A Kiss Goodnight at the End of Forever

Chapter 7 Pt 1 - The Impossible Kiss

"What?" James said. "Why would we be off our game?"

Serafina looked at their parents for a moment, then pointed their thumbs at themself.

"Because of you?" Martha asked.

"Look, you guys have nothing to be ashamed of. A MILF and a DILF, if ever there were. But from the stories you've told me, I think you've been better. Because at your personal best, you're self-absorbed – maximizing your physical potential and refining relevant skills. But no half-way decent parent can afford self-absorption. It's more than just me, however. This is a very busy life for the two of you once we get going."

"You don't say," James said, his face intrigued.

Then Martha remembered where Serafina had just come from. "Oh, how was Hannah's? How's Chunky doing?"

"Chunky's fine. Still biting Hannah," Serafina said, referring to their best friend from across the street and her hamster, irrespectively. "But in general, I'm wiped. No matter how many times I'm five, I always forget how exhausting it is. The mood swings and the laughing and the screaming and the crying and the jumping... SO much jumping."

"I hear that," James said. "But back to our busy lives. Care to elaborate?"

Serafina scrunched their face in thought, then said, "Yeah, okay. I guess we're ready to talk about that." Martha hadn't had any panic attacks since Steven's surprise visit and had weathered Serafina's transformation for their playdate with Hannah without incident. Perhaps she had finally turned a corner... is exactly what someone about to have another panic attack would say, so let's not jinx it.

"Ready to talk about the future?" James asked Serafina hopefully.

"Yes, but there's a lot to cover. I'm not going to dump it all at once."

"Sounds reasonable," Martha added. Looming over Serafina's revelation of immortality and Martha's subsequent struggles with parental dysphoria had been the matter of averting the human race's extinction – a responsibility they'd only become aware of less than a lifetime ago. Oh yeah... That. "So where do we start?"

"We start by pulling me out of kindergarten. I'm sorry if you had dreams of seeing me off on my first day, but... We all know that ship sailed lifetimes ago."

"Yeah, I guess you're right," James agreed.

"I would love to skip kindergarten," Martha said. She thought back to her many years as a kindergartener – stuck in a room with twenty laughing, screaming, crying, and jumping manic depressives – and shuddered.

"You'll homeschool me and I'll pass all the state assessments. Then I'll go back for high school to keep us from seeming too detached and elitist. But that's getting ahead of things."

"Fair enough," James said. "So no kindergarten. What comes next?"

"Next, we need to move."

"Really?" James said, disappointed.

"I know. I know. You've put a lot of work into this place," Serafina said, motioning around them to the multi-tiered, mahogany deck with a built-in fire-pit for s'mores, the various flower and vegetable gardens, and the three story treehouse integrated around a sixty year old camphor tree with an attached zip-line that comprised their backyard. "You love it. I love it too. And if you want to keep the property for sentimental reasons, you can. That's fine. We're just not going to be spending any time here. I'm going to need space for a machine shop and a lab and both will create a lot of noise so we'll also need a degree of seclusion. There's a property up in Santa Clarita that will become available in a month that has what we need."