Jana looked up from her book to see her father pacing about their living room, worried.

The now thirteen-year-old watched him think for about three minutes, her gaze unnoticed, and eventually got irritated. Not only was her dad not giving her any mind, only glancing at her with grimaces, but he was also pacing outside her vision in just the right way to bother her when she read. If he wanted to pace, his bedroom was two left turns from their large, log-cabin style living room, and both the kitchen and TV room were available. Instead, he chose to do it in front of her, specifically.

“Dad, you’re annoying me,” she matter-of-factly said, setting her book on her lap. To be fair to her father, she could have simply read upsidedown for his pacing not to bother him, but that cause for her annoyance wasn’t all that important to her.

His head snapped towards Jana, and he almost seemed surprised to see her.

Her father dressed quite formally, though today, his clothes were dirtied with snow because Jana had messed up when she flew him back from his work earlier. He always preferred to always be moving, as if he had somewhere to go, which helped accentuate his youthful features.

“Oh, Jana, w-what’s wrong?” he said as if he were out of breath. Her father usually sounded focused caring, but now, his voice was ever so subtly off, in a way that only his daughter could notice.

And again, Jana admitted that, to be fair to her father, he always gave her his undivided attention to her when she asked for it, so she could(and just did) easily ask him to address her...

She pointed all about the room, the smallish girl responding to her father with a deadpan expression, “You’ve been pacing for a long time, now. Could you just take a hike?”

“W...Y-yeah, I probably could...” he admitted, before sitting down on a nearby couch’s rest then letting out a long sigh, resting his hand just above his eyebrows. For a few seconds, Jana watched him sigh, no obvious expression on her face. Her father’s hand fell once he’d run out of breath, revealing his eyes, downcast.

Jana’s eyes narrowed just a smidge. This is what was annoying her. She could forgive her dad’s other digressions, but she couldn’t give him a pass on making her worried.

She rolled her eyes then said, “Just spit it out, dad.”

Again, as if he had suddenly realized Jana was still there, he jerked up in his seat, looking towards her with surprise. “Oh, spit...what out?” he asked.

Jana silently shrugged, shaking her head in indignance at the silly question. Did he think she couldn’t tell he was stressed?

“W-well...” he began, trailing off. After a few seconds of thought, he said, “Jana, do you want to see your mom?”

Jana raised an eyebrow, quite apparently bewildered. It had been a pretty long time since her mother had been a topic of discussion, so to be asked if she wanted to see someone she didn’t theoretically know even the name of was...strange. She remained silent, prompting her father to go on a stumbling explanation.

“Well, it’s just...u-uhh...your mom...she’s....uhh...she’s...uhh...umm...” he slowly fell to a halt, finding it difficult to find the right words. “She...your mom...she is going to die.”

Jana’s expression didn’t change.

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“Like, she...she’s got a terminal illness.”

Jana slowly nodded.

“And...uhh...” he waved his hand about trying to find the right words. “I-I guess I thought you might want to...meet her, you know? Before she kicks the bucket.”

Jana’s expression didn’t change. She wasn’t sure if she should have taken that as an insult, or as a testament to her father’s stupidity, because, the thing was: she knew who her mother was. Heck, it was kinda easy(for her) to figure it out:

She had been curious about a year ago, so she did some digging on the internet. She quickly found out some people had spent a...questionable amount of effort in an attempt to figure out who her mother was. Then, to gain their trust, she posed as a random person who had dug up an ancient recording of one of her father’s ‘interviews’ on the subject. From there, it was easy to collaborate with those people and use their collective knowledge, alongside her own personal knowledge of him to secretly figure out who she was, before misleading them with contradictory information to keep her privacy.

Of course, Jana understood that, now, her father had a video ‘interview’ of him reminiscing about when he’d first met Jana’s mother circulating through the internet, but...well, no knowledge is free, as they say.

“Dad...” she began, “It’s Naina Strongstein, right?”

He froze.

“Yeah, it is,” she confirmed, satisfaction leaking into her voice.

“How...Did you see the-”

“I just looked it up online,” she said before he could finish the question. “More or less,” she added snarkily.

After a second, still frozen, her father hunched over, shaking his head with a smile. “You do surprise me, but...yes, it’s her.”

“So, I did see her once,” Jana said. After all the searching for evidence, there was one thing that had made it super obvious who her mother was... “It explains why she was so weird when I saw her.”

Her father chuckled. “Yeah, I guess she was a bit flustered when we saw her at the Dionysus Accord. I really didn’t think she’d be there...But, anyway, do you want to see her again?”

Jana shrugged, set her book in the air, then stood up. “So where is she?” she asked.

“I just saw her in the hospital before you picked me up but-”

“Ok. The Newbrook one?”

“Yeah, that one.”

“Then let’s go.”

“Already?!” he asked, taken aback.

“Sure,” Jana said, not understanding his surprise. “Why not now?”

“Well, I mean, it’s nighttime and they said only family could visit...”

“Aren’t we?” she said, incredulous.

“It isn’t exactly logged, though. They stopped me from entering...”

Jana shrugged then telekinetically batted the snow off her father’s clothes while she waltzed into her room, not batting an eye. “I’d like to see them try that on me,” she responded, no hint of amusement in her voice.

She quickly walked out with new clothes, flying up and out of her cushy nightdress, and into formal winter clothes, her heavy, adult-sized winter coat folding over her arms, a snowflake insignia sewn onto its left side. A few peanut butter and jelly sandwiches flew from the kitchen alongside a few other snacks and came to a float beside her.

“What?” she asked when her father sent her a strange look.

He warmly smiled. “You’re always so decisive, you know that?”

Jana shrugged, flinging the door open with a ceremonial flick of her hand. “You’re just lazy, dad.”

He walked to her side, then scruffled the young girl’s white, shimmering hair. “Then I guess you’re just spontaneous, Jana.”