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"Is this it?" A middle-aged woman leans over the pharmacy counter top, her arms crossed and looking down to the collection of medications sat in front of her. Many of them, from her recollection, were less full than the last time she picked up her mother's medicine.
"Yes. Is there anything else you need assistance with?" The attendant finalizes the co pay for the stack of medication. She hands the middle-aged woman her debit card and collects the medication into a plastic bag for the trip home.
"Has the prescription changed? Anything I need to know about? She can't read print."
"No, no changes since the last refill. The dosage has not changed." The middle-aged woman bites at one lip and runs a hand through her hair - colored a deep red with black roots. She collects the bag of medication.
"Thanks, that'll be all."
"Have a nice day," and the pharmaceutical attendant greets the next person as Mirai walks away. She takes a side-way glance to the bag and grabs a snack on her way to the main cashier counters. When has her mother or her doctors changed the prescription, she wonders for a few seconds before waving it out of her thoughts. It wasn't her business; she was just picking it up today. Patiently she waits her time in line, paying for the small protein bar with some spare change before leaving the store.
Mirai takes her time walking back to her car, fishing through the medication for a pill bottle she used to memorize. She picks through them for her mother's more recent anti-inflammatory medication and turns the bottle around inside of the small zip bag. Instead of a count of 30 for 30 days, there were only ten pills for ten days, and many more refills. When was it reduced? She'll have to ask her mother later.
She thumbs through her pocket for her car remote and unlocks it, setting the bag of medication onto the passenger seat before setting the vehicle's programming to divert to her mother's house. There is enough time between executing the program and the vehicle exiting the parking lot for her to unwrap the protein bar, engulfing it before her car comes across the first traffic stop. With her small lunch consumed she squeezes in some time to play a couple game applications she's wanted to try out. With the distraction of small mobile games the trip to her mother's house doesn't seem as long as it is - leaving Mirai to still be flipping through one of the more engrossing games before realizing the car came to a stop.
The front yard of the meek home is only a little more overgrown than the last time Mirai saw it, several different flowers popping up in different areas of the partly sculpted terrain. A few tools still sit over on the side of the lifted deck - it wasn't odd for them to sit there anymore. Even if Marin couldn't work her yard anymore.
Mirai snaps her tablet shut and tucks it into her bag, shoveling out a ring of keys out in the same series of motion. The balancing act of keys and tech takes only a few seconds, Mirai picking up the bag of medication when one hand is free and pulls herself out of the car - closing the car door with her hip. The car makes soft beeps when it locks itself.
Before she event starts towards the front door her thoughts go to where he mother could be at; resting in the kitchen or living room, asleep in bed, passed away while she went to get the medication? Mirai lets herself into the house and locks the door behind her. “Mom?”
No response. Of course, and Mirai sets the bag of medication down on the nearest display case set up in the entryway. She calls again, but there is no response from her mother, nor from her live-in service dog Joon. As with any other time Mirai starts combing the house for her mother and service dog. Neither were in the bedroom or bathroom, nor were they in the kitchen or in the study. Passing into the dining room and pass a wide window looking out to the backyard, she spots her mother outside, the dog sitting beside her wheelchair.
Mirai heaves a sigh and grabs the medication from where she placed it and puts it on the kitchen counter on her way to the backyard, the doors left ajar and flecks of dirt and other matter trailed into the house and up the ramps. “I got your medication, mom.” She shouts from the second doorway.
“Mirai?” A electronic voice crackles to life, and the service dogs jolts to life. The dog, Joon, steps back as the wheelchair slowly turns towards where Mirai stood, Marin’s hands coiled in her lap.
“Yes, mom, it’s me.” Mirai heaves herself off of the door frame and walks to Marin, whom slowly raises her arms for an awaiting hug. Marin is slow to catch her daughter’s body as Mirai gives her a soft hug, careful not to mess with any of the wires tied between the chair and Marin’s neck. “Why are you outside again?”
“Oh Mirai,” a speaker crackles off on one side of Marin’s chair. “You know why – you just don’t remember.”
“The doctors said you needed to remain inside for now, remember?” Mirai lifts herself from her bent position to hug her mother, stepping out of the way as the wheelchair moves to turn back to where it was positioned before.
