“She will only need to wear these for a few more weeks. She was right when she said that enough time would have passed by then that she would have healed naturally.” My mother said, looking at Anna but speaking to me.
“Damn, I think they look cute on her.” Anna sighed. She sat in a high backed armchair that had been placed in the corner of my room sometime while I had been outside.
I blushed. I was used to her compliments and flattery, but they felt very different in front of my mother.
Before she left the room, my mother continued her double speaking to Anna. “From what you have told me, you assisted my daughter with bringing her color out before, with what she accomplished today, perhaps you are correct in thinking you could help her again.”
“What have I accomplished? How did you know?” I asked, knowing what the answer was but not understanding how she knew.
She looked at me and gave a mischievous smile. “I am your mother, my little Delpha. It is my duty to know.”
“You were watching from the windows, weren’t you?” My patience for carefully arranging my words to sound like I wasn’t talking to my mother had run out.
My mother flicked her eyes from side to side like she was checking for the presence of any eavesdroppers. “Yes, but that sounds much less mysterious. Goodnight, girls. Get some sleep.”
She left us at that, closing the door and sending us to bed.
“I laid out clothes for you on your side of the bed, I should have known you would get the dress dirty as soon as you put it on.” Anna said as she reached under the bed and pulled out the big notebook I had written in that morning. “I know they aren’t exactly the same, but they were the closest I could find.”
Folded neatly on top of my pillow was a gray long sleeve shirt and a pair of lacey purple shorts. The shirt was entirely too big. The ties that were meant to cinch the neckline hung down my chest and the sleeves hung well past the ends of my fingers. The shorts fit me strangely. They formed to my waist before puffing out and retightening at my bandaged thighs in lace cuffs.
“I’m pretty sure the shorts are lingerie, but there aren’t really any sporting goods stores around here.”
“What is lingerie?” I asked, repeatedly pulling the stretchy cuff of the shorts out and letting it snap back to my leg. In all of my memories, both my own and others, I had never heard the word before.
“Uhm, it’s what you wear when you are trying to impress someone.” She said, shaking her head as she spoke. She sat back in her new chair and put the notebook on her lap.
“Are you impressed?” I pulled the hem of the baggy shirt up so she could get a clear view.
Something changed in her eyes and her voice dropped in pitch. “You have no idea.”
“Well, that means it is lingerie,” I walked over to her and sat cross legged on the ground. “They are supposed to be like the sweater and shorts I wore at the boarding house, right? That’s why you picked these out?”
Anna nodded. “Yeah, I thought they might make you feel more comfortable at night. With everything that has happened. . . You deserve that, you know?”
No you don’t. You. . . I pushed the thought away. Every line of thinking that it would lead to led me further away from Anna. Being outside with Arthur, the full feeling in my belly after eating a proper meal, and another self blinded shower had left me in a state I was not quite ready to let go of yet. There would be all the time in the world for me to think about the perilous state of my life when the lights were out and Anna was asleep.
“How do you keep getting all of this? The dress, these, I’m pretty sure you were the one that fixed my bed?” I asked her, choosing to keep as much of myself out of the dark as I could.
“Your bed? I’ve slept in it more than you have. At this point, my room is just the place I have to walk through to get to my closet,” She rolled her eyes playfully. “And all I am doing is picking stuff out. Your mom pays for everything. I haven’t gotten her to admit it, but I’m pretty sure she is rich.”
“Rich?”
“Like, wealthy. It’s not called money here, but she has a lot of it. You saw the house back home, we weren’t poor, we did okay when the rooms were full of paying tenants,” She gave me a little wink. “But she doesn’t even ask about prices when we are in a shop.”
I had never really had to think about money before. When Ms. Lao had told me that renting the room at the top of her boarding house came with a cost, the numbers had meant nothing to me because I had never meant to pay. Was my mother rich? If she was, how had she become that way? Even I knew that doing little more than babysitting your thief of a daughter for ten years probably did not pay well.
“I am sorry about that, truly.” I said, looking her in her eyes.
“What, the rent? Who gives a shit. If I would have known it would lead to all this, I would have paid you.” She smiled down at me.
