"I remember when you were just a thought, a tiny bubble of imperfection

Only I know the stressful night and the endless whispers of dejection"

A gentle lulaby sung by a sultry voice is what guides me out the darkness. It feels as if it takes forever for my limbs to cover the length of ground and lead me out into the open. Immediately after crossing the threshold of darkness a shore begins, made completely of smaller pebbles, charcoal and blue in color. There's a curtain of fog right where the shore should meet the waterline, thick and too dense to let any light in, not that there was much to allow. The atmosphere is dark and gloomy, like the day described at the beginning of The Cat in the Hat. A small row boat is nestled on the shore, half of it covered by the fog and the other half calling to me to sit and row.

The boat doesn't rock as I enter it, in fact the oak it's constructed out of is sturdy and offers a little comfort to my weariness. I don't have to put much effort into rowing the boat forward, the current takes over and pushes me through to the fog, closer and closer to whoever is singing.

A woman sits in the middle of a gray lake, her eyes fixated on the silver waves beneath her and her hands clutching tightly against the sides of the boat. Her auburn hair is thrown into a braid casted over her shoulder and she wears a gold band adorned with olive branches around the crown of her head. When she lifts her head our eyes connect and she rears back slightly with a curled upper lip.

"Unreal," she whispers before her expression softens and she tilts her head to the side. "Arnesia? You are Arnesia?"

My name falls off her tongue like she can't stand the syllables that formed it, like she had to force herself to expel them without gagging. It doesn't help that she shudders when she says it or how her emerald eyes narrow in on me.

I nod and she mimics me. "Where are we? I've never been here before, and I don't even know where he is." Her eyebrow arches but I'm too busy looking at what few surrounding there are. Fog, an endless fog settled all around us and a ball of light which I can only imagine is the sun resting behind the thick fog. "I want to-. No, I don't want-."

"You ramble," she speaks softly as her hands finally let go of the sides of her boat. "You ramble when you are scared," her eyes twinkle and she sings her next words like she's amused by it. "Like Iphigenia."

Something inside me subsides and I release a breath I hadn't even remembered holding. Only the people closest to Mom referred to her as Iphigenia, it must mean this woman knows her pretty well. Not to mention how carefully she wields the syllables and pronounces it almost as effortless as calling someone Tom. Not many people could clearly pronounce her name, not even with numerous exemplary pronunciations.

"I know her well enough. It is you I am more interested in," she wears a genuine smile and tries to lean towards me but the boat rocks and she recoils into it immediately with tight lips. "It has been quite some time since I last saw you, in fact you were nothing but a babe."

My mouth falls open and from the way she's grinning she can piece together why. I hadn't said anything out loud about only Mom's close friends calling her Iphigenia, and yet she responded as if I had. Even now as I'm running it all over in my head I can see the obvious joy lighting up her eyes.

"Did, did you just read my mind?"

Her face falls as soon as I finish my question and the water beneath us takes the opportunity to finally calm, which attracts her eyes before she glances back at me. Her nostrils are flared now and her hand reaches out to me, too quickly for me to yank my own hand away and too startled to escape what strong grip her slim fingers have around my wrist.

She speaks in a foreign language. The words are harsh on her tongue, similar to Pop Pop's Russian pronunciation but way more intricate with its phonic system. It sounds a tad familiar, as if I had heard it long ago but I could make no sense of it now, especially not when I was starting to get weirded out.

I latch my hand around her wrist, almost as bony as my own and pull as hard as I can. "I hate to be rude but you are invading my own space and I don't like it," I announce with an air of struggle before she finally lets go and sits back down in her own boat. My wrist is slightly red from the hold she had on it and I hiss when the pads of my fingers run over the inflamed skin.

"I am sorry," she whispers before taking a deep breath. "I am, though I do not believe those I harmed would take my word as valid."

"Upset? Maliki, I am livid! How could you do this to her?"

The fog thickens as my Mom's voice breaks through and I try to locate it but everything just becomes hazy. Her voice sounds so close and yet she's no where to be seen.

"Nia, I did what I needed to. I do not serve at-."

"No, but you are messing with my child's health, and so help me God that will end with you-."

The fog denses up so much that all I can see is blackness, there is no more faint illumination, or the sound of the water. Just pure darkness and the clear voice of my mother and someone else I did not know.

"Malaki, I fear we will not get anywhere like this," the heavily accented voice chuckles. "My wife, she is quite stronger than we all give her credit for. Please do not trigger her."

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There's a prickling sensation along my neck and it sends goosebumps through me. It's like when a limb has fallen asleep and you're trying to return circulation to it. There's just this feeling of numbness covering me.

"Don't undermine me, Dallas, please."

Light begins to seep through the darkness, small spots giving way to a cracked ceiling and dream catchers dangling down. The coldness is the first thing that resides with me, I was freezing and my teeth were chattering against each other nonstop. The distant sound of shoes shuffling against the floorboards makes me want to locate them but I can't even turn my neck or even move my body.

"You realize it was your undermining of me that brought us where we are today?"

Dallas Krovopuskov, that heavily rough, Russian accented voice belonged to my father. My father who I had not seen in five years. My father whose voice sounded so foreign in my ears but also like a childhood lullaby that was always stuck in the back of my mind. He was here.

