Work Text:
Your name is Rosa Lalonde, which is almost your sister’s name, your mom is not very creative though you can understand why since she’s always so busy, she must be spending all her creative juices on her work.
You don’t really know what her job is but you imagine it’s a really cool one; you are convinced she has to be some sort of wizard. With the way she moves around the house it’s unpredictable! It’s like she teleports around from the shadows; she could be anywhere at any given time and you think it’s amazing, but your sister on the other hand, has expressed her concerns in various occasions explaining that this makes her feel in constant danger and how she has to stay alert any time she’s outside your bedroom, no wonder she basically never leaves.
You are ready to dive deeper into the many majyykal abilities your mom may possess but you’re pulled away by the soft feeling of a Lovecraftian plush being tossed directly onto your face and you’re sent back to reality.
“She’s not a wizard,” your sister tells you; you’ve been thinking out loud. “That is just her being a weirdo.”
“No way!” you reply determined to convince your sister, which has spent way more time with her than you have, that your mom is a wizard. “You yourself have told me lots of stories about her shenanigans.”
“Such as..?” She asks you while striking a funny pose that makes her look like a cartoon detective.
“How about when she made Jaspers disappear right before your eyes and then she made him reappear again but he was dead and-” you’re cut short by Rose yelling “Oh my god!” She stares at you in a way that says “No way in hell you just brought that up,” which is just about the next thing she says, you are a Rose Body Language Connaisseuse if you do say so yourself; you can’t help but tell her that you guessed what she was going to say from simply seeing her expression.
She facepalms in response with both of her hands. “Rosa, I was only four years old when that happened. For all I know Jaspers’ magical disappearance could have been my imagination; I only told you what I could remember, but I can’t testify, nor have I ever tried to, for my memory of Jaspers' disappearance and subsequent death to be a hundred percent accurate.”
“Oh” is all you manage to say. She lets out her deepest sigh so far in this entire night, not that you make her sigh very often, “I’m sorry if I didn’t make that clear before, I understand that you’re younger than me and your imagination easily outshines mine;” you chuckle after hearing that little compliment, “but you know how special he was for me. Jaspers was the one to truly keep me company when I was younger and the only other person in this place was… her.”
You try to empathize with her but you could never understand what it feels like to lose such a special pet at such a young age, instead you crawl up to her side of the table and give her a big hug. With your heads on each other’s shoulders she says “at least it wasn’t long until you came into my life.”
Your eyes open wide when you feel her voice crack as she says that.
Your response is to hug her even harder, a few seconds ago you had no idea that she was capable of crying and now you are here wrapping her with your arms and hearing how her voice cracks and it’s all your fault.
“Please, let me go” she solicited. You tell her that you’ll never let her go and nuzzle her shoulder, you caused this so now you’re going to fix this. “I can’t breathe” she exclaims but you know she’s lying since she’s so much stronger than you, so you can easily tell that she’s just looking for an excuse to get you to stop hugging her.
She bonks your head which causes your glasses to fall off and you let go, jeez, okay!
After you do she hands you your glasses, you’re pretty much blind without them. You thank her and tell her that you’re sorry for that.
“For not letting go or for bringing up my dead cat in a very insensitive manner just to attempt to prove to me that my own mother is a wizard?”
You take a few seconds to think of how to respond…
“Hey wait a second” you finally respond after a slightly awkward and highly intense staredown in which she intensely stared right into your soul while you could only frown, just about as intensely. “She is also my mom; I understand that you’ve been living with her for far longer than I have but come on.”
“This is true and I get that-” she tries to tell you something but it’s your turn to cut her sentences short. “She is my mom and if I want to believe that my mom is a wizard I’ll simply continue to believe she is one! You yourself said that you can’t be sure about your baby memories being all correct, so is all that time you spent with her really an argument against her being a wizard?”
She sighs and places a hand on her forehead. Sometimes she just can’t believe the things you come up with. “I’m just telling you that I know her on a somewhat deeper level due to having spent a little more time with her than you have.” This is starting to become frustrating, your sister has the biggest brain you’ve ever seen (metaphorically because you don’t think you’ve seen anyone’s brains) and yet she can’t seem to comprehend how faulty this argument is.
“Knowing her for longer doesn’t mean anything! You just need to look at all the tricks she pulls to know she’s a wizard!” And just as you stop talking your sister immediately goes “nooooo,” this is clearly becoming frustrating for her as well, “she’s not pulling any magical tricks. She’s just a weirdo!”
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK. You hear from the door right in front of you all of a sudden, Rose flinches hard, almost flipping over the entire tea playset table. “Oh my shit!” She says under her breath; you don’t react quite as vehemently. This caught you by surprise but your brain immediately realizes something.
Your mom was supposed to be out all night since she was going to do Important Work Stuff or whatever but she’s here! She must have known, using her mind reading powers, that you were getting very close to convincing your sister that she was a wizard, the results of which would be catastrophic for her; her secret would be out to the world! If it’s only you who believes it there will be nothing to worry about because people will believe you’re just a silly little girl using her silly little girl imagination. But what if Rose starts to believe it..?
