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“I am so sorry about this,” Lana whispers down the phone, her voice thick with guilt and exhaustion. “I know it’s your birthday, and I know we had plans, but I can’t leave her right now.”
“It’s okay,” Mia says, because that’s the thing you’re supposed to say.
“No, it’s not, I-” She suddenly breaks away from the conversation. There’s a fumbling, like she has her hand over the mic and a muffled exchange of voices. Mia waits on the other end of the line, absent mindedly clicking the sliding keyboard on her phone open and shut. It makes a satisfying little snapping sound every time. After a long minute, there's another fumbling, and Lana comes back on the line.
"Sorry, she says again, still whispering. "I heard a noise, and I was worried she was going to throw up again.”
"Is she okay?" Mia asks, carefully. She's only met Ema one time. With the amount of disruption in her life, Mia and Lana had agreed it was best to wait, so that she doesn't feel like she has to compete for her sister's attention. Mia gets that in theory.
In practice, it's somewhat frustrating.
"I don't know," Lana sounds like she hasn't slept all night. Maybe she hasn't. "She's had these migraines ever since the accident, I don't know what to do about them.”
Mia can almost imagine her biting her nails, a familiar Lana habit under pressure. They used to only be short during exams. These days it's all the time.
"Did the doctors say anything?"
"They can't fix it. It probably won't get any worse." The ‘probably’ is weak and pale. "They think it'll heal in time, but head trauma... It's not predictable."
Lana's never forgiven herself for not being in the car. Mia knows that.
Hell, Mia understands that.
"It'll get better," she says, even though she really doesn't know. But it's what you're supposed to say.
"Mm. One of them mentioned this medication that might help, but it's really new." She swallows, and her voice is even quieter when she continues. "I can't get it on our insurance anyway. But I don't know. I'll work something out."
If Mia was a better girlfriend, a better friend, she'd offer to help. But what could she do anyway? With her lack of money, her lack of time. "You will," she says, and she thinks Lana knows as much as she does that it means nothing.
"I'm a shit girlfriend," Lana says, miserably. "Today was meant to be your day and I've made it all about me and my problems."
"It's not your fault," says Mia. "I know what it's like. You have to prioritise."
She hears a quiet sniff at the other end of the line. "Thanks for understanding," Lana says.
"It's okay. Rain check?"
"Yeah... Another time." She sighs. "I'm sorry, but I have to go."
Mia feels a pang deep in her chest, and with care and consideration, smothers it dead.
"Love you," she says, finally.
"Love you too," Lana replied, already distracted, and the call disconnects with a click. Mia hovers in place for a second, as though something will happen, and then concedes that she's being an idiot and flops back into the bed, staring at the ceiling.
There are things she expected to be hard, when she started this. An education system she was never prepared for. Somehow scratching together enough money to pay for the tiny box of a studio she calls home, its white walls pressing in on her even now. Even learning how to use a computer was hard but she expected it to be hard. She never expected to be left with a twisting loneliness digging its way through her gut.
Her phone trills at her, and she searches for it amongst the sheets without looking, one handedly.
The text isn't from Lana. It's from Maya. She opens it.
"Hi Mia! Happy birthday! Hope you're having a really good party with all your friends today! You'll have to tell me all about it next time you come back to Kurain. When do you think you'll come back next? You still need to come and meet aunt Morgan's baby! She's very loud but cute and I think you'll like her."
As Mia's still reading, another text comes through.
"Love you!"
Well now Mia feels even more like shit.
There's an aching feeling sometimes, like an anchor dragging across the soft malleable sand of her insides.
Sometimes it feels like it's dragging her underwater. What is she doing trying to dig up her roots and re-pot herself in a life that wasn't meant for her?
But. She can't go back. Going back now would be akin to locking herself in a coffin. To say nothing of the clan politics it would reignite.
Pearl, pink and sweet in the photo she was sent, and just turned three months. Who knows how that's going to end up tipping the delicate balance of power that allows the Fey clan to struggle on each desperate year.
Too soon to know, anyway.
"I'll visit soon," she promises Maya. At least she can say that much without lying.
Then she turns over and resolves that she'll still be twenty one tomorrow, but today she wants to put the blankets over her head and ignore the rest of the world.
Is this how adulthood is meant to feel? Mia wishes she had someone to ask. Lana is drowning as much as she is. More, even. Aunt Morgan… well, even if Mia wanted to ask her, the reply she’d get would be less helpful and more a condemnation.
Under the blankets, she could be anywhere. Sometimes she falls asleep and isn’t sure where she’s waking up.
Things will get better next year. That’s what she promises herself. Even with an empty bank account, a girlfriend pulling away from her, a family who want her back and want her gone in equal measure, and the stack of work she still needs to revise before her next lecture. Even then, she has hope.
Mia lets the inky darkness swallow her, and drifts into an uneasy sleep, as still as the dead.