On Earth there was a saying that the first stage of grief is denial. As I looked at my mum, I could say it was true. My confusion and my anger roiled inside me. I could feel them smouldering under the surface, pushing to be free.

I didn’t speak for fear of what I would say.

My mum had taken a life. I’d thought that I had wanted to know what she had done, but this outcome had never occurred to me. In my imagination she had been pressured unjustly and detained against her will. Then that turned out to be a fantasy.

The answer I’d found wasn’t the answer I wanted to be true

My mum was silent. I could feel her hands still pressed against my chest, and I was sure she could hear the rapid beating of my heart. I wanted to speak and comfort her. I wanted to tell her that I would love her no matter what.

But at this moment those words would ring hollow.

I put my hands to my side, my mother’s fingers resting on top of one. I looked at her, and then towards the ground.

I took a deep breath and forced my body to relax. My mum shifted as my posture changed. She moved back and I brought my body fully onto the bed. I crossed my legs and began to meditate.

My mother didn’t interrupt me, she knew what I was doing.

I would accept my emotions, but right now they were overwhelming me. I couldn’t let that happen. I’d been in enough arguments to know that I couldn’t let them sway me.

That was a recipe for disaster.

My mum had taken a chance. It hadn’t turned out the way I’d thought, but she trusted me to make my own decision.

So, I would.

The world disappeared as I closed my eyes. I could feel the waves of turmoil growing distant as I pulled back from them. My thoughts were jumbled, and each and every one of them fought to be at the top of my mind.

My heart, and my mind. I needed to calm them to think over the events that had just transpired.

I let go of my thoughts and allowed the darkness of nothingness to consume me.

I took a proper look at the state of my body and mind. My hands were shaking. There was adrenaline rushing through my body and fighting against me.

My mind was a mess. Images of my mum being gentle, and kind were fighting against the words she had spoken. What I thought to be reality was clashing against the new knowledge I had.

I would have to deal with that, sooner or later.

I pushed those thoughts away for now. I couldn’t resolve them immediately, but there was one thought that broke through.

My mum had risked losing me to tell me what I needed to know. She could’ve kept her secret or revealed less information than she had. The fact that she hadn’t showed me how much she trusted me.

I could hear her breathing beside me. I felt her tears splashing onto my hand. She was scared. She didn’t care about the Genti family or herself, she was afraid of my feelings, and how I would see her in the future.

There was an important question that both of us wanted answered.

How did I feel about her?

That was a complex question. It couldn’t be answered right now. Maybe it could never be.

I searched through my memories for something that could help me understand the things I was feeling. I needed words to express myself.

I entered the mental construct of the blank space. The earth symbol, metal symbol, and my mask greeted me.

I was back in my adult body.

I wanted to rush. My mum was nervous, and I needed to let her know that I hadn’t run away into my mind. I also wanted to take my time, so that I could properly process my emotions.

Memories crossed through the blank space. Buildings formed and disappeared, people holding conversations came and went. None of them helped me.

Then something appeared in the darkness. A form shifted into life in front of me. It stared at me, and I looked back at it.

It was an elderly man.

“Eli.” I spoke to the spectre. “What are you doing here?”

My mind had conjured him to resolve my problem. It had come from my subconscious and waited as the old man opened his mouth. I heard the words he spoke, during a time when he’d just been a kindly old man in my eyes.

It was a conversation I’d had with him that I had forgotten, but it held the answer to how I felt.

I opened my eyes and I gazed at my mum. She was the same woman I’d always known. Kind and gentle. Now she was suffering.

I knew what I wanted to say to her.

“You are my mum, loving and kind. I have spent almost every day of my life with you. You held me when I was a baby to protect me from the world, and you sang to me when I cried. You have never done anything except to protect me. That’s the kind of person I know that you are, and nobody knows you better than me. You could never be a stranger to me.”

The words flowed out smoothly. There was no hesitation, and no regret. They were my true feelings.

My mum looked up at me and I saw a new emotion roll over her body. It was relief. I brought my arm around her shoulders and hugged her tightly.

There was still a lot to say and a lot to unravel, but we rested at peace in each other’s company. My emotions grew with each passing second, relief and worry mixing in with the confusion I felt.

A new crisis grew in my heart. No. It wasn’t new. It was a familiar companion, something I had felt often since reincarnating.

