Now only mother and Mia were left. Mia had both arms on her knees again, looking down at her feet. Mother was staring at him. Now was the time for Willard’s questions. He wanted to blurt them out, to throw them at Mia, to drown her in them. But he found himself unable to speak; his words had stopped and formed a lump in his throat.
Was he afraid? Probably. Though he did not know what he was afraid of. Mia’s answer? His reactions? Willard kept his mouth shut and fixed his eyes firmly on her, fully aware this made him look creepy.
Mother broke the silence.
“I sold eleven Hardframe-Circuit-boards last week,” she mused, adjusting the blanket on her lap.
“That’s good, ma,” Willard halfheartedly replied, still focused on Mia. Then the realization hit him.
“Wait, what did you say?”
“Don’t worry, I salvaged them from the old Harvest Factory. I fixed them myself.” She gave him a small smile.
“Was anyone with you?” Willard said, his attention now entirely on her.
Mother did not respond. Her brows furrowed slightly. Now that Willard looked at her, she suddenly seemed to have aged a decade.
“You should know how dangerous it is,” Willard said, getting angrier by the second. “That factory’s abandoned for a reason!” He shuddered at the thought of a defective gas canister imploding while she was disconnecting the machinery.
“Also, didn’t the Triumglate put up a parameter around it?” His breathes got sharper. “Do you know how much trouble you could’ve gotten me into?”
He was about to go on, but stopped himself as he saw her saddened expression, finally realizing that he had stood up and had both hands on her shoulder. An overwhelming shame welled up his throat.
Mother did not respond for a while, looking down at her knees like Mia. “I......” She raised her gaze, hesitated, then cast them down again. “I’m sorry.”
Willard wanted to scream. He forgot why he was angry. Thinking back on it, he should have been overjoyed that she still had the energy to go all the way around Ferah to the old factory. Overjoyed that she hadn’t forgotten her passion. Hell, he should be overjoyed she was still here, talking to him. He felt a hot searing on his cheeks. He wanted to stand up, to embrace her, and to tell her how proud he was. Eleven circuits! Not even Vaharach technicians can manage to sell ten each month. But of course, he couldn’t say any of that. The safety and stability of his family always came first. And he’ll make sure of that, even if that made them hate him.
“Just...” Willard struggled to find the right words. “Just don’t do anything this...reckless anymore, okay?”
Mother nodded. “Promise?” She grinned. Willard suppressed his own smile. They both knew their roles had switched. “It sold for quite a sum, though,” Mother teased, and her eyes closed again.
Willard gave a light snort and sat down. It was impossible, he concluded, for anyone to stay mad at her. It may be due to the sudden outburst, but he was tired again. His joints ached, and the stitches on his back were practically digging into his flesh. He looked at Mia, who had silently watched the entire conversation fold out. He still didn’t know what to make of her.
Mother watched the two in silence.
“I want to head down Jamel Street.” she suddenly announced, rolling her wheelchair out. Willard noticed two new levers above the armrest. Mother had cranked the left one to turn, and now the right one to adjust her directions. Two tiny levers in a sea of modifications. She had remodeled the wheelchair so many times it looked like a clunky beetle shell rather than a chair, though so automated it ran better than the electric ones in stores.
“New parts?”
“Pulley mechanism. Only needs one bolt to move the whole thing,” she smile as she glided down the corridor, “I would appreciate it if both of you can accompany me.”
----------------------------------------
Annette Marella Olssen, prodigal child and co-director of Chyseis Incorporated, Bagiraek Continent’s biggest megacorporation, said this in an interview after her sister had been dismissed from the family:
Do you know the Penrose staircase? I like to use it in my analogy with life. Life is an endless flight of stairs that everyone walks on, without start or end. Some ascends, others descend. People inevitably meet as they go on. Then they’d keep walking. If two ascenders meet, they’d walk on for a while until one of them outpaces the other, and vice versa. Don’t try to keep up or slow down. Instead, let them go and fate would lead them back to you….eventually. Just know this: change is inevitable and invariability is a lie. Don’t try to hold on to your supposed “constancy”, since the harder you fight for it, the worse you’ll become after you’ve lost it. Just let time take over.