"What is that saying you and Natasha had always been fond of? 'You made this bed, now lie in it,' yes?"

There's a sharp inhale before I hear the doorknob turning. I still can't move and the way my bed is positioned I couldn't get a clear view of the doorway unless I was on my side.

"Nessy?" The voice unmistakably belongs to Laki and when he comes to my side his hand hovers above my cheek, never quite touching but his warmth still mixing with my own, or lack of. "Papa's here and we're leaving soon. When you get better," he clarifies before moving back to crawl up into the bed beside me.

The switch powers up quietly and for a moment it's just the sound of Mario jumping and running filling the atmosphere. The temperature has slowly started to warm up to the point my teeth are no longer chattering and I'm no longer wishing for another blanket to be thrown onto the of the comforter I'm already under. The numbness in my body is slowly starting to subside, most notably in my neck and I can finally turn it so I can get a good look at Laki.

He's sitting crisscrossed on the bed with the switch in his lap and his hair fresh out of braids hanging over his forehead. He's changed out of the clothes he'd worn to school and is now just wearing his boxers and an undershirt, his typical after school outfit.

"Nia, this conversation is far from over!"

"Yes it is, because I am going to check on my child. My child that was harmed today."

She climbs the stairs with no dispute to her statement and when she steps through the doorway I want to cry at the sight of her. She looks so drained, everything about her makes me feel like we're going to be right back where we were a year ago. The lack of livelinesses in her skin, the limpness of her hair, and just the way she carries herself is scary.

"Hey," she smiles gently before pressing a kiss to my forehead and sitting on the bed to look at me. "How you feeling? You and your nose had quite the Niagara Falls moment in second period."

My brain throbs at the mention of Mr. Lain's class and I groan at the sensation. "How long did I black out for?" My fingers are already working at massaging my temples even though it hardly offers any relief.

Mom's brows are knitted together as she peers down at me. "Six hours," she replies hesitantly before shooing Laki to his own room. Once he's gone her own fingers fly to overlay mine and instant relief washes over me. "Nes, what happened when you blacked out?"

There's this feeling you get when you're sick as a little kid. This feeling that every cell in your body is brutally betraying you, beating you up from the inside out and there's nothing you can do to stop. You take all the medicine, eat all the soup, drink the tea, slather yourself in Vick's vapor, and you pray that you can just sleep it all off. There's nothing you can do to beat it, but there's always one champion who's reigning supreme over getting your well-being back in check, and it's your Mom.

Moms' hands are, if not the most, one of the most powerful things on earth. The way things just seem to get so much better after a Mom puts her hands on it. It's unbelievable, unbelievable of the amount of love, comfort, and healing they possess and Nia Krovopuskov was not the exception. Because right now I was reliving in the relief she was giving so much that it takes her wrenching that relief away for me to comprehend what she'd asked.

Her eyes are hard as she looks down on me with an impatient expression. "Arnesia, what happened when you blacked out?" She asks a little more forcefully this time.

I shake my head but quickly put a stop to that when the pain starts back up. "Nothing," I stammer. "I woke up here, heard you and Pops," her eyes soften and I almost wish I hadn't added the last part, "arguing."

Her hands fall to her lap and she takes a deep breath before her eyes close. "That's a bit more complicated than it seemed." She hesitantly opens her eyes and flashes a soft smile before reaching up to tuck a stray strand of hair behind my ear. "We're just worried about you and it made tensions a little high. It's nothing for you to worry-."

"Nia, now!"

She tenses at Pop's voice but does glance back at my door like she expects him to be standing there, but he isn't. The hallway is still empty and her hands are still clutched together in her lap, the lilac nail polish that had been covering her nails chipped and speckled on her jeans.

She turns back to me and takes a deep breath. "You should rest. Today was a long day and it put your body through quite a lot." Her lips are cool against my forehead and as the darkness overcomes me her kiss is the last thing I feel.

"To be the mother of a babe swaddled in fresh crimson

A union between two envokes another and then it will be forever done."

The fog shifts and reveals the same woman, still sitting in her boat but this time she looks more at ease than anything. Her smile is more genuine now and she's less focused on the current below her but at the sky above her.

"I see no time was wasted in sending you back?"

My gaze drifts up to what she's staring at and I see at the sight in front of me. It's a volcano, billowing out smoke which I know realize the fog surrounding us is not in fact smoke but smog. There is no lava coursing down but I imagine there is only a matter of time before it does. It's beautiful, the way the smoke billows up with each puff and how small amounts of rock dislodge themselves and roll down into the water. It's amazing how something so beautiful can be so destructive in two different moments.

"Mount. Apathia," her soothing voice brings my attention back to her but her's remain on the volcano before us. "That is where back is." She finally turns to look at me and there is something so familiar about the smirk she wears that it sends chills down my spine as her right hand dangles over her boat, waiting patiently for me to offer mine up.

Without giving it too much thought I stretch my own hand over the side of my boat and grip onto hers. Her palm is cold against mine but with a quick squeeze she retracts it and returns it to her lap.

"I was once called Anne by those who loved me, and it is nice to finally meet you, Dreya."