“Yes, yes,” the speaker crackles, a misspoken ‘ha ha ha ha’ follows. “I know what they said, Mirai.” Marin’s hands return to the blanket covering her lap and fingering a shape below the fold.
Mirai looks down to the motion Marin’s hands make and reach around the fold to pull out the hidden keepsake. The golden blade was well worn down and cracked from the last couple years, the handle was now a dull steel grey and only a tie remains looped around the bottom. “Give it a break, mom. You need to stop chasing fairy tales.”
Even with her strength barely there, Marin still reaches as much as she could to grab the end of the blade, the blade too dull to hurt her anymore. “Let an old woman dream, Mirai,” the speaker crackles. Marin can only give a slight tug in resistance to Mirai’s casual lifting it out of her reach. “Mirai, please,” Marin still reaches for it, “let me have it.”
“Only if you come inside, mom.”
A space of silent resistance coats the space between them. “Fine,” groans the speaker, the wheelchair adjusting itself and makes a slow crawl to the house. Mirai follows the trail of plant matter and dog prints, holding the golden blade carelessly in one hand. Just inside the house, a few centimeters from the door leading outside, Marin holds out a hand to receive the keepsake. Mirai begrudgingly hands it over. Triumphant, Marin tucks it back under the blanket beneath where she rests her hands.
Marin’s wheelchair settles over by the window overlooking the back yard, her eyes turned up to the sky and hands running against the bump that was the golden blade. Little mumbles come through the speakers, but all of them too subtle for Mirai to make out.
“Mirai, can you put the medicine away for me?”
“I can do that,” Mirai takes the back of medication into the bathroom and exchanges out the old bottles for the new ones. She walks back through the dining room on her way to the recycling bin kept just inside the laundry room. A mumbling of a song trails through the speaker on Marin’s wheelchair, a smile crossing her well worn face beneath large-framed glasses. She watches the clouds even as Mirai calls to her, coming to her senses when Mirai puts a hand over hers. “Are you okay?”
A mimic of earlier comes through. “Yes, yes,” starts the speaker, a distant ‘ha ha ha’ follows, “reliving memories, that’s all.” Her eyes never leave the outside sky.
“Want me to get anything else while I’m here?”
“No, I’m fine for now.”
“Do you want anything to eat?”
“I’m fine.”
“Mom, at least eat something.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t eat anything. I’ll make you something.”
Marin remains staring outside as Mirai makes up a lunch for her mother and her – mostly for her, but with plans to get her mother to eat most of it. The time is 11:56 when Mirai gets Marin to eat some of it.
“Did you know your medication was reduced?”
“It was,” the speaker states, Marin taking slow bites of a quickly made salad, chewing very little.
“Then you knew. Why?”
“You know why, Mirai.” Marin has one hand on her lap and is using the other to slowly feed herself.
“Mom,” Mirai starts.
“Don’t, Mirai. Just . . . don’t.”
“You can’t just change your routine because of an old fairy tale.” Mirai has already finished her bowl.
“Mirai, you remember what I told you, right?” The hand holding the fork lowers, Marin keeps staring out to the clear blue sky, a wisp of white clouds somewhere in the distance.
“Yes. About Brigadoon, what happened that one year. You told me enough. If it’s about my birth mother, I know. If it’s about my other mother, I know.” Mirai carries her bowl to the sink and rinses it out. “There isn’t much that you haven’t told me, mom.”
“What do you think Brigadoon is?”
“A distant place, a fairy tale, something that doesn’t really exist. Those ‘monomakia’ you keep saying exist don’t. There is nothing to show it had happened.”
“Even the things in my study?”
“The papers are rotten, mom. The pictures are faded. It’s hard to believe many things anymore. It could be faked for all I know.”
Marin adverts herself from the sunny day outside to the lump sat in her lap. She clutches onto the blade with her aged might. “I know,” the speaker cracks. “But for me, can’t you just humor me, for this once?”
Mirai stays quiet.
