Lindent went back with his small pouch that day while I cleaned up before I headed upstairs to our room.

The slow and long breaths I heard from the bed while tiptoeing across the room told me that Mom was already well asleep. Careful not to wake her up, I maneuvered my way through the most non-creaky boards of the room and put my bag away as slowly as possible. I proceeded to wash up with trickling water, change, then curl up next to her.

I stared up into the darkness around me, the faint moonlight seeping in through our small window just barely giving me enough light for me to make out the dim cracks of the ceiling. Mom continued her slow, steady breathing, and I turned my head towards her to idly stare at the mess of hair on her pillow-- all that I could define in this darkness, at least.

Mom hadn't always been blind. When I was around three or four (I really couldn't remember, I was way too young and I had bad memory from the start), my parents had gotten into an accident that had, in the end, cost us my dad, as well as Mom's eyesight. According to Mother Lily, it was something of a carriage-and-horse-gone-wild kind of thing, and my parents had been unfortunately mixed up in it. Dad had died almost right away, and Mom had gotten a hit to her head that brought on the loss of sight. I had, apparently, stayed over at Rosa's until the brunt of it was over. And when I had come back, mom had been only able to distinguish between light and dark and nothing more.

I had very, very vague memories of the entire thing, but I did remember feeling weirded out by no other than Rosa, who had cried more than I had and seemed more in shock than I had been. Mother Lily said that she didn't speak a single word for several days, looking blank and almost lost, and when I had finally gotten over the numbness of the situation and began crying, she had out-wailed me. Even at the young age of three, I remember I had been shocked into silence by how loud she had been, before I'd joined her in my loudest wails yet. 

I stifled a chuckle in the dark. What were the odds that in the midst of my sadness, at six years of age, the girl I'd thought why's she crying more than I am! would still be as weird and as close to me as back then?

Mom stirred in the dark, so I held my breath and stilled myself until she seemed to be comfortably sleeping again. I craned my head over to look at her again with better adjusted eyes, now able to make out her face in the middle of all that hair.

I sighed and closed my eyes. It wasn't as if I'd been trying to hide her blindness from Lindent, though it might seem that way... It honestly didn't really bother me in many ways, but I just hadn't thought much about it. Besides, I reasoned, wouldn't it be weirder if the first thing I said to everyone was "oh, by the way, my mom's blind"? And much of Minstia knew it anyways, so I hadn't had many reasons to bring it up often, to either myself or to others.

It had been my normal for so long now. And while I knew it wasn't the normal normal, it was still mine, and I was fine with it. But had it been rude of me not to mention it to Lindent earlier?

Thoughts swirled around my head so much that I sighed again and rolled over. I seriously needed to be going to sleep-- I had work tomorrow.

But as hard as I tried to empty my head out of thoughts (and wondering if that was even possible), a part of me kept going back to the last expression I'd seen on Lindent's face and worrying, guessing, wondering whether what I'd seen was pity, and if that meant that he'd begin pitying me from now on-- or even worse, start avoiding me because he felt uncomfortable or guilty or whatever. 

It looked like a long, sleepless night was yet to come...

...or so it would've been if I hadn't worked the entire day and was dead tired.

"Wake up, Filian! You're late!"

"Mm?" I grunted into the pillow.

"Filian!" screamed a voice just two inches away from my ears. "Wake! Up!"

"Filian," a gentle voice my barely cognizant brain recognized as perhaps my own mother said next to me, "the bell tower rang nine times a few moments ago."

The word "nine" echoed in my brain exactly nine times.

"Nine?" I mumbled. 

A bird chirped outside our window, as if confirming the word. Nine!

"NINE!!" I screamed, bolting upright.

"Wait, is it Monday? It's Friday! Gramps!!"

I practically leapt out from the bed and skidded to the bathroom. "Mom, why didn't you wake me up I told you I help Gramps on Fridays and--"

"Rude," jeered an all-too-familiar voice that, right, she'd screamed into my ear two moments ago, hadn't she? Rosa crossed her arms over her chest. "Rude daughter blaming mother say what?"

