Mother

There was sorrow on the wind.

Mother was going to cry.

She hated when Mother cried.

Aurea sat up in her bed, groggy and slow as her body made the usual creaky early-morning cracks as she stretched. It felt different this morning though. She felt swollen.

She felt cold.

Blurry morning eyes made her squint to focus to her right. The morning light was intense and white like a fluorescent bulb. The type of white that shines through gray clouds. She could feel a draft too. An intense, cold draft. Her legs were slightly bare, as she'd fallen asleep in shorts. The fleece of the blanket hardly did anything to keep her warm from Mother's minty breath. It's as if she was concentrating it all into the room, blowing her mouth into a small crack of existence. She rubbed her eyes and focused harder on her window.

Her window had been slightly open, and the small area rug below the sill was soaked through. The whole room felt damp. Smelled damp. Mother's sadness was everywhere. It was outside, in her room, in her bones. But it wasn’t just the rain that gave away Mother's mood, fresh and clean as rain was. But the way the air felt. It was charged. Cold, yet heated. Mother wasn’t just sad. It was angry.

"What's wrong Mother?" her voice was froggy, early morning flem suppressing her words, cramming them like a scratchy clog stuck in a pipe. She coughed, clearing her throat. Then waited.

No response.

"Ughhhh."

Her legs swung out over the bed with aggravated speed. She hated being woken up with such abruptness. Mother never cared about such things. Even worse, she was being ignored.

"Mother?" the window creaked as the wind blew with force into the old frame. She stood, walking hesitantly. Mother was always hard to approach when she was angry, and she'd been so angry lately. Everything bothered her. Every car turned on, every bottle not recycled. Literally everything. Aurea could understand these things. Humans were treating her like garbage. She was upset. On top of that, Mother didn’t always complain, but these past few years have been mostly complaints. There wasn't a time she could recall in the recent past that Mother hadn't come to her and complained about something. She’d missed the days when they’d first started speaking. She missed the day they first spoke.

She had been three.

It had been raining.

She'd been watching the sky all day that day. She'd loved watching when it rained. But that day she watched the sky for a different reason. She watched it because Aunty and Uncle were leaving that Friday night for their weekly meetings with her cousins. The weekly meetings she wasn’t allowed to attend.

Aunty Jvaara and Uncle Balsar were very important people. They were considered a king and a queen of sorts amongst their people. They always were off taking important meetings, or hosting important events. Aurea was often allowed to attend, along with her Cousin Neel and her little cousin Maggie. They did things together, as a family. Except the meetings. They only ever told her the meetings weren’t important and that all the clans were to attend. The head of the four main families, and their immediate family.

Her Aunty Jvaara and Uncle Balsar had taken her in when she was a baby. She’d been told that her family had been killed in the uprising the year she and Neel had been born, and she’d been entrusted to the Dalpey clan, which Uncle Balsar was head of. They’d always treated her as a daughter, taking special interest in her over their own kids at times, referring to her as “princess.” But they never told her why she wasn't allowed to go, and would avoid the question if she ever asked. Even if she cried, and she'd cried so hard that day.

"Please, please let me go with you. Why can't I go?" Her pleading had only been met with soft smiles, which made her little heart hurt more.

"We'll be back, I promise." Her Aunty had told her, kissing her forehead and giving her a big hug.

"It's nothing a princess should get worried about. Vincent will be here with you."

That was always Auntie's response. That she was a princess, and princesses don't attend the meetings of regular folk.

"You're a special girl." Her Uncle had added. He'd bent down and put both hands on her tiny shoulders.

"We would never lie or not give you what you deserve. But this is something you cannot be a part of. But it's ok. We'll be back soon, ok?"

So, when they'd go off to their weekly meetings, she'd be left alone with Vincent, the butler. She'd always loved Vincent, and he loved her. But he knew when to leave her alone. She had been sad, and she just wanted to sit by herself, watching the rain. So that's what she did. She'd sat in the library, over-looking the garden, her tiny chin in her tiny hands. Then she heard her voice for the first time. The voice she'd eventually call Mother.

"Aurea..."

It had startled her. She'd been sitting in silence for so long, she hadn't realized how quiet it'd been. She immediately clenched up, her brow furrowed in anger.

"Who's there?!" she'd shouted. She had wanted to call for Vincent, but something in her belly told her not to.

"It's me, your Mother." The words had come as a shock to her, especially the word "Mother." Aunty had told her that she could refer to her as her Mother if it was what she wanted, but she never had. It just didn't feel right.

"But I don't have a Mother."

"Yes, you do. Everyone has a Mother, and I'm everyone's Mother." Her voice sounded like it was coming from outside the window, reverberating into the room.

But that had been impossible. Aurea was on the second floor.

"You're not making any sense. Where are you?"

"I'm everywhere, sweet child."

Looking back, this response should have made her blood run cold. There was a disembodied voice speaking to her after all. Maybe it had been her open mind as a toddler, or ignorance to the severity of the situation at the time, but she continued to speak anyway. Without fear.

"I am Mother” The voice continued “I am the Earth you stand on and the rain that pours down. I have come because I saw rain coming from your eyes. What's wrong?"

There was something about her voice that put Aurea under some spell. She couldn’t help but speak openly to her.

“Aunty and Uncle never let me go to their weekly meetings. They won’t tell me why.” There was silence for a moment as Aurea continued to sulk.

“They’re hiding something from you. That is why they will not tell you.”

“Don’t say that! Aunty and Uncle Balsar never lie!”