----------------------------------------
The snow crunched under Willard’s boots. Mother was gliding smoothly ahead, and he couldn’t hear Mia’s footsteps behind him. He wondered what she was thinking, looking at him and mother. So much had changed. Perhaps to her, the two of them were completely different people.
I definitely am. Willard thought.
The tall civilian residences on their right, the bulking cargo-crate factories to the left, and the wide, windswept street they were walking on made Willard feel tinier than he already was. He used to walk this path nearly every day. First with Mia, then with Adrian. When did he stop? Three years ago? Five?
He stared at his passing reflections in the apartment windows. They were blurry, distorted, not letting him get a clear image of his face. He knew it would be ghastly pale with overly red cheeks on either side. His nose would be even more crooked now, with bruises on his left cheek from the cave-in. His hair would be in uneven patches under his hood, and a stitch-scar would run from his left brow all the way up to his forehead. The model image of a dying man, he would have made the poster child in humanitarian magazines. He turned and stared at mother, who was a bit further ahead of them now.
Not a single person was on the streets. Maybe they were mourning, but he couldn’t hear anything apart from his own footsteps, the howling of the winds, and the “clank clank clank” of mother’s wheelchair. Now that they reached the opposite side of the monolith shaft, even the factories had gone quiet. It was as if Ferah itself had fallen into a deep slumber.
“Eh! Who’s those two behind you, grandma?” A voice.
Perhaps not entirely asleep, then.
The man wore a tailor-modified red overcoat, the Triumglate’s insignia branded proudly above the right chest where slanted zippers ended at the neck. Pants were ironed to near perfection, yet they failed to conceal to dirty brown socks underneath. An inspector’s baton swinging casually by his side, the man approached them like a Nesgowl, carefully selecting its prey. As he got closer, Willard smelled the sickly sweet scent of cheap Vaharach perfume mixed with musk and body odor, as if someone had sprayed fragrance over a mishcat’s litter box.
“Where’s your son? He’s a rabid hound, that one!” he smirked and sent a foot up onto mother’s wheelchair’s right wheel, purposefully putting his weight onto it and threatening to tip her.
“Hey! Cut it out!” Willard rushed in front of Mia and gave the man a push, pulling mother back. Mia watched by the side, eyebrow raised. It was then that Willard finally recognized the man. Nose thin and pointed with a long philtrum to the upper lip, he looked more rat than human.
“Rom.”
The man squinted at Willard, then, in an exaggerated gesture, spread his arms as a huge grin came over his face.
“Price! I haven’t seen you in four months!” He slapped a hand on Willard’s bandaged shoulder.
“Don’t you ever call her that again.” Willard shook it off and stared the man straight in the eye. Several blue blood vessels from the top of the pupil all the way a faint blue stripe to his forehead. Lucere addiction.
“You’ve become even balder than I remember,” he furrowed his brows in a boring display of sympathy, his eyes darting all over Willard. “The hound’s brother—a molting mutt,” he poked his index finger into his shoulder again and drove it deep into his shirt.
“What do you want?” Willard did his best to ignore the pain. He felt as though a stitching was being pried loose.
“When you gon’ pay up?” he said in a cheerful voice. Though, while Willard knew it was an act, his voice sounded forced. Like he was trying to conceal something much more profound than he was letting out. And Willard knew exactly what it was.
Hate.
“I’ve already paid six months in advance,” Willard said in his flattest voice.
“Ah…but that won’t do. You’re not paying the fees.”
“There are no such thing as ‘fees’, Rom.”
“Oh, come on. You realize I’m the only reason no harm has come to your family…yet.”
Willard fought to calm his nerves. “You’re the only reason any harm could come to my family.”
“Watch your mouth, Price.”
