[Amavia] Mama Knows Best

[misshadleigh]

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             Though tears flow freely from her eyes the letter in the girl’s hands is held almost reverently. Somehow, through her tears and quiet sobs, she manages to read it again and again. Each line is important. Every word so meaningful she wonders if some of it is flying by her as she devours every bit with her eyes. Slower. She must slow herself down or risk losing some shred of knowledge, chance not gleaning some insight that will never be spoken to her by the one who penned this.
Mama.

That single word makes her throat constrict again and she carefully rests the page in her lap so she doesn’t wrinkle it. Fingernails dig sharply into her palms and she barely smothers the wail that’s growing like one of their apple trees in the back of her throat. The branches spread and create a strangled, muted cry that tries to worm between her lips for more.

You’re only damaged goods if you live like you are. They only win if you let them.

How did mama know exactly what she’d need to hear?

Her biggest fear was being broken, being seen as damaged goods that weren’t worth the pretty wrapping they came in.

No more. No one will make her feel like that ever again.

Amavia snakes her arms around her waist and squeezes tightly, still trying to cut off that sound that is not withering or dying in her throat. It presses against her lungs till they burn and demand she open up and gasp for breathe. It’s like swimming and taking too deep a dive; the struggle not to open your mouth and suck in lungfuls of what will kill you is warring in her.

But there is no water and the only lethal thing here is the girl herself.

A girl this young shouldn’t have done the things she has. But who sets the standards for that? Who is so omniscient as to judge when a person is ready for the terror that is death?

No one.

Finally that cry shoots out of her and for a moment she’s reminded of the birds they took as a name.

Hawks cry and screech. They keen as they dive for their prey.

Hawkins do not cry. They are calm and reserved.

But this reminder that her mama is a light that will never shine again is wracking Amavia. The constant fake smiles and forced laughs have not built the armor she so desperately hoped they would. Theirs is a brittle defense, as cracked as plaster and crumbling now beneath the blow that was her mother’s final farewell.

These life lessons should have been dealt over the course of years in small morsels to her eager daughter. Years were no longer an option for them. Consequence and action brought them to a fork in the road and their paths ran separate, never to converge again. At least not while one of them was still up and walking. Instead these motherly insights were left in her last goodbye and shook her daughter to the foundations. The walls built by pretending were gone and she felt naked and bare to the world.

What she’d rebuild in their absence was uncertain as she was still reeling in the dust of their destruction.

In the corner of her bedroom, beneath a little hidey-hole crafted of blankets and a basket her mother’s final gift hisses. The blue whelpling is starved and had she and Llew not found it when they did it very well may have died in the place her mother left it. It needs food and water and attention to thrive.

It needs love and that is something Amavia has in spades. She slips off her bed, the letter resting on the sheets now, and pushes the plate of raw, tiny pieces of meat and the dish of water in range of the snake-like neck. Golden eyes meet her own and narrow in suspicion. Another hiss and it snatches a piece of meat to hungrily devour.

On her stomach, Amavia smiles at the creature. Love. It’s something her mother encouraged her to feel. The guilt that plagued her for loving her mother’s killers - by their hands or not - is fading with the message from her mama.

But what you're feeling, that's instinct. That's reaction to what IS.

And what she’s feeling now is hope.

Hope for herself.

Hope for her future.

Hope to live a life that would do her mama proud.

((In response to Svafa's final letter to Amy, her reaction after reading it. ))