I've told you before that my memories are vanishing. That much is true. What I didn't say, or rather, didn't elaborate on, is that actually, they're made inaccessible to me by the mod’s increase. But there is something still there, a remnant which neither I nor the mod can touch on purpose. Some part of my early childhood still lingers on. Maybe it's to do with stories my Gran has told me over and over, so they stay in my head in that way despite the actual memories themselves going. Or maybe it's that the subconscious is harder to touch than the conscious, so something will always be retained, at a base level, no matter how much I choose to screw myself up with cheap and nasty mods.

I still dream about my mother.

Gran says my father was definitely killed in the civil war. She saw his body and all. But about my mother, her daughter; she's always been a little harder to pin down on my mother's fate. She's probably dead, that's what Gran says. She was ill from the virus. But her body was never found. She went out one day, there was an attack, one of many skirmishes during the civil war, and she was never seen again. Probably, she died, but we never found her again.

I don't remember my mother except for in dreams. But she's there a lot, whether I want her there or not. She has bright red hair like my grandmother, like it's always spring with her. But her skin is like mine, not like Gran's. Soft petal skin. That doesn't make a lot of sense, to be honest. Most Gerondians had skin like Gran's before the virus.

I always feel like, if I saw my mother again, I would just know it's her, no matter how long it's been. Maybe I'd recognise her scent, the floral essence lingering on the edge of naming in every dream of her, forgotten in waking moments. And she would recognise me, somehow. Sight, smell, somehow, she would see that I was still her little petal, and come to me, and hold me. I told myself this growing up. I've held onto it all these years, even though it's obvious by now: if she were alive, she would have come back to find us.

If we weren't hiding who we are for some reason.

---

I sat in the cell with Gran, waiting for her to wake up. Frod had been kind enough to throw me in the same cell as her, at least. The overcrowding of the jail post-breakout turned out in my favour this time. The whole place had this surly energy surging under the surface. Distant shouts rang out down the corridors as the disgruntled prisoners relived their little dash at freedom in conversations cell to cell, throwing threats at one another to pass the time, waiting for another chance which surely would be forthcoming, surely, if they were to just bide their time a little longer, then the Wilt would provide once again...

Gran stirred in her sleep, rolled over, and met my eyes.

"Marys."

"Gran."

She sat up, rolling her shoulders. "Your hair's finally gone winter."

I touched my hair, dragged the longest forelock of it down so I could just see it past my eyebrows. It was indeed winter-black as she said.

"Ha. I guess that answers that then. I was wondering if I was stuck in autumn hair forever, up here. It wouldn't be the worst thing. I've always thought autumn became me."

"I like you most in spring."

I beamed at Gran, briefly. It was a trite conversation, sure, but I was just glad she was talking to me at all, after several days of the silent treatment.

"So, here to pester me again, are you? Going to try and make me talk, Little Ms. Detective?"

I poked my tongue out at her, and she chuckled. But her eyes were so, so tired.

"Actually, Gran, I'm here for the time being. I've been arrested too." Her eyes shot up at me, hardening, and I found myself justifying the misadventures of the last several days to her, as if I were a little kid again, needing her approval. Throughout the story, her facial expression eased away from disappointment, and into concern. By the end of it, Gran had closed the distance between us. She'd gotten off her bed on the other side of the cell, walked over slowly, and planted herself beside me, wrapping one strong, hoary arm around me. Even with the knobbly, twiggy ends of her branch tags digging into my back, it felt so good to sink my cheek onto her shoulder and rest against her solid, hardwood body.

For all that I'd gone winter-black, her hair remained bright-red, stuck in a perennial summer. I always envied that about her. I was so changeable. I was the picture of Lisia Astrantia Helianthe's triumph, a perfect rosebud which changed with the seasons, homogenous, looking like the majority of others of my generation, compatible with all of them. Gone were the genetic fluctuations of my species, but so too all the individuality, the rough and wild parts of what we used to be. That uniqueness was dying out with Gran's generation, and the generation between us, with so many of them lost in the civil war, or to the illness.

Gran stroked my hair and told me, "It's going to be all right, Marys. You've been working so hard. But you don't have to strive anymore. I will tell you your real name. And it will answer every part of you." I looked up at her, to find her eyes watery. "I just wish I had told you years ago. Because now... no, it won't break you. I know you'll survive this. But so much about who you became was because I lied to you in the first place. I thought it was the best path, to avoid pain back then, to hide who we really were. I thought you would grow into your new identity, and be able to settle peacefully in the new world after the war. But... instead, all I have done is twisted your natural path. Like a gardener deciding that a beautiful vine must follow the course she dictates only, I have twisted you until you have found whatever sunlight could sustain you. And you've become what you've become: beautiful, strong despite yourself, and far, far too driven than is good for you. It's my fault."