“Lead to the manor and everything, you mean?” I knew perfectly well what she meant, but I put on my most innocent face.
She nudged her foot against my middle playfully and rolled her eyes again. “No, dummy. You know what I mean.”
“Nuh-uh, I’m just a poor dumb prisoner. I don’t know anything about anything.” I shook my head from side to side, playing up my persona.
“Well, I guess I'm going to have to tell you then,” She said, placing the notebook on the stone floor beside the chair. There was hesitation, just like there had been before, but I kept my eyes on hers and nodded slightly, silently telling her that whatever she was about to do was okay. At my encouragement, she slid to the end of the chair, the hem of her thin black nightgown bunching at the middle of her thighs, and lowered herself to the ground in front of me. She spread her legs, one on both sides of me, and leaned back against the chair. “I mean that it led to this, me and you, us. I know it seems like I do alot for you, but you do a lot for me too.”
“I can do something for you right now.” I said, feeling my face grow hot as I considered what that something would be.
“I don’t believe it,” Anna said, her jaw dropped. “You just actually flirted with me.”
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“That was not a flirt, it was a declaration.” I whispered, bringing myself up on my knees. Instinct alone brought my hand to Anna’s knee. My eyes locked on hers, I slowly walked my fingers down her thigh.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Her eyes widened and a sudden laugh bubbled out of her. She stopped my hand with her own. “What happened to you being all awkward and shy?”
“I don’t have the time for that anymore.” I whispered. The massive shirt she had gotten me was baggy enough that I could slip the collar off one of my shoulders once I loosened the ties in the front. I did and let it fall just far enough to make her think I was going to reveal myself.
“Yes you do,” She rolled her eyes and sat up properly. Almost as soon as I had let it fall, she reached over and pulled the shirt back over my shoulder. “Besides, we have work to do.”
I did not understand. “How can you say that? That I have time?”
Anna smirked and held her arms out for me to help her up. Once we stood, she smoothed my hair back from my face and tightened the ties of the big gray shirt. “You can’t walk around with these undone, if someone sees your tits I’ll have to fight them.”
“Oops, you are gonna have to fight two of the guards then.” I said, doing my best Arthur impression by rubbing the back of my neck with my hand.
“Autumn! Which ones? Give me their names.” Anna scowled and raised her fists.
I knew she was joking, mostly, but her false fury at the notion of someone seeing me inappropriately only made me want her more. “You did not answer my question. How can you speak so confidently about having time and being patient? Do you not remember that we were supposed to be on a date while I was being ground to dust?”
There was no part of me that felt confident that The Mothers were not going to burst through the door and drag me out of the manor by my ankles. The way my day had left me feeling aside, I did not understand how she could be so certain.
“Of course I remember,” Anna said, her eyes growing serious. “I also remember when you got sent to see them the night that bird lady took us from the boarding house. You know what they have in common?”
“No.” I answered a little too quickly. I needed to know what she knew and I did not wish to stand there and guess.
“Both times, you came back.” She said, simply.
What did that have to do with anything? Of course I had come back. If I had not, we could not have been having the conversation we were.
Anna seemed to notice my displeasure with her answer. “Think about it. None of it makes sense. You ran away. If The Well is important enough to put the seal on your stomach and lock you in a room for ten years, wouldn’t they have come and found you immediately? When you were sent to see them, wouldn’t they have just locked you up again? If you are what they say you are, they should have, but they didn’t. They put you in a nice ass house and left you alone for months. I know The Mother in Brown’s punishment was not easy, please don’t think I’m saying that,” She placed her palm on my arm to emphasize what she was saying. “But you are here. We know you are going to get punished again, but we have more evidence that you are going to come back.”
“Okay, and?” I followed her line of thinking, but I could not see how it gave me any more time.
“So, the way I see it, things are going to be hard for a while. They are going to punish you, but you are going to come back. And when it's all over, when you're done with the punishment and The Well, me and you are going to leave. We are gonna go somewhere that we can swim, like you said you wanted to. We are gonna be together, it's just a matter of time. My goals for us aren’t tonight or next week, I’m thinking about things in the long term.” She smiled at me, holding my hands down by our waists.
