“Miria!” called out my mother again.

I felt a glimmer of excitement as I thought about the first real conversation I would have with my mother in this life. Thus far, she had been in a drug trip almost every time I interacted with her, and seeing her lucid for the first time in months brought hope for a real change. I wanted my mother to get better in this life. And having a real conversation with her was the foundation for improving everything.

I left my room and half-ran into the living room, and looked at my mother.

She was… normal looking. Or at least, much more normal looking than usual. None of the usual haze stuck to her eyes, and when she looked at me, she looked as though she was really looking at me, instead of a distant apparition that existed only in her imagination.

“Mom,” I said, cautiously.

My mother hesitated, and looked at me more carefully, and I could see a bit of a grim smile appear near her lips.

“You’ve grown,” she said. “In my memories, you’re much smaller…” she sighed, and shuddered. “Miria,” she said. Even though she still seemed a bit out of it, her words were the clearest they had ever been in this life. “I… I haven’t been well, have I?”

“You… you haven’t been, mama,” I said. I felt my eyes start to grow hot as I thought of all the times I had tried to talk to my mother, and she had just given me a blank, empty smile as I watched her slowly kill herself. “You haven’t… been here.”

“Miria… you’ve grown older,” said my mother. “So much older while I wasn’t here. I’m sorry. It hurt so much, and I didn’t want to look at anything, so I just… dreamed. I don’t…I’m not sure how you even survived.” She said, as she inspected my arms and legs, and then looked at my face. “You look healthy. Much healthier than I thought you would.”

I nodded. “I found someone who was willing to let me help out for food, so I’m not hungry these days. I was really hungry before. But it can be better now. You’re… you’re planning on continuing… right?” I asked, looking into my mother’s eyes and making the best pleading expression I could.

Please be done with drugs. Even if you just want to get better, I can help. I have magic and as long as you want to get better I can find a way to make it happen. As long as you’re willing to accept help, I’ll help.

My mother sighed. “So you needed to find someone to take care of you when I couldn’t. That… makes sense. Who is it?”

I felt a stab of concern. I couldn’t tell whether she was ignoring my unspoken question, or whether she hadn’t understood it. Should I push harder? Should I back off?

I had never dealt with someone in such a delicate mental state before this. Sallia and Felix had never once lost control of their mental faculties. Not like this.

I felt like I was in a field of landmines. A single mistake could cause the situation to collapse and send my mother back into a drug induced haze for months. For now I decided to back off and go with my mother’s topic change.

“Old Mo helped me. He runs a bakery. Nothing fancy, but he needed some help kneading dough in the mornings, so I help him out in exchange for meals.”

My mother sighed. “A bakery, huh. You’re… four? Five?” My mother looked at me, and then shuddered. “Gods, I don’t even know what year it is anymore. Is working at a bakery where you learned to talk so… maturely?”

I froze. Was I doing a bad job of pretending to be a four year old? I had thought I was doing all right, but it had also been a long time since I had the mindset of a real child. Ever since I had joined the Market, I was basically playing pretend anytime I tried to act like a kid…

My mother looked at my confused expression, and then sighed. “I guess with a mother like me, you had no choice but to grow up fast…” she shook her head again. “Damn. I really need…” She reached for a small pouch that I hadn’t noticed before. It hung off of her shoulder, almost like a fanny pack. I saw my mother pull out a pinch of blue powder and start raising it towards her mouth-

“Mama? Can you not take Fizz anymore?” I asked, urgently. My mother’s first response to stress or disappointment had been to immediately start reaching for her drugs again. I nearly teleported the drugs away from her, before I managed to stop myself in time. My mother wasn’t in her right mind most of the time - I didn’t think she would really be all that great at keeping secrets. If my mother started blabbing about my weird teleportation abilities to her customers, it wouldn’t be long before someone put two and two together and figured out where Felix had gone.

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But the temptation was still there. I wanted to knock the drugs out of my mother’s hand and throw them in the trash.

My mother froze for a moment, looking at me and the pinch of blue powder in her hand.

