The next few months were a blur of constant healing and schoolwork. Whenever the connection between my mother’s soul and brain repaired itself, Dr. Trish and I removed another piece of mold. Then, we let my mother recuperate, and once she had stabilized, we removed more mold.
And there were results.
Slowly, my mother's strength started to recover. Her dexterity improved. Previously, she would sometimes wobble around while walking or doing things. She had the mental capacity to firmly grip things when she wanted to move them around.
But even more importantly, her mind started to heal. She was capable of understanding her environment in a way that had been impossible just a few months ago.
The first signs of bigger changes came when I saw my mother avoid a hot surface on her own. Normally, I had to keep her away from anything hot. My mother wasn't capable of avoiding hot stoves on her own, so I had to be careful. Her brain seemed to be incapable of linking stovetops to heat. But after a month of healing, my mother started keeping her hands away from hot surfaces on her own.
Then, she started to have frequent, recurring bursts of awareness. They didn't last long, but for a few seconds every day, my mother would realize where she was and talk coherently. Previously, my mother only regained awareness of her surroundings every few months. To see her aware of her surroundings a few times every day was a huge improvement.
After a month and a half, my mother managed to make herself a meal.
While I was doing my homework, she made the connection between the food cabinets and cooking. Instead of just shoveling raw ingredients into her mouth, she actually made a sandwich and ate it.
Little things like that started to become more regular occurrences. My mother started using tools, cleaning up messes, and doing things on her own. Even if she was still a dim shadow of her former self, I could see her mind returning every day.
Two months into the healing process, Dr. Trish and I removed the last chunk of easily accessed Fizz mold. The only remaining pieces of Fizz mold were too dangerous to remove, unless I got better at handling souls or figured out how to use my spatial abilities inside of people’s bodies.
A week later, I smelled flatbread in the morning.
At first, I thought that Old Mo had come to make me a meal. Since he was half of a parent to me in this life, I had given him a key to my apartment. Sometimes he made me breakfast, or asked me to heal the aches and pains in his joints if he was having a bad day. I was more than happy to soothe and strengthen his body whenever I could, so I saw him often.
But that morning, it wasn’t Old Mo who made me a meal.
It was my mother.
I saw her in the kitchen, cooking, and I felt tears well up in my eyes.
“Mother,” I said.
My mother turned towards me. There was still some haziness in her eyes, but it was faint. She looked at me, and she saw me, instead of a hallucination. She was actually present when she looked at me.
“Miria,” she said, before she knelt down and hugged me.
“I’m sorry. It must have been hard without me. I’m… sorry for not being there,” she said.
I hugged her back.
For the rest of the day, I kept a cautious eye on my mother, but the spark of intelligence in her eyes didn’t disappear. She retained awareness of the world for a full day. Another day passed, and she didn't slip back into a daydream.
The last few months of effort had paid off.
My mother was better.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
* * *
I took the next few days off from school, citing a family emergency. My grades in everything except Alchemy were at the top of the class, so the teacher didn’t object. Now that my mother was awake, I wanted to spend some time getting to know her.
We also spent those few days talking. I told my mother all about the things the three of us had done while she was unconscious. I told her about our flight from Verne, and the run-in with the worldstriders. I told her about when I had met Old Mo. I told her about Markus and Dr. Trish.
The only thing I didn't tell her about was the Market. I loved my mother... but I didn't trust her enough to tell her everything. She had been absent from my life for too long. I wasn't ready to tell her about secrets that could actually hurt me. People learning that I was actually from Verne might be inconvenient... but at this point, it wouldn't matter too much. I was very well liked in town, and if people learned that I had lied about my country of origin they might not care much. But having our transmigrator identities exposed might draw in the government.
Still, my mother seemed shocked when I told her about some of what we had accomplished in the last decade.
“You found an ability potion?” asked my mother. She seemed more shocked by that than anything else.
I nodded and grinned, before I grabbed a knife from the kitchen and made a small cut on my fingertip. I healed it immediately afterwards, and showed my mother my perfectly healed fingertip.
“It’s the biggest reason I could keep you alive,” I said. “Dr. Trish says that people who reach that stage from your…” I almost said addiction, but I stopped myself. I didn’t know what might trigger her. “People with your condition usually have several strokes and then die. But since I constantly healed you, you survived,” I said. “Of course, it wasn't perfect. A bunch of mold died inside of your brain, and then got stuck in little clumps. My healing magic kept you alive, but never removed those. Dr. Trish and I had to get those out with surgery. Half of them are still there, because we can't remove them safely. But you're awake now!” I grinned.
My mother patted her forehead with a worried expression, before she slowly nodded.
"So you really found an ability potion," said my mother. "It sounds like a really strong potion, too."
“It was very lucky," I said. "If we hadn't... uhh... found that corpse... of a man carrying ability potions... things would have been dangerous." It took me a few minutes to remember the cover story we had given everyone, to explain our abilities. "But it worked out really well. I can earn a lot of money as a healer,” I said. “I sent Felix, Anise and I to school, and I’m paying the rent for this apartment. It’s nothing too fancy, but…” I gestured towards our surroundings. “Most kids can’t pay for an apartment at all, much less a comfortable one like this. We have six rooms to ourselves, and some luxuries like chocolate and machinery. Things are good now.”
My mother looked at our apartment as well, and nodded. Our living conditions had taken a huge step up from the moldy, rotting apartment in the slums. We had a comfortable life now.
My mother took a few steps closer to me, and then sighed. “I appreciate what you’ve done for me, Mir… my daughter.” My mother sounded awkward, as if she weren't sure how to address me.
I nodded. "It was really hard. But it all worked out." Then, I made a stern expression as I stared at her. “Just make sure that you don’t… fall back into your condition. I don’t want to see you like that.” Watching my family member die of a drug addiction hurt. I hated it.
My mother glanced at me, as if she were hesitating for a moment. I felt a surge of anxiety. What was there to hesitate about? My mother’s addiction had already nearly killed her. Without my healing magic, she would have died. Even with my healing magic, she had nearly died.
Before I could stew on that thought, my mother nodded. “No more,” she said. “I’ll cut Fizz out of my life. It’s…” she shivered, and didn’t finish her thought. "I'll stay away from it."
I relaxed a little bit. As long as my mother got better, it was fine.
“Oh, if you want to fit in, I can also help you learn Damilian,” I said, as I realized that my mother would struggle to fit in here. The rest of the group had already learned Damilian. I could speak it as fluently as a native now, and I had almost forgotten that it was a problem at all. But my mother hadn't spent years studying the language. I would have to help her with that. “I know learning a new language is hard, but… this is our home now. Honestly, it's a good thing we left Verne. The city we used to live in got shelled a lot during the war. They also had some food shortages several times. The city may have never completely fallen, but I hear things got bad there for a while. Learning a new language is a small price to pay for avoiding cannon fire, right?”
My mother nodded, and I let myself relax as I continued to tell her about our experiences here. My work with Dr. Trish. Old Mo and his bakery. School. Harmless little stories about daily life to tell my mother about our support network, and the life our group had built here. I wanted her to know who else she could ask for help, if she needed it.
It was… nice. Being able to finally converse with my mother. I went to sleep that night with a smile.
And in the middle of a particularly nice dream, I was woken up by panicked shrieking from Anise.