I was feeling out of my depth.

I’d finally begun grasping my place in this new world, accepting its wonders and terrors. Now the rug had been pulled under me unexpectedly.

This time I knew what I had to do.

I shifted, and my mum looked up at me. “There’s a lot that I want to say. There’s also a lot I want to know.”

I kept my voice soft.

“I won’t hold anything back.” My mum nodded.

“Was it… on purpose?” I spoke carefully.

My emotions spiked again. Anger, confusion, and disgust. My values had been moulded by my life in this world, and my time on Earth.

Murder had never been something I was comfortable with. I don’t know if I could ever accept it. No matter who it was committing the act.

“No. Goodness, no.” My mum's tone steeled. “It was an accident born of negligence and bravado.”

Relief drained away my tension.

I could see that she didn’t want to discuss the details. She couldn’t while she was in the state that she was in.

I was certain that she would, eventually, but it wasn’t something that I needed to know immediately. My mum had taken a big leap today, and we both had things to think about and emotions to sort out.

My concerns were centred around my mother’s restrictions, and the Genti household’s reaction. I wanted to know what my mother could do, and what she couldn’t do. How we could stop them, since she seemed so certain we could.

I opened my mouth to ask her, and then paused. Asking her now would be heartless. She had already told me so much, and I could see how it was impacting her.

She was well past the verge of tears.

She had told me what I wanted to know. We could work on it from here, but she needed as much time to rest and calm down as I did.

There was the sound of knocking, and after a minute of waiting a door opened inside the house. I raised my head towards the sound.

My dad was home.

His footsteps echoed across the house and broke our silence. I could see his shadow behind the door, waiting for permission to come in.

My mum gave it to him.

The door creaked open, and my dad stopped as he saw the looks on our faces. He knew.

He drew closer and his arms wrapped around my mum and I. We stayed there, until my mum shifted, and my dad let go.

We didn’t say anything to each other. My dad wanted to, but she squeezed his arm, and he reluctantly left the room.

She waved goodbye to me, and I gave her a small wave back.

The moment the door closed I felt a tidal wave of emotions slam through me. There was a lot to take in. I still held some worries, and there were problems that couldn’t be fixed in a day.

The Gesti household was still keeping me from my family. My mum and Grandma thought there was a way to fight them. If there were courts here, then the government could probably help.

Then again, my mum was the criminal in the situation. I didn’t know how willing they’d be to side with her.

I closed my eyes and fell deep into meditation. It helped calm my mind and stemmed the tide of my emotions.

Unfortunately, meditation couldn’t replace sleep.

It grew late and I allowed my thoughts and emotions back in and the rest of the night was spent tossing and turning. The mana in my room gathered around me, trying to comfort me. It helped a little.

The morning came slowly. I knew there were bags under my eyes as I draped my school bag over my shoulder.

My mum saw me off, and I gave her a hug. I could feel the tension in her body.

She hadn’t been sure that I wouldn’t change my mind about her overnight. I could understand the feeling because I hadn’t been sure either.

There was a chime in the air and a shift in the mana around me. The portal to school was forming.

I travelled through the nexus corridors with a heavy heart. The sleep had taken the edge off my emotions and worries, and time was healing the headache in my mind, but it was a slow process.

My mum had killed someone.

The court had determined it serious enough to restrict her. I didn’t know the details, or how long her sentence was, but I would find out.

The fact still hadn’t hit me yet. My emotions were raw, but they weren’t a hurricane threatening to tip me over. I could feel a persistent sense of denial inside me. It was gating the flood of feelings that pressed against my heart.

When those gates opened, I would need to be ready.

I felt my feet pressing into the soft grass of the academy hillside. I was still too far away from the main building to see through its concealment, but I could see the other students making their way past me.

My thoughts took a back seat as a person walked in front of me. They held their hand out to greet me, and I paused.

A boy draped in flames and embers stood in my way.

“You’re Andross, right?” Alexis stared at me. “We met in the hallway a few days ago.”

His hair was aflame, and I could feel the unrestricted heat emanating from his body. His friends weren’t around, but a few of the students were peeking at him from the corner of their eyes.

“My dad mentioned you slept over our house.”

He leaned in closer towards me.

“I'd like to have a talk with you.”