Opportunity Of Object Permanence.

Is It The End?

Ilyia had woken at dawn, her body not used to the time difference despite the months she'd spent out of Turkey. She'd dressed quickly, sweatpants, hockey jersey and sneakers completing her look, far more prepared than yesterday and yet still not ideal for the unpredictable changes in weather the city had to offer. Once her hair was in its customary braid down her back, she climbed out her window and dropped to the ground below. It wasn't 6 o'clock yet, and she'd already begun her day.
. . .

Ilyia Blue. Tanned skin, freckled abundantly from all her time baking in the sun, her hair, a colour similar to raw sugar, bleached the same. Wide, blackened brown eyes and eyebrows thicker than your finger to match, interrupted only by the thick scar that eliminated about a quarter of her right eyebrow. You could tell exhaustion weighed upon the youth, an exhaustion that went further than mere lack of sleep.
Indeed, the girl was tired, tired down to her bones. She'd been tired for years, and nothing she did could ever, did ever lift that heavy blanket of tiredness. And it only got heavier as she went on, she thought it would lift when her parents came to her all those months ago, but it grew worse and she was lost.
. . .

"Ilyia? Come here, child." Her father's voice called out to her, a sound she'd heard rarely in her 18 years of existing.

"Geliyorum baba." She turned the page in her book, pressed a spoon between the pages and got to her feet, creeping into the living room adjacent to the conservatory where she spent most of her days. "Baba? Anne? Nedir-?" Her parents clear their throats, Octavius meeting her brown eyes with his black ones.

"Sit, child, we speak to you something of importance."

"Başım belada mı? Ben yanlış bir şey mi yaptım? Beni korkutuyorsun."

"English, Ilyia, we speak English in this household." Her mother, Ybeth, snaps, speaking for the first time, her voice tense, like a rope about to break.

"Apologies, Mother, I did not mean to upset you."

"Ilyia, your mother and I have something to tell you, something we've been keeping quiet for some time now." Ilyia bites her cheek, desperately containing the words that threaten to burst free. Yeah, you've been keeping it very quiet, so quiet this is the first time you've spoken to me since my 14th birthday. Another part of her is praying and begging, praying that whatever they're trying to tell her isn't what she thinks it to be. Please, God, don't let her be pregnant. Do not allow them to bring another child into this household, I could not wish that upon anyone. Please.

"...child? Are you listening?"

"Sorry, Father, what were you saying?"

"Oh for God sakes, Ilyia, I'm dying. I've got cancer. I'll be dead within the year." Relief flooded through Ilyia, relief that her rarely-present mother was not pregnant, then horror took over as she digested the words her mother had spoken.

"Cancer? Mother, I- I don't understand." Her father clears his throat again.

"Pancreatic cancer, child. Your mother has had it for 2 years now, it's gotten to the point she can no longer work or hide it anymore. She will be moving in this week, and our wishes are that you can nurse her from now on."

"You... you want me to nurse her to her death? Mother? I can't do this, I'm not a medical professional, why can't you hire a hospice worke-"

"Because I do not want anyone to witness me in such a poorly state, you will care for me and you will do it without arguement. I will not stand you talking back to me, you ungrateful beast." Ybeth snaps once again, her temper escaping its leash finally, she leaps to her feet as she shouts and stalks from the room once she's finished berating her only child. The room was silent in her wake, except for the hiccuping breaths of Ilyia as she tried and failed to calm herself. It was nearly 10 minutes before her father spoke again.

"Ilyia, you must excuse your mothers behaviour. She hasn't quite come to terms with her illness yet, she still believes she can work."

"Why can't she work, Father, surely keeping active would benefit her greatly." Octavius shakes his head sadly.

"Unfortunately, child, though she'd never show it, she is in a great deal of pain. She's fainted several times, once right before a meeting, and her strength and immune system are not what they used to be."
He sighs, running a hand through his grey hair, still surprisingly thick for his age, a man of 74. He had his first child, Aslan, to his first wife when he was 27 years old. His wife, Christienna, had died of a genetic heart condition 17 years later, leaving Aslan and himself to drift apart until he married Ybeth 20 years ago and sired Ilyia 2 years after that.

"Listen, young one, it's alright to be hesitant and to be afraid, but your mother needs you and you will have to "suck it up", as the youths say nowadays." Octavius glances at his watch, narrowing his black eyes briefly before standing, all 6'5 of him looming over Ilyia. "My plane leaves in an hour. Look after your mother." And he leaves, submitting Ilyia to an unknown period of time, caring for her mother, a woman she's hardly met before.
. . .

Ilyia shakes her head, shakes it again, clearing the memory from her brain. That day was nearly 3 years ago now. She had cared for her mother for 10 and a half months before the bitter woman passed, leaving her daughter with not even a few words of wisdom, let alone an inheritance she could access before she turned 30. After Ybeth's funeral, Ilyia's nephews, Tomias and Tobie, packed up her things and moved her in with them, to their home in Antayla, some 763 kilometres South of Çakrazşeyhler. Despite her being 19 then, the grief counselor had declared her unfit to live alo-

"Watch out!!!" A hand grabs the back of her jersey, yanking her backwards and nearly out of the way of an oncoming taxi. The taxi still hits her, sending her flying into her almost-saviour. Ilyia feels her head collide with the freezing concrete, and the world blacks out.
. . .

(I'm coming dad.

Mother? Father? What-

Am I in trouble? Did I do something wrong? You're scaring me.