>>Hael (Childhood)
My eyes fluttered open the same as the tears rolled down my face.
I was still on the floor, right where I had lost consciousness, "Mom?" And I still called out to her, because she was all I had, I had known only one other person and he was already long gone, "Mom?" But like usual I received no reply.
I couldn't move my body, it was hot and heavy. It felt like I weighed a thousand tons and at the same time it felt like I had no strength.
"I'm sick," I said, "I think..." My voice seemed to echo or maybe that was just me because I felt delirious. I waited for her reply but received none, which was expected. I had never been sick before, or I had been and I don't remember because I was far too young.
I'm sure I'm running a fever though, I read about it. But where is mom?
Is she still writing her letter? Can't she hear me? But, that's impossible. My voice should have traveled to her... She's just choosing not to listen to anything. She's that lost in her own mind.
I turned my head to look at my bed. The floor was hard, at the very least I wanted to have something soft under me, but the thing was, I couldn't stand up. I tried but my legs had no energy. So in a very desperate attempt, I rolled my body over with a lot of effort, then crawled towards the bed. Luckily, it wasn't far, but it was very difficult to climb it.
I held the sheets, and the mattress with all my might that I could muster up in that condition and tried to put some weight on my feet to get to the bed.
Something so small made me sweat a bucket, but I was able to get to bed. It felt a little nicer, the mattress was soft and cool but my mind was on fire and I couldn't bring myself to focus on anything.
Time became a fractured blur as I drifted in and out of consciousness, lost in a fevered dreamscape of fragmented memories and disjointed thoughts. Each fleeting moment felt like an eternity, but then it was passing by without me even realizing it.
Loneliness washed over me time and again. Tears welled in my eyes as I struggled to comprehend the emptiness that surrounded me. Where was my mother? How did she become like this? She wasn't like this in the start.
I want her with me, I want her to hold me. I'm getting scared.
A hollow ache gnawed at my chest, a raw and primal yearning for the comfort of her embrace. But she was nowhere to be found, lost to the vast expanse of the night like a distant memory fading into oblivion.
With a trembling sigh, I closed my eyes and surrendered to the darkness, my heart heavy with the weight of unspoken longing, who would I even say these things to when the only person I have isn't coming to me. The first day blurred into the next in a haze of fevered delirium.
The hours crept by like a sluggish river, each moment stretching into an eternity of solitude and longing whenever I was up. The sun rose and set in a ceaseless cycle, casting its golden rays upon the world outside while I lay there sick. I kept coughing, I wanted water, but my bones left massless.
"MOM!" I tried to yell her name but my voice came out hoarse, and after that came a coughing fit. It lasted a few seconds but even after I was done I got no reply.
Throughout it all, the silence of the cottage weighed heavy upon me, a suffocating blanket that smothered the flickering flame of hope within my heart. There was no sound but the rhythmic ticking of the old grandfather clock in the lounge.
I tried to distract myself from the emptiness that engulfed me, tracing patterns in the peeling paint on the walls or counting the cracks in the ceiling above. But no matter how hard I tried to escape, the specter of my mother's absence loomed large, like a gaping void.
The second day dawned with a sense of resignation, the initial flicker of hope extinguished by the relentless march of time. I lay upon my bed, listless and weary, my body drained of strength and my spirit weighed down by despair but somehow I felt like I was better than yesterday.
I didn't call for her the next day and she did not come to see me either. With each passing moment, the ache in my heart grew more acute. Just because I didn't call for her, didn't mean I didn't want her. I did, I wanted her to come and comfort me but with how she had been acting, I knew she wouldn't.
On the other hand, I was simply afraid that she might have left me and I didn't want that to be true. It took me three days in total to get better. Being part elf played a role in it and I was able to heal on my own, because if i was fully human, I might have died.
As the haze of fever lifted and my strength returned, I knew I could no longer endure the silence of the empty cottage. With trembling limbs and a heart heavy, I pushed myself upright and went out to see where my mother was.
I was famished as well. I hadn't eaten at all in those three days, nor did I have any water. I first went to the kitchen, which was empty and took the jug of water and gulped it down. The cool sensation traveled through all of my body, calming me down. After putting the empty jug down, I looked around for something to eat.
My mother may have stopped talking to me, but she still made me food. My eyes darted around till it stopped on the bread wrapped in heating form.
