Meeting Mom

I remember my birth.

Cracking the egg, being met with heavy water, orange and black and burning. Toughening my skin to defend against the heat, trying to float in it, to not drown, and then being… taken, falling upwards into …somewhere, another drowning place where the water had not one color, except for all of them, fixed yet always changing. A place where I could never truly breath or float. There was heat too, but not from there. It was from me. My body fighting against something trying to drown me from the inside, I learned later.

It was so hot.

I was so cold.

There was somewhere before the orange water, I knew that, and there was also someone in that before. Someone that held my egg in its back, that I could hear the heartbeat even while growing, growing in an egg inside water. That water felt warm, and the egg safe, floating with the certainty of not drowning.

In the before it had a promise, of survival, of life.

I was surviving, I had life.

Every moment my body grew hotter.

I felt so very cold.

It was like that for so long.

Had I dreamt the comfort?

Was this, all there was.

To forever drown, to never float.

Shouldn't I, just give up then?

What was the point…

I remembered being born again.

Stop drowning.

There was cold still, but the relief of breathing made my eyes leak, brought me strength, and when something sharp made a hole in my body the relief turned in to fear. I did not want to go back, to live dead, to survive suffocated, not like that, never like that.

But instead of pain, there was … relief… my body stopped being hot, I stopped being so cold.

When I was covered in something that felt not hard but not liquid, I hoped to float without drowning, to be safe again.

I survived.

Lived.

I was alive.

My eyes looked up then, to a most beautiful color, a color where I was floating into, safe, warm, with a new promise of beginning.

I wished to take the color, this floating, with me forever.

And so I did.

Slawkenberg, was the place I was brought to by who saved me. Cain was my saviors name, Papa, I called him. While I held his shoulder with my hands, my feet on his back (piggyback, it's what others called) Papa brought me to such wonderful places, where I not only floated, but did the opposite of drowning, where I learned new thing, experienced then, colors and texture and challenges and games and just, so so much, so so good, so so much… life. Places with people that Papa's heart beated loudly when speaking to, so excited, so happy to live. Aunts and Uncles some of those people should be called I learned, those that were closer to Papa, like those at his side right now, Uncle Jurgen and Aunt Malicia.

But then they stopped outside of a room while Papa continued inside. In the room there was only us and a white stone in form of a person, a big person, bigger than even Uncle Hektor who papa always played games with. I looked at Papa from his shoulder, waiting for an explanation. Today we had visited a big place, even bigger than our home. A place with many corridors and as many rooms, rooms with written words in them, drawings, picture, and some even with people of stone, and inside them there were people of flesh standing like me and Papa were. But why this room, so far from the entrance at the top of the place.

I opened my senses while Papa didn't answer. 3 heartbeats could be heard beyond mine and there was strong incense smell with a background touch of cleaning, colors of dark and heat bloomed in my vision, but the it didn't bring the why to ligth , and… ah! maybe this is it.

With my skin I could feel, a weight beyond air. Like the place I drowned in for so long. I described as water for a time but been presented to baths showed the wrongs of my descriptions. I too had learned a lesson that not all those waters, those magics, wanted to suffocate, and that they were called that, magic. Uncle Jaffar taught me after Papa stopped me from killing him. He made the room weight much like this and for a terrible moment I thought he was dragging me back there; I immediately attacked him and only Aunt Malicia and Papa's actions stopped me from eliminating him.

After understanding, I piggybacked him as sorry.

- "This"- Papa finally spoke, looking in the face of the stone person – "is Emely, Zerayah" – he paused for a moment – "your Mama."

Zerayah. A word that's only for me, like Cain was for Papa. I knew other words like that, Jurgen, Malicia, Krystabel, and now, Emily. But what is Mama? Aunts and Uncles are those closer to Papa, there are many of them, but this is the first Mama.

Mama, it sounds like Papa, it must not be a coincidence. Maybe it's an even closer person to Papa. But all aunts, Uncles and Papa were made of flesh (Even Aunt Malicia, with the different smell and taste, was flesh). Yet, this Mama, this Emily is Stone.

People of Stone.

Hum.

That doesn't seem right.

