It was with familiar apathy Jo sat cross-legged on her bed, balancing her notebook on a knee as she stared at the lined page with a well-used biro in her right hand, the white tinted orange under the weak streetlight breaking through the worn and torn rose-patterned linen curtains they were meaning to replace soon.
If Josie was being honest to herself, which was most of the time, it wasn't one she wished she was familiar with. She dreaded it. Feared and desperately avoided it however possible.
Simply because it could become what ruined so much of Katya's life.
(The unwanted inability to do even in times she wanted to.)
But when the ten-year-old closed her puffy eyes for a long moment to take a deep, readying breath as Kolya—her adorable Lodestar—shifted on her lap, the creeping, nebulous grief grew.
(—"Katerina's complaining because I said they should copy out a textbook to help with their writing stamina—" she remembered Mrs Th—)
Jo blinked her eyes open to the empty page and shook off the memory.
(Even as her pulse pounded, hammering against her now-tightening chest and beating loud in her ears.)