*"She came to the Falls to tell me that she left the Basin and was going to the Edge to uh... to live with Torleik...”*

I was reminded that Torleik was his actual name. And then I promptly forgot it again because fuck Shapes.

Something bitter and burning slid down my stomach as Auntie told me Ma went to actually live with him. Which didn’t make real sense—cuz didn’t they both live in the Basin? “I thought Sh—uh, Tomlek was a Basiner, too?” It had seemed that way when I last talked to that rat-bastard to his face. Like…I dunno, there was something missing that I wasn’t catching and the whole picture felt out of place without that missing piece.

But I left that detail alone, because something was being confirmed in my head that I had been dreading, and it was like that burning sensation as solidifying into a smooth, solid pit of pure black and awfulness. “So uh…they…” I stammered, because the question was a lot more painful then I could’ve really anticipated, “They’re…they’re really a thing?” Ma had said he’d been a “protector” and a “friend” and my dumb ass was still clinging to the possibility of it being anything other than what it so boldly appeared to be. "She...uh...she didn't say anything else?" About the horrible daughter that cussed her out on her own doorstep?

I felt like an asshole dreading it, too. Like it was such a tragedy for there to be someone in my Ma’s life that could make her happy like he was apparently doing. Which was a knife-thrust in a gut, ‘cuz that meant she needed someone like him to really shield her from someone like me.

(Which means she really did h—)

But Auntie was taking me back to other things, pulling my mind away from shitty shit to other shit that was almost as equally shitty. “Jiji?” I asked, her name coming up in a blaze of crimson and gold sparks (at least in my head) “Yeah, I …I just got back from seeing her, actually.” My voice, my body, everything had perked up when Auntie pulled her daughter in the conversation—like, I dunno, I still felt shitty about lying my ass off to her, but that didn’t mean she still didn’t burn glowing coals in my body.

It still had to dampen, though, because she was asking how she was doingand this world was chock-full of tragedies. “She’s…really beat up about her Pa,” my voice dropped, cuz I didn’t know how to address Midas in front of Auntie. I didn’t even really know if she knew he was dead—it just seemed like she would know, adults tend to know everything which is why I’m so convinced I’ll be a child forever. “I spent some time with her ‘n everything but I couldn’t stay…I got shit to do.” And I’ll always have shit to do, always and forever, that would keep me away from my Jiji.



"talk"