"What?" I screeched in the middle of brushing my teeth. (It came out more like wuh? with the toothbrush in my mouth, which described my state of mind in that moment. Accurate.) "Rosa? What are you doing here?"

Rosa, with all her sparkles, sauntered over to the nearby cabinet. "Skipping school, what else?" she said, as if she'd just said the most obvious thing in the world.

I spit into the washing basin and began rinsing my mouth and face at the same thing. "Buwafshuingaihaofsdhs!!" I replied.

"What?"

Drying my face with my shirt, I repeated, "But why are you in my house?!"

"Oh." Rosa considered this, then shrugged. "'Cause can."

Mom spoke up on her behalf when I yelled out something like a groan. "Filian, Rosa has something very important to tell us."

"Two important things," Rosa corrected. 

"Can it wait?" I demanded as I yanked on a pair of pants. My foot came out through the rip on the knees instead and I huffed in absolute frustration. "I'm a little busy right now, if you couldn't tell!"

Completely ignoring how I was hopping around the room looking for spare socks, she continued. "I'll tell you one of them first."

I could only grunt negatively (?) in response.

"One, it's actually six and you aren't late."

I immediately threw down my socks. "Beautiful!" I snarled, at Rosa's smirking face.

"Hey, it wasn't me," Rosa shrugged. We both turned our heads to look at Mom, who smiled as if she could feel our gazes in the sudden silence.

"Mom," I wailed, sinking to the ground.

She shrugged and only said, "I like a bit of fun sometimes."

I groaned, while Rosa cackled going "Good one, Auntie!"

I slid down even further until I was absolutely flat on the ground and said, "Thanks. I hate you all."

"Uh-uh, you won't hate me once I tell you the second important thing you need to hear."

"Do I really want to hear it?" I whispered into the world around me, with all sorts of wistfulness and the throbbing kind of pain that comes when one is lost to the speculations of the universe and the smallness of a single being in the entirety of one's life. I could almost feel myself disintegrating into stardust right then and there in the room, forgoing the hardships of life and welcoming the beauties of the true natural--

"Yes, you want to hear it," Rosa said firmly, snapping me back to the real world. I glared at her through squinted eyes and tried to telepathically inform her of how cruel she was to stop my ascendance to another realm, but she appeared completely unfazed and unreachable. "And you'll want to hear it now."

I raised an eyebrow at her as a way of saying, Well? I'm listening.

She sat down on the bed near my mom, who was silently fumbling with her knitting needles. "Well," she said, pronouncing the word like whale, "remember when I said just a few days ago that I'd be getting my allowance sometime soon?"

I peeled my head off the floor in interest. "You mean the few days that felt like practically six months for some of us¹dead author was dead? Yeah, I remember."

She flipped her hair back with an absolute flair, sending almost murderous amounts of sparkles into the air that even I had to squint a little. "Whale," she continued, her voice growing louder and more excited with each syllable, "guess who got their allowance started early!"

I was up in a flash. "No way!"

"Yes way!"

"Then you mean?!"

"You bet I mean!!"

"We mean!" I crowed, jumping up and dancing around the room now. "We mean no more extra hours!"

"We mean no more lettuce dinners!"

"We mean soup for breakfast!"

"We mean cookies on Saturday!"

"We mean it! I can't believe we mean it!"

Rosa joined me in my weird Egyptian-like dance skills that I'd gotten from Rosa's siblings. As I made unintelligible noises and Mom laughed at us, Rosa yelled, "You know what this also means? It means you should tell Cook you're not working today!"

"Yeah! And I'll go tell Gramps I'm done with early morning shifts!"

"Yeah! Just let it all go!"

"Yeah!"

"Yeah!"

And then I packed up my stuff and left for work anyways, because I was a Responsible Person™ who Does Not ditch work just because I didn't feel like it.