I grabbed it immediately, opened it and started devouring it down. I was beyond starving at this point. But that didn't stop me from noticing that the bread wasn't fresh, it had been lying there for a few days, although that didn't matter to me at all. It was edible and I ate it.
Weak and unsteady, I made my way through the dimly lit corridors of our humble home, to look for mom. I finally reached the door to the study, with a trembling hand, I pushed it open and stepped inside, my heart pounding in my chest.
I was afraid that she might have left since she didn't even come to see my face. But what I found there struck me like a thunderbolt. My mother sat at the desk, her brow furrowed in concentration as she poured over the pages of her letters, her quill scratching out the words of her thoughts.
I looked down, there were many crumpled papers there. Thrown, discarded or unliked so they were left on their own on the floor. I found a weird sense of familiarity with them.
I stood rooted to the spot, unable to comprehend the truth before me. She had never left the study. All this time she just kept writing.
"A perfect letter," The words escaped her mouth in the form of a whisper as her disheveled appearance only got worse. A flood of conflicting emotions washed over me – I felt like I was isolated. My mother was right there with me but I felt alone.
"Mom," I called out to her in a confident voice, and she stopped. Her pen stood there on the paper, inkling the white sheet as she raised her head to look at me. It was a mere one second glance, then she looked down and began to write again, "Something that will make him come back to me," She whispered again and my heart fell.
I grabbed the door knob and closed the door.
***
Days passed like that. She didn't come out of the study and I spent the time trying to make food for myself. But we were running out of supplies and I wasn't very good with food but it was edible enough.
The rest of the time I would read but I had read all the books there were available, so I had to reread them. There weren't many to begin with.
One night, as I tucked myself in bed, I kept thinking about my mother. She hadn't eaten properly. I would leave what I made at her desk, she would eat it sometimes, other times she wouldn't even look at it.
It was difficult, but what else could I do? I didn't want her to die. I was hoping she would go back to the way she used to be.
I didn't know how to react to her actions but being all by myself was making me feel weird. Was that normal? Was that strange? The mom's in the storybooks weren't like that but maybe storybooks aren't supposed to be reality and this is how reality is?
I closed my eyes to go to sleep, wishing things would get better
I hoped that my mom would turn out to be like the mom in the storybook I read. That she would come wake me up in the morning, she would feed me breakfast, she would read with me and play with me.
Those thought helped me sleep and I dreamt about her coming to wake me up
"Hael," Her voice was sweet, there was so much light in the room, I couldn't even see her properly, "Come, Hael, let's go eat." She hadn't called my name in ages, so it felt nice.
I groggily woke up and took her hand. She held mine tightly and it felt warm, but when she was taking me out of the room, I hit my head on the wall because I didn't see where I was going.
!!!!
In reality, I had sleepwalked and the hit on the wall right next to the door woke me up.
My eyes shot open, "Mom!" And she was the only person I could call, "Mom?" But my calls were met with silence.
I sat up, my forehead was throbbing so I rubbed my hand on it, "Mom?" I was still in a daze from that dream and it momentarily made me forget that she hadn't been answering my calls for a while now.
But as soon as I was met with silence, I remembered it.
Oh, right.
I stood up carefully. I had turned eleven that day. It was my birthday. Nothing special though, I only got cake for my birthday when I was like five or six years old, before dad left.
I walked out of the room, looking for my mother. I went to the study, the bathroom, the lounge, the kitchen, the veranda, the master bedroom, but she wasn't there.
Where could she go though? She hadn't left the study in a while but today she isn't there
...
I'll look again
After going through the whole cottage three times, I came to a stop in the lounge and stared at the open entrance door.
It was wide open but there was no person in sight there. I walked to the edge of the cottage and stood in the doorframe, staring at the vast yet empty fields with no living thing in sight.
I stood there from morning, till the point the sun began to set. Its hues dyed me along with everything else golden while my eyes longed for something distant.
Then came the night but I didn't move from there. I kept waiting. I sat down on the floor, searching for her but there was no sign of her.
And just like that, came the next day. The early rays of the sun hit my face who had stayed awake the whole time. Birds chirped as they flew over the house while I softly blinked at the empty fields.
It didn't take it long for me to understand that my mother had abandoned me.