“I don’t know when I’ll be gone, Mirai. If you believe me or not, I’ll be gone one of these days – I don’t want to pay for what I won’t use.” Marin traces the blade buried beneath the blanket with the sides of her withered fingers. “That’s why there’s not as much; if that’s what you want to know.” She licks her lips as if she still used her mouth to speak. “Brigadoon, real or not, means a lot to me – you should know that, Mirai.” Mirai sat across from Marin and, anticipating the coming tears, tucks a couple tissues between her half-folded hands. And the tears did come, clouding Marin’s nearly blind eyes – she doesn’t bother to clear them.
“It’s one of the things I can still believe in, Mirai. I don’t want to ramble.” She clutches onto the tissues and the shape of the worn down golden blade. “I’m 113, right? So much time I’ve spent living, spent living to make it this far.” Her old chest heaves from her bubbling emotions and she starts to cough. She sits there coughing as the speaker set off to one side continues. “I promised someone, a person I told you so much about, that I’ll be waiting for them. If it’s to Heaven or to Brigadoon, it shouldn’t matter to you, Mirai. Either way, I’ll be gone.”
“Mom, you need rest.”
“I need a lot of things, Mirai,” and the speaker on her wheelchair goes quiet. Marin takes a handful of tissues to clear the tears off her cheeks. A gentle ticking of the kitchen clock fills the void between them. “Before you go, Mirai. Help me into bed.” The time is 12:14.
“Sure.”
The wheelchair carries Marin to her bedroom where Mirai pulls back the patchwork covers. Carefully, Mirai removes each connector from the wheelchair, rendering Marin temporary mute. Only slight noises of pain come from Marin as Mirai helps her into the bed. The connectors hanging from Marin’s neck are connected to another set of ports beneath her pillow, where she can speak again, and the heart-rate monitor comes to life at the side of the bed. Other well defunct machines sat in the corners of the pale bedroom, ones Mirai long forgotten the use of. A new speaker comes to life above the headboard of Marin’s bed, practically new compared to the old one connected to the wheelchair. “Thank you, Mirai.”
Mirai pulls the sheets up to Marin’s chest, who rests her arms above the sheets with the dull blade held between her hands. “I’ll check on you later, okay, mom?”
“The receiver is on, right?”
“Yes. If you need anything, call your caretaker, please? I need to finish work.”
“If that’s what you want.” Marin has her head tilted towards the window, staring up to the sky.
“Hey, mom?”
Marin’s speaker says nothing. The time is 12:21
“Nevermind. I’ll check on you later.”
In her car Mirai stares at the front door of her mother’s home, trying to remember if she locked it or not. She brushes the flicker of anxiety away and sets her car on ‘pilot’ mode – she needs time to think. The car backs out of the driveway and turns away with the rear, Mirai takes the car out of the rest and turns down the way the car drove her. At a short stop, when she glances back as she waits for another vehicle in front of her to turn, she catches a glance of what appeared to be a green cat. She attributes it to her current state of mind.
She does not take the highway back to her side of the city, instead taking the streets, letting herself air out the stress stocked up at her mother’s house. The time is 12:24.
Mirai switches between heavy traffic and down side streets, letting anything take her preoccupation. A school yard down one street and the routine of small corner stores. She rolls her car up to a row of stopped vehicles in front of her and looks around to the traffic lights obscured by a large truck. On the sidewalk to her left she watches a person wait for the light to change, looking down at a watch on their wrist. The traffic turning right moves first out of her peripheral and she turns back to the backend of the vehicle ahead of her. Red brake lights dim as vehicles begin to move, and the car is moving again. Off to her side, she could swear there was a kid with green hair that wasn’t there before.
---
The gentle beeping of her heart monitor makes Marin tired, her nearly blind eyes still focusing on the patches of light blue outside of her window. A blur obscures her vision of the sky, a shape she has long forgotten.
“Marin,” said a distant voice, one she hardly remembers – there was a hint of a cheeriness that was once there. There was a pain within the words of the shape she long forgotten, two small hands touch her cheeks and a tail tickles at her hands. “Marin?”
“Hello, Lolo,” creeks the speaker above them, tears in her eyes.