Even though Mother was just a voice, she remembers how sad and upset Mother seemed as she cried out this response. But at the time, she was too little or too upset to care that she’d hurt Mother’s feelings. Mother had hurt hers, had insulted the only people in the world she loved.

“There are good and bad people in this world, Aurea.” Said Mother.

“You may not believe me, because sometimes, bad people disguise themselves as good people. Your Uncle is disguising himself as a good person.”

“Why are you telling me this?!”

“Because I am your Mother, my sweet baby, and that’s what Mother is supposed to do. Comfort you when you’re sad, and tell you the truth.”

And from every day since then, Mother has told her many truths. About the state of the world, about pollution and the universe. But she always returned to the same truths. She hated Uncle and people were mistreating their mother.

So she could see, as she stood in front of her open window which howled and shook with the sound of the wind that asking her what was wrong was obvious.

"Guess that was a stupid question to ask."

But still, she didn't have to ignore her. Mother wasn't the only one in the world that was pissed off right now.

'Got to clean this shit off the ground before it seeps through the floorboards.'

Clothes over-flowed the hamper that flanked the window, now damp from the air that blew in cold huffs of Mother's tears. The closest towel she could find was thrown to the ground, swirled around with Aurea's toes as the water seeped through her socks. She looked to the sky with matched anger.

"What's wrong today, Mother? Is it the pollution? Or all the hate?" she sighed the question out. She felt awful the second she heard herself. She couldn't help it though. She was exhausted. Cold. The room was damp, and her floor was wet. Mother didn't care about these things. She never did. All she cared about was crying a river.

Onto the floor.

The socks peeled off with a sloppy wetness, and they landed in the hamper with a thud. Now she really had to do laundry.

'Thanks Mother.'

Rain came down harder. It looked as if it would break through the glass. She had to close the window,

but she could hear Mother's voice calling.

"Aurea... Aurea..." Mother was ignoring all her questions.

Then it happened. She did it without thinking.

She grabbed the frame and slammed it down. Hard.

"Fuck!"

She hadn't realized how hard she threw it down, or where she'd placed her hand. Now the tips of her fingers pulsated with pain, and for a moment she saw red.

"Karma" said Mother.

She could hear it softly on the back of the wind. She could feel it in the still of the closed window, and how the room instantly warmed up. She could see it in the way the rain lightened a little.

"Come outside."

Aurea looked out the sky again, her eyes heavy with tired and irritated defeat.

'Brilliant idea' she thought 'Let's go talk in the middle of a thunder storm.'

"Coming Mother." Gritted teeth couldn't cage the anger in her voice.

She slunked towards her door and out into the hallway. The light from the living area shined down to her door to greet her. The harshness of the sun didn't fade, even this far from the windows.

Her stomach growled.

'Mother can wait a moment. I need to eat first. Bitch woke me up, she can wait a minute till I eat.'

Her footsteps were sluggish as she approached the kitchen. She didn't know what she wanted. Maybe some pancakes. Something that'll take a long time. That'd be awesome. But she was hungry now. Damn it.

"I'll have a banana."

She grabbed a banana from the bowl on the counter and peeled it back slow, the rain hitting against the windows as if knocking to come inside.

Or for her to go outside.

"I'm coming." But she didn't want to go. She just wasn't up for it today. She understood Mother's anger. The way Humans treat her. But she just wasn't in the mood to hear somebody whine.

She walked across the living room, grabbing the large blanket off the back of her couch to wrap herself in. She’d forgotten to grab her coat. Mother had been rushing her and she’d been to sleepy to realize she needed to grab one. She turned the lock on the sliding patio doors and broke the barrier between her and the outside world.

Between her and Mother.

“What has Human kind done today to piss you off?” the slate patio was oddly warm against the balls of her feet as the wind blew hard. Mother said nothing.

“You woke me up for a reason. Now talk.” She could tell Mother wanted an apology for her rude behavior.

“Look, I’m sorry. You know I’m cranky when I wake up. What’s wrong? What happened?”

Mother sighed, the wind coming across Aurea’s face in a calm and steady stream.

“You’re going to see your Uncle, aren’t you?” Aurea furrowed her brow, just like the first day they’d met, and she’d expressed her distain for the man.

“Yes, what of it?” her attitude was setting back in.

“Are you telling me you’re upset that I’m going to see my family today?”

“Yes.” The air became even more charged then. And Aurea could smell lightning in the clouds. Mother was ready to scream, punch. It was odd though, even for Mother. She’d been fully aware that the issue could be one of two things, but never had she been this upset about Uncle.

“You know I loath that Uncle of yours.”

“Yeah, I get that. But why the fuck are you so upset? I go to see them all the time. It’s nothing new.” The wind almost came to a dead halt with the end of her statement, the rain coming down lighter. Mother’s mood shifted too, the mood calmer, but still serious.

“He’s lying to you.”

“Yeah, I know. So you’ve said. A thousand and ten times. Since I was a baby.”

“I’m serious.” Mother’s voice sounded heart-broken. It always did when it came to the talk of Uncle Balsar, but this time it sounded different. Aurea’s shoulder’s tensed.

“You know, you’ve always told me he’s such a liar, but you’ve never even began to tell me why he’s lying. When you don’t tell me, you’re just as bad as you claim him to be.” The rain poured down harder again, Aurea wrapping the blanker tighter around her. Then Mother spoke.

“Because what he’s hiding from you is far worse than you realize. You need to just trust me.”