Geneva was at a loss for words. But that did not seem to matter, because her son, who had been the veritable center of her universe since the moment she had known he existed, also sat in silence. It seemed that this was so much for her blue eyed boy to absorb. She had never experienced Pripyat in such a way before, and this situation was hard for her to understand in some ways. She could not admonish him for having his own feelings.
Pripyat was coming into his own, developing the tools that both his parents had strived to provide him. She should be proud now, seeing that her son had developed his own autonomy. He questioned things; he learned, and he seemed to be learning now that sometimes ignorance was far less painless. The gray scale lady just felt hollowed out. How could she explain to Pripyat the deep, dark chasm of loss that loomed within certain parts of her life experience? He had never experienced such loss, and Geneva hoped that he would never have to. She would not wish that upon anyone, let alone the child she had striven to protect and shield from any negativity. When he had been a child, Geneva had tried to keep him cloistered and protected from every dark thing in the outside world. But now that he was older, those boundaries that she had set up to cocoon him were rendered meaningless. And she realized that this was a good thing, but now she had no control, and she could not navigate this situation in a way where she could be certain that neither of them would be hurt afterward.
”Her name was Shae,” Geneva said shortly. Of all the questions her son could possibly ask, it seemed strange that he would ask for his dead sister’s name. She had named her despite the fact that her daughter had not survived her first day of life. Perhaps names gave things meaning, creatures meaning, although Shae had scarcely had time to breathe in the atmosphere of the cruel world that had taken her away from a mother who had wanted her more than she had wanted to live. After her daughter’s death, she had not felt that she could go on. Some unnamed part of her had decided to push forward after that, and that was when she had collapsed in Crimson Dreams, still covered in the afterbirth from her failed litter.
But she did not want her son to know the depth of the sorrow that surrounded his sister’s death. Even Geneva had found the desire to cease being disturbing after she had had time to analyze it. She had had to find new meaning in life, and she had found it time and time again with Pripyat. If only he knew how much he meant to his mother, but words failed her at this part. There was no way to express how much she loved her child.
”Your sister lived less than a day. Her eyes never opened; she was very small,” Geneva did not know what else she could tell him about his sister. ”She was the only one to survive from her litter,” Geneva said. She did not know if it had been because her miniscule size or because of the stress of dealing with Jordan and her father’s deaths, but her body had not been able to sustain the lives of her unborn children. There were chilling parallels between Shae and Pripyat. ”Like you, she was the only child born to me. Her father’s eyes closed before hers even had the chance to open.” There was so much sorrow in those words. Life could be cruel; the cold realities that descended upon her sometimes startled her, but she had pulled through to better times.
”I do love her, Pripyat, even though I never truly knew her. How could I not love my own child? It worked the same way with you. I wish I could tell you…for so much time I loved you, and never knew your face, or your name, or what you would be like, but I loved you.” Geneva did not know if she could explain the undefinable love of a parent for a child to Pripyat. Although he was growing into an adult, he was still a child in so many ways. How could she explain the mystery and the muscle of love to her blue eyed boy? He had never known a life without love, and therefore could not consider the magnitude of such a force that moved her.
”Can you understand, Pripyat?” she asked her son helplessly, her lime green eyes searching his oceanic gaze. She gazed at his beseechingly. She did not want this to cause a rift to form between them, although it probably would. She knew that Pripyat needed his own time to sort through his feelings, but it wounded part of her to know that she could hurt her son, even inadvertently. And at the same time, she was so sick of hurting herself by keeping this inside of her. Jordan and Shae were parts of her history. Their lives had touched her own, and formed her into the creature she was today. It seemed sacrilegious to deny their existence, to whisper their names instead of speaking them openly. The gray scale lady had some healing of her own to do.
She was at a loss. It seemed that the gray colored pair had reached at dead end. Each of them had to consider the contents of their own hearts before they could make sense of any of this. Geneva could accept this, and knew that they would both need time. But there was a desperate part of her that just wanted to lay this to rest now. She had already lost so much time with loved ones within her own lifetime. It killed her to think that she would be robbed of more time with the child she loved with the entirety of her heart.
WC 1010