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

She was worked up now, tears falling on my head. "Gran, you don't have to be distressed. Just... take your time. I don't blame you for any of this. We were all in a rough place. Our entire world was in a rough place, because of Lisia."

"That's just the thing, Marys." She huffed out a teary breath, then stood up, taking my hands to pull me up. "Lisianthe."

"Pardon?"

"Her full first name is Lisianthe."

Why was she telling me this? I looked down at our hands, at my grandmother's serious expression, and swallowed. We stood in the formal posture of people meeting for the first time.

Had they shut the air off in the station? Because suddenly I could not draw in enough breath.

My grandmother wiped her tears away, and began.

"Agathis, the seed,

Araucaria, the bed,

Monarda, the root,

Helianthe, the stem,

Astrantia, petal three of four."

It was my turn to cry. I couldn't help it, even as I tried to clamp my mouth shut. My grandmother swam in my vision. I wanted to slap her hands away. I wanted to cling to her, like the last lifeline I had.

"Your turn, Amaryllis. You know the missing part already." I shook my head, but she nodded hers. "You must."

I clung to her hands, and fought to keep my breath steady between sobs as I recited my origin story to my grandmother. To Astrantia.

"Agathis, the seed,

Araucaria, the bed,

Astrantia, the root,

Lisianthe, the stem,

Amaryllis, the sole petal."

Gran squeezed my hands, then pulled me into a long hug. I wept into her shoulder, into her blood red hair. "Now you see why I lied? I had to keep us safe. Our world would have punished us for her sins. Even with you, just a child. If you'd told the world your true name, they would have killed you for it, if not all at once, then slowly, over time."

"You protected me," I whispered, and patted her back. Perhaps I should have been angry with her for the lie. But I saw it for what it was; witness protection; the only choice she had. "You did what you had to, Gran. I understand. I understand why you would never tell me. And I can see now... it must have been the end of the world for you when I declared I wanted to find Lisia and bring her to justice."

We pulled away, and we both laughed. It was funny, in a sad way. "I wasn't sure what to do anymore. Tell you, and have you hate me, and maybe hate yourself, for being Lisia's daughter. Or let you go on this wild goose chase, and hope you never, ever found her."

I nodded, still chuckling. "Yeah. I can see your dilemma. How to tell your own grandaughter that her mother's a monster..."

"You might hate to hear this, but you are so much like her. That's part of what was so scary about it."

No, I didn't want to hear it, but at the same time, my heart yearned for that knowledge. "What do you mean?"

"She didn't go into law enforcement like you did, but in her own way, she was a detective. She was obsessive about knowledge. But her field was science. She was relentless, trying to figure out the problems our people were having with fertility. And then she thought she had the answer..."

"So her solution against our world's fertility problems became a deadly pandemic?"

"Exactly. Now, I thought exactly as you probably do: she should have come clean about that, and done what she could to help people recover from the pandemic while taking accountability for it. But instead, she chose to use it to rise to power, using the cure as a reward for cooperation. She thought she knew best for our world. And instead, she nearly destroyed it all."

I hugged Gran one more time, and admitted, "I'm still going to find her, Gran. I want her to answer for her crimes."

Gran nodded into my shoulder. "I know. That's just who you are. You're your mother's daughter, even if that means you're her nemesis."

I laughed, sniffing. "But first, I've got to get out of this cell somehow."

Gran nodded, and went back to sit down, looking faint from all our confessions that we'd just rushed through. Her hands shook, but she looked around the cell with me, considering the lay of the land. "Perhaps an air duct?"

I scanned the ceiling. "I don't see one."

"Perhaps - oh!"

"Marys." I spun around at the sound of Frod's voice. He was sticking the forcefield key in the archway and turning it. The purple buzz in the air between us disappeared. "I need your help."

"Oh, that's just great. Lock me up in here and now you need -"

"Shut up for a minute, Marys!" he said, and now that I was close and the forcefield was down, I could see the sweat on his face and the whites of his beady eyes. "This is urgent. I need your help, and so does Xen."

"What? Why?"

"I realised that Xen's wristband was not in the personal effects found in your quarters when we searched them."

"So? That means Xen must have it."

"Exactly, that's what I thought. So I went to ask the leasing agency to show me Xen's last known location, via the wristband. When I turned up there, the place was trashed, and the agents had been attacked by Teg Korr, who came in demanding the exact same information."

I stepped forward, almost tripping over my own feet, then crashed into Frod as I ran for the way out. "Come on! We have to save Xen! I'll see you soon, Gran!"

Gran got up and clung to the edge of her cell. "Be safe!"

Better to wish that on Korr. I was done messing around. Next time I saw him, he was going to get a taste of my gun mod, like he should have in the first place.