Kael stood in the suffocating darkness, his sword hanging loosely at his side, staring at the woman in the sundress.
He didn't know how to feel.
That was the story of his life, wasn't it?
Not knowing how to feel.
"Mom," he whispered again, the word tasting like ash in his mouth.
He hadn't spoken to her in years before he died on Earth.
There hadn't been a fight.
There hadn't been a dramatic falling out.
There had just been… silence.
A slow, agonizing drift into estrangement that was entirely his fault.
Kael remembered his childhood.
He remembered the doctors.
He remembered the therapists in beige offices asking him to point to the doll where he felt "happy."
But he never pointed.
Nothing made him happy.
He wasn't abused.
He wasn't neglected.
His parents were saints to him.
They were warm, loving people who wanted nothing more than a family.
But nature had played a cruel joke on them.