“Is that a threat?”
“Child, we have discu-”
“Shut up!” Rom pointed at mother’s direction, a vein bulging in his forehead, “talk when you’re talked to, hag!”
It a stomach jab, straight into the fleshy part of Rom’s abdomen. Though Willard thought he had not put much force into it, the punch sent the man bowing, arms around his waist, gasping for air. To Willard, the exertion was almost reflexive, a passive protective action he didn’t know he had the courage to enact.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Rom glared up at him, then looked at the baton in his hand.
“You…do know…what this means…heh…” he smirked, “assaulting a guardian of the law…”
“Present circumstances does not justify an act of assault.”
Both him and Willard turned to Mia.
“Who…”
“You initiated this altercation by unlawfully making physical contact with her wheelchair first, thereby provoking the conflict. What he did adhered to his duty of rescue, as a legal Triumglate citizen.”
“Bullshit,” Rom stood up, his grip on the baton shaking out of fury, “you’re just playing with words. You ain’t even from here.”
Mia was silent. Her expression a mix of boredom and contempt. Clearly, Rom wasn’t used to that look.
“Hey, woman,” he snarled, “where’d you learn to speak like that?”
Mia pursed her lips, as a look of mild interest replaced her contempt. It was as if she was looking at some small worm she had never seen before, squirming around in the dirt.
“Answer me!” Rom pointed his baton at mother. But before the stick could align itself with her, there was a flash three inches before his nose, and simultaneously a pile of packed snow behind him exploded. As bits and pieces of ice blasted everywhere, Willard turned to see the tip of the baton completely shaved, smoking rising, revealing the slashed wiring inside. Rom turned, gaping at Mia, who remained exactly as she was, head slightly tilted, staring at him with that one, obsidian-black eye.
“What did you do?!”
“Do, officer?” Mia said, “I did nothing.”
Rom gulped. His gaze went from her, to Willard, to mother, then back to Willard. Without speaking, he slid the damaged baton onto his belt, adjusted his ruffled uniform, and spat.
“fuck you,” he growled. Then, as abruptly as he came, he turned, and disappeared along the bleak streets.
“Who was that?” Mia rubbed her bad eye.
“Rom,” Willard sighed, “moved here two years ago. Been relying on his dad’s connections to bust himself out for every offense.”
“He has a Peacekeeper’s uniform on.”
“His father’s the former deputy,” Willard flexed his knuckles, remembering how good that punch had felt. Then he remembered something, and turned to mother, “does he do this often?”
“He used to,” mother chuckled, and shook her head, “not anymore now.”
“Why?”
“He’s scared of Adrian,” she sighed, “Will, you stay vigilant around him now,”
“What gives? He always was violent.” Willard wondered what she had meant by Rom being scared of his little brother.
“Lost his sister in the cave-in,” mother gave the wheels a knock, and the mechanical contraption started click-clacking again, “that makes him…extra unstable.”
“…I’ll bare that in mind.”
The three moved on as the peace settled once more over Jamal street.
The road curved into a dangerous slope. Mother’s wheelchair had glided effortlessly down it, and she was continuing forward without waiting for them. Willard took two steps down, his work boots gripping the slippery ground. He wanted to offer Mia a hand but stopped himself halfway, remembering she used to have no trouble going along this part of the road. In fact, she used to tease him when he slid down the icy dip. But he reminded himself that times have changed and pulled his hand out again. To his surprise, she trotted down the slope without even bothering to look at her feet.
He felt like a fool. Mia, who’s been gone for more than a decade now, was better suited to home than he was. And the way she shut Rom up…
At the bottom, the houses were replaced by rows and rows of tree stumps, the road stretching in a straight line through it. Willard had heard that the stumps were the results of a failed effort to cultivate the surface soil of the monolith. Some Meeko had felt sympathetic after visiting Ferah and decided to cash in a huge sum, buying three cargo crates of fully grown Alpaco trees from Bagiraek and planting them here. They must have felt like a messiah. Perhaps they were still boasting about it right now.
