Returning Red

session 06/06

"Beautiful," I whisper, not caring whether she heard it or not. I scribbled, 'Katherine Carlyle is blue, like Isabella Cosmo's favorite color' as a sidenote. 

"Mom, you've never spoken like this at home," Lily whispered slowly. 

I see her sitting back on the seat, silently watching. Sometimes I forget how young Lily is. She definitely understands a lot more than she should and that worries me because somehow, that's my habit too and I don't like where it's sailed me. 

"Well," Katherine's voice is all chirpy now. "You cannot talk butterfly language with caterpillar people, right?" 

"So Bee and I are butterflies?" Lily smiles. 

"Yes, you both are butterflies." Katherine chuckles. 

I take a moment to smile too. I love how openly Katherine is throwing complements at me today. I want to question it too but I know one of my questions is going to cover it. 

"What's something that Katherine Carlyle, the woman, loves? Not the doctor-therapist, not the mother, not the daughter, not the wife. What does Katherine Carlyle, the woman, love?" I ask her and turn to her, getting excited about the answer. 

"Hmm," she said staring ahead of her. I see her blink her eyes a few times. "No specific category?" 

"Nope." I say immediately. 

"Katherine, strike off Carlyle, loves mysteries. From Agatha Christie to Dan Brown to Carolyn Keene. Katherine loves cliff hangers, and indefinite endings because they have a potential for creativity and imagination. Katherine loves new people, new stories and new experiences. Katherine loves hot water and honesty. Katherine loves being unfiltered. She loves surprises, unpredictability and the thrill of waking up to a new day. Katherine loves her family, but more importantly, she breathes for Lily." Katherine glanced at me and gave me a wink, quickly looking back to the road. 

I smiled, half chuckling to myself. Lily didn't respond to this. I catch her staring at the car stereo. Her lips tug upwards and something tells me she already knew how much she meant to Katherine. 

The car turned around from the street onto an inclined muddy road. My breathing hitched because there were dark trees around us now and the narrow road brought back flashbacks of an all too familiar memory. The sky was hued to darkness and the moon was a bright white cresent adorned on it. I licked my lips as the car slowly drove through the leaves and the branches onto an opening. 

I sat up straight as the car stopped and Katherine switched the engine off. I unbuckled my seat belt and slowly stepped out of the car. It was a small field covered in grass and shrubs. The place was a grove with white dandelions bedecking the ground. Trees began hiding the grove from a distance but until that boundary, the place was serene. I looked above and the crescent moon was directly in view. Faint breeze made my hair sway but the smell of fresh grass was lovely to breathe in. 

We walked to the middle of the grove and I slowly kneeled on the grass. I saw Katherine and Lily sit down beside me. We were quite for a long time, allowing every sound around us to identify our presence. I looked around, watching the dimmly lit grove look brighter by the second. The moon really did torch this place now. 

"We come here when we want to relax," Lily said. "It's quiet and therapeutic." 

"Nature is always therapeutic." Katherine added. 

And that's when it hit me. The six sessions were all revolving around one concept that was discovered by humans a long time ago and theorized as fundamental in all factual psychologies. 

"The five elemants," I looked at Katherine, thrilled at how I cracked it. "That's what we did, right?" Her face looked confused at first but slowly, she closed her eyes and smiled, biting her lower lip. "Wind, water, fire, space and now earth."