When I came back after a few hours of helping Gramps, Rosa was gone and Mom was alone in our room, still working on her gray scarf.

I slumped down on the bed next to her and watched her as she slowly felt through the stitches and the string around her hand before she moved her needle carefully. 

"How does it look?" Mom asked. My eyes darted up to her face, where she had a playful smile tugging at her lips.

"How'd you know I was watching?"

She laughed. "I don't need to see to know what you're doing, Filian. You're my daughter."

Nice, sixth senses maybe only mothers got to have.

"So?" she prompted, turning her face towards me, the smile now fully visible. "How is the scarf?"

"Much better than when I last saw it! I think you're getting the hang of it."

Her smile got larger, and I marveled at how pretty my mom was with her hair tied up to one side like that. Dad sure was a lucky guy.

I stared at her while her knitting needles clicked softly in the comfortable silence, then spoke up again. "Mom, how did you meet Dad?"

She paused. "Have I never told you?"

I shook my head. "I don't think you did."

She seemed to consider it for a few moments, then said, "There really isn't much to tell. Your dad courted me first, you know. Apparently, he fell head over heels in love with me, and I hadn't known a thing until he told me."

"Really?"

Mom laughed, her face lighting up in the process. "No, of course not. I knew for a long, long time. I just didn't act on it because I wasn't sure if I liked him back enough."

I felt myself smiling at just how much pleasant joy she was radiating. Leaning back on my arms, I said, "But how did you guys meet?"

"Oh, we were friends for a long time," she said airily, returning to her knitting. Her smile lingered on. "I'm pretty sure he didn't really like me at first, even as friends, but then one day he just started looking at me, and I could tell."

I chuckled at that and leaned over to drape my arms around my mom. "I like that," I told her, resting my head on her shoulder. She lightly tapped my head with her head, too, and we stayed like that as Mom's knitting needles clicked on.

After a while, Mom spoke up. "Rosa said she'll be back by twelve."

"Twelve?" I echoed, frowning. But hadn't the bell tower rung once just a few moments ago?"

The door slammed open the exact moment I was about to point that out, and my head jolted up in surprise instead. When I turned to look at the entrance, lo and behold, Rosa was back.

"Filian!" she bellowed, looking grim under all her sparkles and her hair fluttering in what seemed to be like a soft, romantic breeze... except we were indoors, so I had no idea what was happening.

"Speaking of the devil," Mom whispered to me, and I almost choked from the burst of laughter that exploded inside of me.

"You have no idea how true that just might be," I whispered back, and she chuckled as well.

Rosa looked at us weirdly for a second (as if we were being the weird ones!) before visibly choosing to ignore us. Instead, she flashed us a grin (did Mom just squint?) and announced, very, very proudly, "I got you off work tomorrow!"

I shifted in my spot. "What? But Cook would never! He hates when we try to ask for a leave the day before!"

She lifted her nose into the air. "I know," she said, "but I, ah, asked very nicely."

I raised an eyebrow. "Asked, huh."

"Yes, asked. Using my, let's just say, superior knowledge of certain circumstances regarding Cook and his rather questionable dealings with rather questionable groups, perhaps?"

Aha, so she'd threatened him.

"Rosa," Mom said gently, "you only need to say that you threatened him."

"Yes! Yes, that's exactly what I've done! I've threatened him to the extent of influencing his stubborn principles for the sake of my profit and my profit only!" Rosa arched her back triumphantly and put her hands on her hips, her lips twisting in satisfaction. "He didn't stand a chance, the fool Cook. He had it coming for him for a long time. I have merely done my part for the sake of justice!"

She then threw her head back and began laughing maniacally.

I put my head back on Mom's shoulder while Mom resumed her knitting, watching Rosa continue to chortle with the back of her hand covering her mouth.

"Sometimes," I said to Mom, in a confidential tone, "I worry about that girl."

Mom only nodded in silent agreement, and we stayed like that for maybe five more minutes, waiting until Rosa's rather villainous cackles finally died away.