I escalate Papa and jump from his shoulders, falling right at Mama's front where I hold her with a hug. There is a weird lump in front of her heart that helps me hold on to her. With a firm grip I put a side of my head on it, put my ears in the lump and try to hear. Again, only three heartbeats, even if Papa's approaching heart is beating faster, like when he speaks with someone lively, but no beating heart in this Stone Mama.

Perhaps she is sleeping. When others sleep their heartbeat get quieter, slower, perhaps Mama has slept so deep or for so long that even I can't hear her heart. That's not good, Papa brought me here to meet her and sleeping people are not really themselves. But now how, how to wake her up?

Papa is speaking below, telling me to get down, but his heart speaks the truth, it's beating fast, faster than ever. He's animated! He wats to see what is going to happen, what I'm gonna do.

I climb higher in the lump, approaching Mama's face. Look directly in her slightly open eyes, Papa used to wake up immediately when I watch him sleep, but her eyes don't change, so I go for the simple solution and call for her:

- "Mama?"

In the Immaterium, Emily Debouir begged at Slaneesh's feet, to give her the power to have a permanent part of herself in the Matterium, even if much weaker, even if only confined to Slawkenberg, all to be able meet and raise her child, to have a family with her Beloved, to become a Mother.

Slaneesh delighted itself with the suffering, the agony at not having what they crave that was so common in all her daemons, but in the same way that the simple almost juvenile love of Emily for Cain was a rare emotion, a treat really, the suffering of not being able to be a mother to have a family was an even rarer delight.

The experience of having a family build in love alone would be worth the energy necessary to grant Emily's wish, but the Prince of Pleasure did not content itself with the simple. He asked of Emily an impossible thing that no Demon in their right or wrong mind would accept.

Emily Debouir, who loved a mortal who declared war to a God, accepted without a second thought.

They truly deserved each other.

After calling Mama, I put an ear in her lump again to see if the heartbeat changed. For a moment, nothing, perhaps I needed to speak louder, but then…

Thump…

Thump…

A heartbeat, and quickly accelerating, Papa gasps loudly below us, but I ignore looking at Mama's face. First impressions are very important. The white skin of Mama gains a purple color as her blood goes faster, and in a moment, the weight of the air becomes heavier, more magical, more than even in the moments before my second birth. Mama Emily in seemingly a blink, goes from stone to Flesh.

But is not quite flesh I can still fell the magic, in the very flesh, to its smell. The magical flesh of Mama is very purple and she has shiny black hair in her head and when her eyes open they are bright green, so pretty that becomes my second favorite color. Pretty eyes that look at me.

We look at each other for a moment, while below us Papa's heart's is going so fast, I can't hear the separated beatings. Then I ask her:

- "Mama Emily?"

Emily's face change, her eyes leak bright water, but she smiles ear to ear, then she lifts me from her Lump with her purple arms (with shiny black claws in each finger) and starts kissing my face, my cheeks, my forehead even my nose can't escape, and with each kiss is a little of magic , magic that goes through my flesh and fells like life, like joy! On the second kiss it's already too much joy to hold and I start to laugh but Mama doesn't stop, she kisses and kisses and kisses.

But in some point, she stops and just touch our foreheads together while closing her eyes, I do the same even if I still had some little laughs needing to go.

- "Zerayah, my daughter" – Mama Emily says, and this confirms, I'm her daughter like I am Papa's, she must be the closest person to , second closest.

Emily though her heart was full to the brim with her love for Cain, if so, her heart has just doubled, or perhaps tripled to accommodate the joy for her daughter, for her family.

-"E-Emily?" – Below us Papa finally speaks, making Mama stop touching our foreheads to look at him, she smiles again but this time showing all her pointy teeth, she answers – "My Love"—from her back two more arms surge, that she uses to lift Papa like she lifted me, Mama is so big that even he looks small. She puts me in Papa's chest, where he holds me, and makes the arms not holding us anymore disappear. Then she just hold us there close to her heart, so close that we could touch the Lump.

-"H-How…?" – Papa begins to ask but seeing Mama close her eyes, enjoying the moment, gives up and just, relax in her arms letting his head touch the Lump. But he still has the eyes open, looking somewhere beyond the ceiling. I follow his example and let my head rest in his chest.

And that's how I met my Mama. How our family was made. How I truly learned to Live.