❦ - … My muse’s child (lana)
Amae isn’t there when she wakes. That’s normal; chores don’t wait because we’re tired, they say, a lot, though not to her. She listens anyway, and tries to wake up when they do.
It doesn’t always work, like today. Amae isn’t there, and that’s normal, but she still feels that sinking in her belly, like she’d had bad food. She can’t remember ever having bad food.
The ground squishes under her feet outside Amae’s aravel, a clue as to why she’d slept for so long. The soft tapping sound rain made on the fabric overhead was her favorite, if she had to choose, and the cool air that came with the rain was soothing.
Even if Amae complained about the cold.
Her feet sink further into the mud, but that couldn’t compete with the return of that feeling. They’re not here, waiting with her first meal of the day set aside and always warm, a constant as old as her earliest memory. She knows the signs: smaller, lighter aravels gone, a hush settled over her home.
She finds her uncle waiting by the cooking fires with that same meal (and a hug), but it isn’t the same. She loves him dearly, but he doesn’t have Amae’s presence, and the food tastes like ashes on her tongue.
He reassures her that this time won’t keep them away as long.
Ashes.
It isn’t the same.
