The morning started off so wonderfully blissful; he had a great night’s rest and he was teasing Étienne while the man made them breakfast, softly conversing in hushed voices while his body woke itself up from being up and ready at such an un-Milo hour. Only when the finishing touches were done did he finally go poke his head into his mother’s room and was met with a chilling discovery and almost instant tears.
It was almost an hour of searching every single crevice of the AirBnB before the first wave of tears came. As lush as the exterior was, it was also filled with trees and large shrubbery that Olympe could’ve easily wandered off to in hopes of exploring on her own. With Étienne searching in one direction and he another, Milo stumbled onto streets and started to walk, asking those he passed if they’ve seen a woman that looked like the one he shared on his phone. There was no lead, nobody to show him the way. For a moment, he paused in his sprint and panted, catching his breath so he can dart off yet again.
@ofchryseum
it had all seemed a little too good to be true that morning. making breakfast for milo and olympe, waking up for the first time in years without a phone full of urgent emails and a head full of thoughts. being present with milo was so much easier like this, even if they were trying to keep quiet to let his mother sleep in. the realisation that she was not even in the house hit them both like a freight train, especially when they were acutely aware of the effect her accident had had on her memory.
the two of the had gone into panic mode, although étienne was well practiced in the art of keeping a calm exterior. every time he rang her phone and got no answer, or called her name only to receive silence in return spiked worry in him, especially when he saw milo’s ability to cope dwindling with every second. he felt intensely responsible for them both, and though he was reluctant to let milo go out looking on his own, he knew they would cover more ground separately.
instinct told him to head for the beach. it was where he would go, and he knew olympe well enough to know that there was a good chance she was in pursuit of beauty when she had set out from home. sure enough, he recognised a tiny figure on the beach as the hunched over form of his future mother in law. a moment was spared to text milo that he’d found her and that he should head to the beach, before he approached olympe cautiously, aware that she might be unable to place him.
“olympe, are you alright?” he called in gentle french, as he shrugged off his jacket and wrapped it around her slight shoulders, crouching down in the sand beside her. “milo’s coming. everything’s going to be fine. do you remember how you got here?”
olympe felt frozen to the spot. frozen by the cold. frozen by her confusion and her panic. her mind kept repeating the same loop of questions she couldn’t answer herself always followed by the hatred of that fact. the loop added to things that held her glued to her kneeling position on the sand. all that moved was the ocean itself, almost rhythmic in the way it hit the land over and over again.
a familiar voice pulled her from her reverie and her head snapped to the side. “étienne!” her exclamation was breathy and full of relief. relief that he was here and relief that here was something she recognised. her trembling hands came up to cup his face. “where are we? i can’t- i can’t remember and i panicked and looked for something familiar and now i don’t...” her frantic words trailed off in embarrassment and she pulled her hands back to cover her own face. despite being with her son in law, the calm that she was desperate for, still had not come.
his presence didn’t put her mind back together, even if she wished it would.