---
The vehicle in front of her suddenly stops and Mirai’s vehicle runs into the rear bumper, but only a tap. Mirai can barely see in front of her, the sky is blinding – as though the sun has exploded. She holds an arm out in front of her, squinting even as she pushes herself out of her vehicle. Around her she can see that other people had stopped as well and had emerged from their vehicles.
“What’s going on?” shouts a driver behind her.
“I don’t know,” shouts another.
There was another blinding flash and the glare that was there before was gone, and in place of the brilliant white that engulfed the sky for a moment there was an aurora of color and squaring curls that coil around the sky far above the clouds. Wrinkles of color flow across the sky like a satin blanket; one thing comes to Mirai.
Brigadoon.
---
“Marin,” starts and stops Lolo, hands still on her sagging cheeks. “What happened, Marin?”
“Time,” came from the speaker above the bed. “Just time,” Marin smiles against Lolo’s small hands, one of her own hands coming up to pat the cat on the head. Feeling his ears were lowered her smile wavers. “I’m just old, Lolo, that’s all.”
“I’m glad… you’re still around, Marin.”
“Where’s Melan?” the speaker chirps, Marin hold the well worn memento in one hand as she tries to force herself to sit. The wires connecting her to the machines at the side of the bed keep her lying down.
“He’s on his way,” Lolo scratches at an ear. “I think; he had some things to settle first.”
---
As people around her stare in amazement at the display of color above them Mirai hurries into her car to fetch her phone. She hammers in her mother’s phone number as fast as she could, missing one or two numbers before re-entering them. The first call goes unanswered and goes to voicemail, so does the second, and the third. Mirai tries to keep her calm, biting at her lip as she tries a fourth time. While the phone dials in to connect with Marin’s number, with Mirai whispering ‘come on, come on’, there is a tap to her out bent arm.
“What?” she almost growls. Her phone connects to the voicemail.
“You look a lot like Marin,” off to her left stood the green haired kid, “are you related to her, by any chance?” The child was munching on food from a foreign labeled package.
“How do you know my mother?”
“Has she waited, all this time?”
“Um, yes?” Mirai slowly puts down her phone, her shoulders shaking. “Why are you asking, who are you?”
The child smiles and pops another handful of food into his mouth. “She’s just someone I used to know.” Mirai grabs the child on the shoulders, almost making him choke on his food.
“What are you saying, who are you really?”
“You should probably check on her, while you still can. He’s coming back for her either way.”
“Who?”
“She didn’t tell you?” a look of surprise crosses the child’s face with a dash of confusion. Mirai lets go of the child’s shoulders and looks to the sky above. She thinks hard, tries to remember, but all she can do is pick up her things and slam the door of her car closed with a spare business card tuck into the inner windshield. Her wandering only took her a few blocks from her mother’s home; she assumes she’ll be back there in a couple minutes at best.
---
Marin barely hears the familiar gentle gust outside the window and Joon was barking somewhere in the house. Lolo hops off of Marin’s chest to the window, cracking it open and his shape vanishing outside the silhouette of her bedroom window.
For the next few seconds, ignoring the growling of Joon, she listens to the beat of her heart play on the heart monitor sat beside her – her eyes turned to the single door into her bedroom. Lolo dances back into her blurred line of sight first, settling on one of the many machines sat in the corner. A small blur of deep blue pushes the door open, lines leading back to Melan’s abdomen. She can barely make out the small cuts in his arms – must’ve been in a skirmish – and she reaches out with her weary hands.
“Even after all these years, you still can’t manage without me,” the speaker above the bed chirps, a smile breaking across her winkling face.
---
Mirai’s legs are screaming in pain by the time she makes it to the driveway, a short trot brings her closer to the front door where she can hear Joon barking. She struggles to unlock the door quickly and also open the door – leaving the door open in her wake. “Mom!” she starts yelling, going from room to room, stopping in her tracks in the bedroom doorway. Her mother isn’t there, the wires that emerge from the bed are cut and the sheets are thrown off, the knife her mother cherished so much laid by the bed.
Without thinking Mirai snatches it from the floor and runs out to the dining room, where the doors have been left ajar. Outside she can see Joon barking, barking at the multicolored sky above.