The tree stumps stretched all the way to the edge of the cliff. Or rather, the edge of the giant monolith cog. There was a single tree that hadn’t been chopped down, its branches teetering outwards like arms, begging to fall. When winds blew across it, they waved in the air like a corpse in water. Snow had covered the log bench under it, and also on the edges of the barrel before the bench.
“I’m going to pay Rose a visit,” Mother said halfheartedly whilst waving a hand at them. “She’s only recognizes my scent, so you two go on and do as you please. I’ll meet you back home.” She pulled both levers and sped off into the dirt road between the gaps of the trees on their right.
Willard stared at her receding figure in the distance. Now he was alone with Mia again, and could feel her gaze on him. He had an idea of she wanted to go. Did she remain because she wanted him to make the decision? Maybe she didn’t want to look assertive. She had lost the right to do so after she left. But that was fine. Willard wanted to go there himself. He hasn’t visited this part of town in quite a while anyway.
Slowly, he turned and walked towards the end of the road, Mia following in silence. Willard had planned to say something as they walked, but the invisible clamp kept his mouth shut. Perhaps he didn’t want to know her answer. Maybe he was afraid. Or was it because he simply didn’t care anymore?
Willard didn't bother shaking his head to drive the grim thought away.
The two reached the tree.
Willard passed the log bench and stood next to the barrel, looking down from the edge. The wind was much stronger now that he was near open air and seemed to pull him towards the edge. The fall seem to stretch on, nearly invitingly. A chill reverberated through him and he took a precautionary step back. He glanced over and saw Mia, dangerously balanced on the edge on her left leg, her right feet curved behind her left ankle. She was standing there like a statue, like she had always stood there. One wrong gust of wind could tip her balance and push her off the edge. But he forced his heart to calm down.
She’s an adult now. She has her reasons.
The winds blew across her face, pulling her hood down, her loose hair fluttering behind her like a thousand glistening ribbons. She did not flinch at the cold brushing against her cheeks, and she stared at something under the cliff, deep in thought.
Willard looked in the direction she was facing. In the distance, he saw several massive, hulking pink masses moving, each one as large as a mobile factory. They looked like boluses, but after closer inspection, one could see the hundreds of tiny legs under them. And under these he saw several tiny dots skittering to and fro, like ants next to lemons. Sorissian Shepherd Hounds. It was comical seeing the dogs herd the Giant Land Urchins around. If it wanted, one Urchin could have squashed all of them with just one stomp from its hundreds of legs. But it didn’t. And that was how the very first Sorissians had gotten their water from the continent itself. Now, it was one of Sorissu’s three mass-produced products. Their thick hide provided excellent insulation against the cold, so naturally, they were harvested and sold to Bagiraek. Ironically enough, Sorissians who produced them can’t afford any of their products.
“Will. You remember that time I nearly fell off?” Mia’s voice pulled Willard’s attention back . He realized he was standing close to the edge again, and stumbled a few steps back.
“What?” Willard thought about it. A snowflake landed on his brow and sank in, and he suddenly felt the coldness sweep through him.
“That was...several days after Adrian was born.” She stared at the Urchins, her voice so small she could’ve been talking to herself.
“Ah. You meant that time.” Willard smiled at the nostalgia.
“I still think that kid...what’s his name again? Gord? I still think he deserves it.”
“Well. I did give him a beating after I was done with you.” Willard chuckled. It had felt good. The bruises on his knuckles had pulsed with a sickly sweetness after he smacked the daylights out of that brat who nearly pushed her off the cliff. He did get his own scolding from mother, though.
“You never told me that.” Mia frowned, then curled her lips up again into a small smile. “And that was the only time you’ve ever gotten mad at me. I nearly ran away afterwards.”
“Well, you WERE aiming for his windpipe.” Willard grinned. He didn’t know why Mia was bringing it up. Why here? Why now?