I spoke, honestly, but I had never been very good at lying to her anyways.
“I do not know if that is true. That is why I want to. . . ” I whispered and wrapped my arms around her waist.
“You don’t have to know right now. I know it enough for the both of us,” She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “And believe me, I want it to, but we shouldn’t rush. Besides, I need your help.”
“With what?” I asked, unable to think of anything I could possibly help her with.
“Don’t be so surprised, you're good at tons of stuff. Actually, you're the only person that can help me with this.”
I shook my head. “Unless you need me to steal or trip over something, I don’t really know what-”
“Shut up,” She gave me a playful push. “If you think you can, I need you to go into The Well for me.”
“Why?” I asked her, confused.
She bent down and picked up the big notebook from the floor. I could not keep my eyes from tracking the hem of her dress as it rose up the back of her legs.
“We are going to figure out who the fuck The Mothers actually are. That’s what I’ve been doing all this reading for, but the books can only tell me so much when it seems like it is illegal for anyone to know The Mother’s names,” She flipped open the big notebook to the page I had written on that morning. “The names from your first list aren’t right, right?”
“One of them isn’t. Nami,” I said, surprised that the name had actually come out of my mouth. “She is The Mother in Blue, I think. She has blue hair at least.”
Anna flipped to a clean page and wrote down what I had just told her. “The one that has already punished you, The Mother in Brown, were they similar?”
“No,” I shook my head, Anna’s excitement making me want to give her everything I could. “They could not be more different. The Mother in Brown was tall and slender. Her eyes were like liquid gold and I knew she hated me from the first time I saw her. I saw Nami in memories before I met her. She is why I came back from my punishment when I did, I couldn’t see her, but she made,” Azza. “Fuck, it’s annoying not being able to say her name. She made The Mother in Brown send me home.”
It took Anna a few minutes to finish writing all that I had told her.
“How is this helping you?” I asked, still not understanding.
“Have you ever seen The Mother in Brown in a memory?” Anna asked, still writing.
“Yes, during my punishment. I think the thing that lives at the bottom of The Well showed it to me.” I had forgotten about waking up around the fireplace after Azza’s memory until that very moment. It had been there, sitting next to me, hadn’t it?
Anna nodded. “If you had seen it before your punishment, do you think you could have guessed what she was going to do to you?”
I thought about the city whose name I had already forgotten and all its literally colorful people. The sand, the hairless cat, the split, all of it came back to me in flashes. I remembered the wave and how she had used the sand and the lightning to stop it. She had been sentenced to death for using her power, for being who she was, and she had saved the very people that were trying to execute her. The voice she had called her daemon and the name it had given her, how had I forgotten it all so soon?
“Goldluster,” I said, surprised for the second time that the word had come out of me. “It’s one of her names or something like that.”
“We should have been doing this the whole time, I couldn’t imagine trying to keep track of all this in my head. You are strong as shit, if I had to do this, I would lose my mind,” Anna said, writing again. “Do you think it would have helped you?”
“Maybe?” I said, shrugging my shoulders.
Anna closed the notebook. From where I stood, I couldn’t help but look down and see the curves of her chest that were barely concealed by her nightgown. “Maybe is better than no. The idea is for you to go into The Well and try to find one of their memories. We could learn something about them or a different name, but either way we can try to prepare you from whatever bullshit they do to you next. Are you in?”
She had called me strong. I didn’t think anyone had ever called me that before. There was still a large part of me that wanted to curl into a ball and hide under my blankets, but a larger part of me wanted to please Anna.
It was no longer pretending, I had moved past that. I would try to do as she asked because I wanted to, not because of some backwards desire to hide my pain.
“We can’t do it here,” I said, forcing myself to turn away from her. There was only so long I could keep my hands from wandering to her again. “I’m not going to be able to focus. We need to go down to the well house.”
Anna laughed. “You try to seduce me and now you want to sneak out, you really are Autumn aren’t you?”
“I’m whoever you want me to be.” I answered with my back to her.
“Two flirts in one night, you’ve got talent, kid,” Anna laughed, coming up beside me with her notebook in her hands. “Keep up the good work and you may make it to the big leagues one day.”