---
“Marin,” Melan has to kneel to let her hands cup his cheeks. The barrel of his gun rests on the ground while his bladed limb lies over her body. The top set of his cat-paw cups hold themselves over Marin’s frail old hands, supporting her weak arms.
Marin runs her fingers across his face, wiping away the tears he seems to ignore. “I promised you, didn’t I, Melan?” Her mouth does not move as the speaker talks for her. A sideways glance to the speaker above the bed is all he needs to connect everything together. Marin can’t see the changes in his face, but she feels them. “Melan?”
“Who hurt you,” his voice is muddled with pain, a pain that brings back memories of their first excursion to Brigadoon. It isn’t physical; he only has a couple scratches that will heal up in a day or two. But even then, he feels something carving into his chest. And there is no one there except them and Lolo, whom he isn’t sure stuck around. “Are you alright, Marin?”
“Yes, I’m fine, Melan,” the speaker starts. “I’m just old.” She starts to force herself up, but the wires keep her on the bed. “I’m ready to go whenever.”
“Marin, why can’t you get up?” The cat-paw cups lower her hands from his face, holding them together between them. “I don’t understand, Marin.” Tears flow off of his capped chin and onto the floor. “What happened to you, Marin? Is your biological information damaged, is it corrupted?” Marin lets out another smile and reaches to brush off another tear.
“You could say that, yes, Melan, it is. Its natural.” The chirping of the speaker is nothing like the voice he remembers, her hair isn’t the same, nor is her body or hands. But the smile, it’s still the same, if not on another’s face. The little thing sat over her body and the covers he had taken notice, was the mark of his promise to her. But it was not as bright as before, dull in color and on the blade; cracks crawled through it from blade to grip. The gorging in his chest drew deeper and he found it difficult breathe regularly, catching his breath every so often. “Melan?”
Carefully, gently, the paw-padded cups went beneath the covers to wrap around her, pulling himself closer to her and bringing her into a hug made of his padded wired limbs. What would happen to her if the wires disconnected, would she die there and then? The thought grips him in each passing second, trying to force the ideas away just by her proximity to him. An old hand reaches up to wrap around under his wings, and another follows. Marin pulls herself up as much as she could, and with the help of Melan’s padded limbs her back lifts off the bed. “Its okay, Melan. I’m here – and I don’t plan to leave you ever again.”
“But, the wires…”
“They help me speak, mostly. The rest of them I don’t remember.” The brazen way she waves off the importance of such a thing with the speaker voice cracks at him harder. “I think the speaker from the wheelchair can be removed, maybe. I’m not sure.” She smiles as he pulls out of the embrace, “the chair should be in the corner.” Melan keeps one pad in the palm of her hand, which she squeezes for reassurance every few seconds as his other limbs fiddle with removing the speaker from the wheelchair.
The beeping from her heart monitor fills the silence as he carefully works his way around the bundles of wires hanging off the side of the chair. Even after working his way to unwinding the one certain wire that connects to the speaker all it connects to is a small computer nestled below the seat. “Marin, it … doesn’t connect how you describe.”
“Oh, darn,” grumbles the speaker. “Oh well, guess we’ll have to find a solution in Brigadoon.” She forces herself to sit and this time it isn’t the speaker that sounds, but a guttural groan. In an instant three of Melan’s pads are beneath her and hold her slightly up, but not to the point the wires are taut.
“Marin!”
“I’m alright. Can you remove the wires, please?” One pad reaches to the back of her head and cannot grip the sides of the wires. Feeling the pad struggle at the base of her neck Marin reaches an arm to his bladed limb. “If you can’t remove them, then you can cut them.” With the phantom grip tighter in his throat and the hole within him growing deeper, he does not hesitate to cut the wires to separate her head from the bed. Even though Marin’s does occasional squeezes on the pad nested in her hand the blaring beep from the heart monitor startles Melan and in a panic he pulls her close to his chest. Beneath his head there is a soft sigh and another squeeze to the pad tucked between her hands, she’s still alive. And with her free from the bed he’s able to hug her with his arms, careful to not injure her with the bladed limb.
“I’ll never leave your side, ever again, Marin.”