My mother spoke to me for the last time when I was sixteen just days after my father died. She told me that after five years, she will meet me between where two strings of light touch the ground. Within those five years, I’ve remained just as clueless and the day she vanished from my life. Most of the belongings that would have given me at least a sliver of closure had been sold at a garage sale weeks prior. Now, I dip my toes into the shallow waters, prepared to face the unknown.

This lake was not only a play area for my younger self, but a place where storms rages the hardest. Over the years, many trees have been destroyed with lighting strikes, opening up the clearing further and further. Nature seems almost naked with the thin band of trees left.

“Mom? I’m here!” I cry out. My eyes drift to the black blotches of cloud rolling over the sky. Wind carries stray rose petals between the branches like string weaving through the thinnest fabric.

“Mom!”

My echoes answer me back.

I kneel down and peer at my rippling, liquidy reflection. I look more like my father now, with my long nose and exhausted face. When I stand up, my joins ache in a stabbing pain.

The watch wrapped around my wrist tells me that ten minutes have passed. Thunder rumbles out its call. Quick drops of rain leave cold kisses against my arms.

Then a deer approaches. A doe. She drags a dead buck my the ear. Wounds have been plunged deep into his neck, and his black eyes look out into nothingness.

“Hello?” I whisper. Everything in me shakes, from my bones, to my organs, to my skin at the sight of blood. While it’s the same color as the petals that passed by me moments ago, the wetness of it makes me want to vomit. The blood is on the corner of the doe’s mouth before her tongue licks it away. She uses her legs to moves him closer toward me as if asking for help. I am unconscious by the time I take a step forward.

When I wake up, I see my mother. Hard, heavy rain surrounds us in sheets like the privacy curtains at a hospital.

“Bronwyn…”

I slowly sit up, my head throbbing. The doe is gone, but the dead buck remains. My mother ignores it.

“Bronwyn, you came.”

I nod. The water level is up to my chest, and rises slowly as the rain continues to pour. My mother wraps her arms around me, sobs releasing from deep inside.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for leaving you alone like that. I’ve regretted every second, but I knew you were strong. I knew you’d survive.”

Words, memories elude me. A sixteen-year-old shouldn’t have to survive. She shouldn’t have to work two jobs just so she can move out of her aunt’s house as soon as possible.

I want to shove her away.

But then, two bolts of lightning strike on either side of us, loud and deafening.