to keep making bad decisions. I couldn’t help it. I’d seen it, seen the cycles, broken children growing into broken adults. Just because I looked “normal” on the outside, just because I was quiet and polite and helpful, didn’t mean I was any less broken than them. Maybe I was more broken.

What was the fancy quote… “Is it better to have loved and lost, than have never loved at all?” Well, I had my own: “Is it better to think you are loved and be abandoned, than never loved at all?”

What broke a child more?

I pulled the duvet over my face, afraid to show even the empty room my tears. Hyraj could see them, but not this empty room. Still a child who was afraid to call out because she wanted to hope that, if she did, someone would come, but knew in her heart that no one would.

Then the bed creaked, a weight pressing down on it. Sudden and shocking, yet I didn’t feel scared, didn’t flinch when a gentle touch stroked my head through the duvet. No, I lowered the duvet.

There was the goddess. Indescribable, her appearance ever changing, like a video made with a different face for every frame. Black, white, Indian, Chinese, and so many more I couldn’t tell at a glance, her hair both long and short and plaited and coiled and covered by a headscarf, her clothes light and heavy and showing nothing and showing almost everything. But it never looked wrong. There was more to her than what I saw and I felt like what I saw said more about me than her, staring into a mirror. Like my mind couldn’t decide how she should look.

As scary as that maybe sounded, I felt calm. Had I felt calm last time? I felt it this time, relaxed—at home. Like she was the mother I’d never had. Recognising her by the weight on the bed when she sat down, by the gentle, familiar touch when she stroked my head.

In a way, she was my mum, giving me life here in this world. It was such a funny thought I started to laugh. It wasn’t a manic laugh, not like I was falling apart, but gentle and warm, eating away the stuffiness in my chest. Once there was nothing left to burn, I looked up at her with a bit of a smirk.

“Hi, mum,” I whispered.

She looked back at me with a smile, soft and gentle—and how many times had I thought that now? Gentle. The one word I thought a mother ought to be over anything else. A mother’s love, a mother’s embrace, the gentlest, yet most secure, things in the world. Not that I knew them.

“Hello, Loulou,” she said, her voice like a summer’s breeze the way it made me feel.

I lowered my head, both shy and guilty. She’d given me a second chance and all I could end up wondering was why. Why me. And I was afraid to ask her, afraid she had no reason, afraid she had a reason.

But I had to ask.

Lifting my head, I looked her in the eye. “Why?”

She still smiled, her ever-changing eyes a little pinched. “Because Loulou was adrift—in more ways than one,” she whispered, and brought up her hand to pat my cheek.

I leaned into the touch without thinking, like a cat. Once her fingertips broke away, I broke from the spell, finally hearing her words. “I don’t understand.”

“You do, which is why you don’t,” she said.

I wanted to laugh, wondering if mothers had to speak in riddles. But no laugh came out. I hurt, so much. “Why?” I asked again, trying to blink away the tears.

“All I want is for you to look at yourself in the mirror and see yourself. See that you, too, are a person. To hold yourself to the standards you hold others to, to love yourself how you would love others.”

She leant forwards as she spoke, pausing there to kiss my forehead. Had anyone ever done that? Well, some of the little ones had when playing pretend where they were the mum and I was the baby. Not much different to now, but the feeling was so different. So gentle and full of love. How had it felt before, though? Had it really felt so different?

While I was stuck between present and past, she pulled back to how she was before, sitting elegantly on the side of the bed. Not at the end, but not too close either. The place where a mum would sit for her rebellious teen who was in a mood.

Her words crashed around inside my head, not painful, but uncomfortable. “I don’t understand.”

“You do, which is why you don’t,” she said again.

I hated the riddles. I hated that I was scared what would happen if she didn’t speak in riddles. That the naked truth would break me. Well, break me more. How much more of me was there to even break?

“Tell me, Loulou, are you satisfied?”

Hearing that question again was jarring. I’d even asked myself that earlier, and the answer I had come to was—

“Because it seems to me that you have found the simple life you desired.”

I blinked and she was gone, the only trace the indent left on the blanket where she’d sat, bed raising back to how it was.

A draft brushed against my face, cold enough to make me shiver. Snuggling into bed, I closed my eyes. Maybe I would think this had all been a dream in the morning. Maybe it was. But, like how other people seemed to always remember the things their mothers said, I felt like I wouldn’t forget.

For better or for worse.