“Please? Don’t take any more. If you just wean yourself off of it, maybe you can get better. And then…” And then I would have you in my life, instead of a hollow shell of a person that occasionally wanders into the house before passing out. I didn’t say that out loud, because it didn’t match the four year old persona I was trying to display.

My mother looked at me, and then looked at the blue powder in her hand, before she laughed bitterly.

“Miria.” Her eyes locked onto mine, and her expression became unreadable. Some of the sorrow and warmth that had been in her gaze seemed to fade away, replaced with a look of alienation and disgust as she stared at me. There was something else in her eyes for just a moment - something that made me a bit nervous. It was a spark of rage.

Then, a few seconds later, my mother smothered it before turning to me again. She stuffed the pinch of blue powder into her mouth, chewed once, and then swallowed.

“When you’re older, you’ll understand, Miria. Verne isn’t… a good place to live for someone like me. People don’t… think highly of my work, and they also don’t really approve of single mothers,” said my mother, snorting. “No matter what I do, nothing will change anyway. Ever since I kicked your bastard of a father out, getting by has been hard, but at least everything we have is safe with him gone.” My mother snarled as she said that.

“But mama… when you’re at home, it doesn’t feel like you’re really here,” I said. “I don’t care what you do for work. If you don’t want to anymore, we can change it. If you really don’t want to change… it’s not what matters right now. What I want is for you to be here with me when you talk.”

My mother snorted again, although I couldn’t tell if that was some sort of reaction to the drugs she had just inhaled or not.

“Miria… I love you, but the real problems are you damn father and my… job,” she said. “When you get older, and you understand what I do for a living… you’ll see why my actions don’t matter anymore. Don’t ask me to stop. This is the only way I have left to cope with our situation.”

I started to feel a gut-wrenching pain in my gut.

“So you won’t stop? You won’t even consider it?” I asked, hoping that maybe I had just misunderstood my mother. If my mother was willing to work with me to improve, there was so much I could do to help. I could use alteration to turn all of the drugs she took into some sort of vile-tasting sludge, or just ‘hide’ it from my mother… or a number of other things.

But if my mother actively fought my treatment, I didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t like I could stalk her 24/7 and teleport things out of her hand anytime she was about to take a drug.

“No. Stop asking,” said my mother. Once again, for a brief moment, my mother had an expression of alienation and coldness on her face as she looked at me.

I hesitated for a moment. I had never seen that kind of expression on any of my previous parents. I knew that I hadn’t. It almost made me want to run away, instead of continuing to talk with my mother.

But if nothing changed, she wouldn’t get better.

I hesitated. Was pulling back the right thing to do? Should I wait for another day?

I thought about how long I had waited for a single lucid day from my mother. If I pulled back now, I might need to wait months, or years, for another lucid conversation with my mother. I didn’t think that was a good idea. Even if my mother’s body and brain were in decent condition due to my constant healing, the longer my mother was trapped in a haze of drugs and despair, the harder it would be to build a life afterwards. I wasn’t sure if it was possible for my mother to get back everything she had lost during this period of time… but I wanted to try. I wanted her to get back on her feet, so that she could build a life again.

“Mama, if you don’t stop taking Fizz, you’ll still keep hurting. If you stop, then we can find ways for everything to improve. Please, just-”

“Don’t ASK ME TO STOP,” snapped my mother, nearly snarling at me, before she shivered, and her tone became a bit softer. “Sweetie, don’t mention Fizz again. I hate the way I get when you mention it. I don’t want to hurt you by accident. See? I don’t… I can’t…” my mother’s eyes were starting to become a bit more vacant as the drugs she had swallowed started to take over again. “I can’t handle the withdrawal symptoms, sweetie. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.” She leaned a little closer to me, and then gently wrapped me in her arms.

This was the first hug I’d had that didn’t feel nice. I just felt cold and sad.

A few moments later, my mother released me and then wandered into her room. I was left with an empty feeling in my heart. As I heard my mother start to drift further into a set of dreams, Felix quietly crawled out of my closet and started gently rubbing my back as I sat on my bed and tried not to cry.