#rc lou

Ann Reed didn’t know her daughter. At least, not anymore. Not really. 

She once knew a little girl who comes home with scrapes, scabs and bruises and broken skin. At the playground, she fought older boys over a toy motorcycle she was too young to play on anyway. At school, she talked back to teachers with zero regard for etiquette and rules. 

How Ann loved that girl. Now, She loved her. 

Naturally, she loved her then too, but the foolish mother had tried to subdue her wild daughter then, wishing she was more girlish and proper. She didn’t know then that there wasn’t enough time. 

Now, she wished she’d spent what little time she had honing that girl’s fire rather than trying to contain the blaze.

Over a decade later, in Ann’s mind, that little girl is still stuck there with her.

Ann Reed’s apartment wasn’t very tidy, but it wasn’t messy either. She had all that was needed, a seating area, a cheap modern TV, a small table where she ate next to the couch. Clothes and clutter and knitting equipment lay about all over the house, but she knew where everything was. It was functional, and that was enough for her.

Perhaps it was because she learned to settle for what was enough and didn’t strive for more that she ended up where she is today. Frozen in stone like a statue that took up space in her apartment.

Ann was putting dishes in the sink. She left the empty plates there and told herself that she’d come back to them after coffee. Her husband had just left for work after he ate with her. 

She left the TV on as she made herself a cup. Alone, there was nothing else to do in this house but watch TV.

She couldn’t see the TV from where she was standing in the kitchen, but she heard what was being said on the news. Apparently, the prior was spotted with new company at the main temple in New Paris the other day. Figures, it was a spiritual holiday, naturally the prior would be there. And he’d gotten himself some reinforced security. But what did Ann care about inquisition bodyguards?

She brought her cup of coffee with her over to the living room and sat on the couch, bracing herself for another useless day spent exactly as all the others, wasting away as life continued moving outside her window. 

The hologram showed an image of the temple on the day of the Revelation. The vicar was reciting a heartfelt prayer, the voiceover narrating the event was praising his words. 

Ann grabbed the controller, about to change the channel. She froze before she could, feeling a painful clench in her chest where her heart beats. 

The shot switched over to show the prior and his company- a young man, neat and handsome, accomplished and indomitable at his side. At the other, a woman. Formidable and stoic, rigid and unyielding.

Achingly familiar. All grown. Her daughter.

Reality refused to uphold Ann’s memory of that sweet untamed girl. 

Her daughter, the image of which forced memories to flood in Ann’s mind that tasted of cool spring air, that smelled of the last drops of rain at the park the morning after a storm at the end of winter. They tasted of cheap birthday cake and children’s laughter. They tasted like Lou, to whom Ann tasted of nothing at all. 

That girl in the TV screen, Ann knew her. Her mind knew her like the river knows the shore. Like the sky meets the sea and years to dip its sunset beneath that line. So why then couldn’t her heart?

Lou Reed had become something colossal. She’d made her way up in the Inquisition, got herself a position in which she protects the second highest ranking man in New Paris. Soon, she’d be an active member of high society.

And Ann was right where she left her. 

Stuck, a failure who wasted her youth and fated herself to become nothing.

No, not nothing. A mother. And to her, that was everything. 

It was a universal experience for psionics to become disconnected from their parents, and Ann had become one of them.

United one, how could Ann let herself become one of them?

There her daughter was, imminent, exceptional, the pride of any woman who gets to call herself her mother. 

Ann was that incredible girl’s mother. And Lou was a mere hologram on a screen, nothing more.

The house started to feel stuffy, suffocating. Ann left her cup of coffee on the table, she hadn’t even drank from it. She opened the window in an attempt to get some fresh air. The old dingy playground was in its view. It lived in an old memory tucked somewhere far away in her mind. 

Her eyes found a toy motorcycle made of tires. A little girl sat there, perhaps too young for such a toy, with cuts and scrapes decorating her arms, but she was delighted. She probably fought to the nail to earn a spot on that toy.

The mother smiled. She wasn’t sure anymore if she was worth that title, mother. She swallowed down the tears that desperately wanted to pool from her eyes and cloud her vision of that girl. She didn’t allow them to come up, forcing them to remain in her throat.

Ann Reed didn’t know her daughter. Not anymore, anyways. Not really.

But somewhere out in the world was an incredibly powerful young woman whose name will be remembered in history, a woman Ann had given birth to. 

And while that woman made a name for herself, Ann remained a statue taking up space in her own apartment. A statue of a mother.

A statue of a woman who was nothing else if not a mother, who now had to live with the oppressing fact that she forever remains disconnected from her daughter.

Day 1. Late night call

part of @rc-catalog's lovestruck event!!!!!!

lowk Kay doesn't look like himself in this piece, lol