She stopped the words in my mouth before I could spew any more—but I still wasn’t looking at her right, like my eyes were too afraid to see what kind of face she’d be wearing. I just stood stock-still, awkward and subdued, the embarrassment gone for now as I waited for the real reason she wanted to shut me up (chew me up, spit me out, tear me limb from limb—). But all she did was reach forward—and I was in her embrace before I knew it and the world was flipping up, down, and all around in so many different ways, I went dizzy.

Auntie and Ma always smelled the same—well, damn-near the same, at any rate, close enough that it used to piss me off as a foal whenever I’d grope for a warm body in the dark and it turned out it wasn’t my mom. But those little baby rages always melted quickly cuz this type of scent always meant something warm anyway, whether the hide was light or dark, and I guess warm things are a baby’s way of discovering love at first.

She was holding me now--touching me, and that was basically love, right? And it made my face screw up and there was stuff behind my eyes that I sucked up cuz I knew deep down—just like Ma—there was no way she could still love me after something like that. It was just so much…safer to assume she secretly hated me, and even though she was showing me love and acting on an impossible thing—

*"...you know I don't hate you, right?"*

I gave a shaky sigh and, for a moment, I couldn’t find my voice. I just settled in her embrace—and eventually I let myself feel it, too, Auntie’s weight and everything telling me this was a real body pressing against me. I sighed again, then again—but I think at this point it just means I was breathing really heavy, like I was trying not to drown.

“I missed you,” I whispered, feeling so small for the first time in a while—I pressed myself against her like a little filly who couldn’t see straight and was looking for the side of her Ma. “I miss…I miss everyone,” I said, and in my eye I was looking at the Foothills and all those bodies that my head piled in that place, those people around me that I had grown up around when I was small and didn’t understand that, one day, it would all be one.






@[Ktulu]
"talk"