That would be an entirely different story! She’s 9 years old and you know how aristocratie works, she’ll be ruling over the world in basically no time and the secret society of wizards will be dismantled.
Though you don’t really want that, maybe once the wizards are uncovered they can put their powers to good use. They could make your internet signal stronger so that your movies will load faster. You could just threaten your mom to do so directly telling her that you'll reveal her secret to everyone you know, but you don’t think that threat would go very far as you only know like 2 people and she herself is one of them.
Wow your mind really is wild, about three different trains of thought just passed your mind before Rose opened the door to respond to the wizard herself. Rose has just stood up and is slowly opening the door. She would have loved to pretend to be asleep since it’s 2 am but you have your lights on so it’s pretty obvious that you’re wide awake. Really, last time this happened and you pretended to be asleep right on the floor... it just didn’t work.
“Eek!” Rose exclaims and takes some quick steps backwards stumbling and falling on top of the entire tea set and scattering the pieces all around. Good thing you were just pretending and not actually drinking anything, the carpet would have been ruined! After seeing this you immediately look up and find out what had her this shocked.
It’s your mom!
Obviously, except she’s wearing some bright pink robes, a matching hat, a really long beard… and a wand! Your theories were right all along! You were right and Rose was wrong! You’d say you can’t believe this if it wasn’t for the fact that you totally believe it, it was bound to happen sooner than later.
“Heyyy girls” your mom tells you both “turns out they didn’t need me to stay all night so I’m back. Did ya miss me?”
“Absolutely” Rose replies sarcastically, clearly in pain from how hard she just hit her head when she fell, she has both hands covering her face, she doesn’t even want to look at her and wishes your mom would just go away.
“You’re a wizard!” You yell, “ugh” you immediately hear your sister say, she’s still covering her face and it doesn’t seem like she plans on doing otherwise any time soon. Your mom lets out a smile that you could describe as vaguely sinister and vaguely smug, she also looks like she’s holding back her laughter. “Of course I’m a wizard Rosa” she says, “how else would I be able to teleport using shadows… or something” Rose grunts considerably loud and your mom chuckles, “but that’s only the start of my wizard powers list little Rosa” your eyes are wide open now, even more than they were 5 seconds ago before she revealed that she has a whole arsenal of magic skills; “I can also like, teleport cats, girl!” Rose finally uncovers her face and she does not look pleased at all after learning about your mom’s cat teleporting ability.
“GET OUT!” She yells, really really loud. “Hm? Why dearie? I’ve just arrived” Rose hurls one of the tea cups at her but she dodges it “NO, NO YOU HAVEN’T” Rose properly stands up now facing your mom directly and just asking her as unkindly as possible to leave. You learn a grand total of two new swear words. Your mom laughs out loud and absconds from the scene. Rose slams the door behind her, and locks it.
“Rose…” you say in a really low voice. “Don’t talk to me” she replies, she’s not yelling anymore but she’s clearly not in a good mood and it would be advisable to do as she says and not talk to her. “We are going to sleep. Now.” She sounds dead serious; you thought you’d be able to play for longer, you’re not tired just yet.
Rose makes the bed, you sleep together in a queen sized bed and always make a mess of it in your sleep, you don’t bother making the bed after waking up. You really want to help Rose do it this time but it really doesn’t sound like a good idea. So you just sit there waiting for her to be done and reflect on what just happened.
You start to consider how weird it was for your mom to just reveal to your sister that she’s a wizard as it does not comply with your idea of what would happen if she were to find out at all, and suddenly, it all begins to fall apart; you take to thinking of the two powers that she mentioned and it all immediately breaks apart; if she could read minds, why would she just bring up the two powers you talked about out loud?
It’s pretty clear now that it was all an act she put up to pull a prank on you, it’s pretty clear now that she was listening to your chatter while you thought she was at work, and it’s pretty clear now that-
You are ready to dive deeper into the many lies fabricated by your mom in collaboration with your own brain but you’re pulled away by the sudden snapping of Rose’s fingers and the hard pats she gives the bed, it’s almost as if she was calling a cat asking it to get on the bed.
You’d love to oblige her desire of not listening to you speak but you just need to tell her one thing. “You were right, Rose.” She stares at you, this time with a calmer look, “she’s not a wizard.”
Now she just looks sad. “I’m sorry, Rosa.” You’re not sure what she’s sorry about and before you can process what she could be sorry about she tells you, “let’s just go to sleep, please.” You can feel she just wants this night to end and that she wants to forget that it ever happened, but you don’t think she will, if anything, she will only feel less safe in this house now that she knows your mom could be listening to your private conversations at any given time.
Once you’re in bed there’s an expected, yet awkward silence. You won’t talk to her this time but you try hugging her; she keeps her body stiff, as if she’s in a trance still properly processing what just happened.
After a few moments, she starts crying and hugs you back. You stay like this until she’s unable to let out any more tears and finally fall asleep together, maybe tomorrow will be a better day.