Mia gazed at the horizon. Willard had the feeling she was looking at something beyond the Land Urchins. She stood there, silent, just staring for a long minute. From Willard’s side, she looked like an unfinished artwork. The artist had left before he could add the finishing touches, leaving behind this pitifully beautiful product that just...lacked something. Even though she was smiling, there was a certain melancholy in her eyes. The look made Willard uncomfortable. It was as if she was purposefully holding back something she craved to tell him.
Willard decided to quit the act. He had waited long enough, had grown tired enough, and didn’t care enough to put off his burning inquiry any longer.
“Mia, wher-”
“Will, listen,” Mia cut in, a painful expression etched deep across her face. “Whatever I say...whatever I do...I want you to know you’ll always be my big brother.”
Willard nearly choked. The questions on his tongue were forced back into his throat. He didn’t know why she said it, but he felt happy hearing it. No...happy was not the right word. It was more like...relief. As if a lost part of himself had returned. But he still felt confused.
“But...why? Wh-why did you leave us?”
There. Now it was finally out. Willard felt as if he had just pulled the trigger of a gun. The bullet was out, and there was no going back.
The pain on Mia’s face worsened. “I can’t tell you that.”
It took Willard several seconds to process what she had said. Then her words hit him like a truck.
“Wha—? What do you mean?”
“I’m sorry, Will.” There was a world of hurt in her voice.
“What do you mean you can’t tell me?” Willard half stuttered, half whined, a cold sweat rolling down his neck. It was as if that single droplet was sucking all his heat away. The coolness burned his nape.
Her lips trembled.
“Why did you leave? Why did you leave?!” Willard was shouting. His words rang through the rows and rows of tree stumps, all the way onto the sloped pavement. His throat ached, and his lungs burned.
She was silent. Willard could see her shaking slightly, her hands balled up into fists, tears swelling in her eyes. Willard didn’t want to stop.
“Where were you? Why didn’t you write? Do you…do you have any idea how worried we were?!” Willard forced the bloody coughs back down.
Mia sank onto her knees, her face a mess. There were several strands of hair across her cheeks, stuck there either by her tears, the snow, or the snot running down her face. She looked as if she was going to melt into the ground.
Willard wanted to continue. Every single cell in his body was screaming at her. He wanted to shake her, to slap her, to force an answer out of her. Anything. He’ll take anything.
But a part of him told him to stop. It was like the single column stopping a dam from bursting, and it was slowly driving the water back.
It’s fine. She’s back. I don’t care where she’s been. She’s back, she’s safe, and that’s all that counts. My worries can wait.
Maybe it was the older sibling in him. Or maybe he just wanted to feel like an actual older brother again. Willard shut his eyes and squeezed them as hard as he could. He knelt down beside Mia and awkwardly put his arms around her. She jumped, but didn’t resist, sobbing even harder.
“You have no idea...” Willard heard his voice getting smaller and smaller, “you have no idea...”
“Ah...Ah’m sho—hic—shorry,” she wailed, burying her face into Willard’s shoulder, “I...I wan-want to—hic—to tell you. I-I-I-”
Willard stroked her head lightly, imitating mother.
“It’s okay...it’s fine,” he whispered in her ear. He did not know if he really believed this or was just saying it to comfort her.
Let bygones be bygones, huh?
She needed more time. More time to adjust. More time to open up. More time for things to go back to the way they were.
Nothing will go back to the way it was. You’re weak. You’re spoiling her.
That was probably true, but a worry for another time. Willard squeezed his eyes again, closing himself off from his thoughts. He had lost enough already—his past, his father, his friends, his health, and his future. Now that he’s back home, with his family, with Mia, he felt like the broken pieces of his life returning.
Now was a time for healing. Her answers can wait. Now that she was back, he’d have all the time to ask the questions again. Maybe the cave-in was a good thing. It would be a fresh start. For him, and for her.
Live in the present, and the past will not haunt you.
The two stayed in each other’s arms for a long time.