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Can't feel her legs.
That isn't too dissimilar from everything else. There was a coldness in all of her limbs that had very little to do with the walls of ice, the frigid chill of the wind outside. Inside she was well insulated; no, the chill came from within.
Hei-Ran opened her eyes slowly, as they too refused to obey her as they should. Nothing had. Her body was outside of her, a puppet with its joints frozen, the connecting strings snipped or overtied when they shouldn't be. Before, her body had no delay in responding to her wishes. There were no wishes about it, she had simply acted. There was no separation from mind and limb, fire and thought.
Can't feel her legs.
Of all her slowness in even thought, that fact poked at Hei-Ran more than anything else. Why had it so? She wasn't fully awake, but her mind remained active in delayed embers.
Numbness wasn't good. Quite terrible, in fact. Atuat had emphasized this, multiple times. To start feeling numb instead of just cold would be a terrible sign of -
Her eyes opened a little more, and like countless post-injury checks in her youth, she tried to move one of her toes.
Barely any feeling at all.
Somehow, the feeling that she may be dying after all didn't make her panic as much as it should. Would that not be fitting? Even with all the skill in the world, she could not outrun what she's wrought. Hei-Ran knew from whispers above her bed when it was thought she was asleep, that she should be able to move by now, to react with less delay.
A very small whimper pierced the quiet. It was soft enough to be heard over the faint flutter of her heart, and in an instant she knew the shape of it. Even in her current state, she knew the sound anywhere. It carved a piece into her soul.
Careful to not move more than necessary, her chin dipped just enough to look at her numb lap and legs. Hei-Ran was sleeping propped up, able to look down like this without much strain. Everything was so blue in Agna Quel'a, so the sight of soft red fabric was stark.
Rangi was trying her hardest to curl herself into a tight little ball on top of her lap, one leg hanging off the bed and stabilizing her on the floor, nearly hanging off the bed starting from her hips. Without the support, she surely would've slipped off; she was fully grown now, and with the two of them standing she was a few inches taller than Hei-Ran. It was honestly impressive how well she's scrunched herself to lay in her lap, heavy enough to make it grow numb.
The still shorn, barely grown back top of her head was turned away from Hei-Ran. It was as close as possible as to when Rangi would lay in her lap as a child, to have her hair brushed or simply to be. The magical time of the very young when they still desperately clung to their parents' company, not yet in the growing years of adolescence where suddenly the idea of anyone knowing they even had parents was embarrassing.
And even with her daughter's hair being cut, the small curly hairs at the top of her head and near her temples remained stubbornly curly. Should she squint, Hei-Ran could for a moment pretend they were in a different time, a different place, the small reminder of Junsik one of present awareness, and not a years-long grief. His hair curled at the tips just like that.
Rangi whimpered in another sharp intake of breath, and Hei-Ran just barely felt fingers grabbing at the blanket on the one section of her lap less numb than the others. The sight forced a heat in her chest so great, it was the first thing to pool it through her limbs since before the poisoning that had left her so cold, so barely clinging to life.
The noises stopped, as Rangi went still. Did she sense the shift in consciousness? Perhaps, because she started to breathe more evenly… or try. They were soft shallow breaths to make it sound like she was sleeping, and perhaps it would fool someone who wouldn't know better…
But not her mother. Never.
It took a moment for Hei-Ran's hand to obey her. It was pressed down on the bed, and not far from where she intended. Acting as though she believed the ruse, she raised her hand - cursing the way it shook - and traced where a short lock of hair was surely getting in Rangi's face. She pulled it back, and saw her stiffen ever so slightly. The little curls she loved so much and knew Rangi stubbornly tried to tame bounced like they did when she was small. Still refusing to be contained.
Suddenly, her lap losing circulation and feeling wasn't so alarming. There was a very good reason for it, one that didn't need any interruption or help. Hei-Ran knew getting feeling back in her legs was going to be a painful and likely slow process, but she would clutch this burden to her as tightly as she could, like she would the Sun; agonizing and just on the cusp of unbearable, but Hei-Ran burned brighter. She would leave claw marks in the Sun, never letting it go.
Rangi's foot keeping her supported on the floor shifted. Her daughter could sleep like this, but she clearly was not. She was trying so hard to not move too much, or cry out, as though if she did the illusion would be dispelled, that this rare moment of warmth in such a frigid place and frigid time would be blown from her grip on the icy, merciless wind.
As though her mother would vanish forever, like she almost had.
Like her father had.
Her fingers traitorously shook again as they traced the hair framing Rangi's face, pushing back any errant strands. They went along the same paths as they had years ago, on a face that was once much smaller and not slightly sticky with tears.
Hei-Ran had a very similar fear, that this would vanish if she made it clear she knew they were both awake for this, and she was perfectly fine with keeping the ruse up. Her hand moved as though on its own, to cup her chin and wipe away the drying tears with a thumb. With a guilty swallow she reflected it was a tender touch she hadn't done in years.
When was the last time she'd dried Rangi's tears like this?
Despite how comical it was that Rangi had pressed herself so close, to try and shrink herself to return to the past, the illusion still held, bringing to mind a version of the past where her daughter did not need to try so hard to fit, where she didn't need to pretend to sleep like this. Once fit in Hei-Ran's lap with ease, even able to sprawl out in complete safety and bliss; the version of a girl with her whole life ahead of her, both of her parents alive and loving, there and in the flesh.
The soft heat continued to pulse faintly through her limbs, making tingles out of the tips of her fingers. Hei-Ran felt her intentions being carried out with less delay, and stroke by stroke, she shook less. Rangi's shoulders shook in an effort to stop more tears from coming through but it wasn't successful, and they were still felt in the soft touch of her fingertips.
It shattered her heart. It always would, to see her cry.
When Hei-Ran first opened her eyes, she had seen the hope flickering in Rangi's, puffy and red still but with a relief she could not contain. That embrace had been gentle and hesitant, but not this. That one was closer to wrapping ones arms around a vase already cracked, to not shatter it among millions of fragile planes.
When was the last time this had happened? When had they last truly honestly hugged, pressed close without the barrier of expectations, of the world bearing down on them?
Hei-Ran knew every curve, every blemish and the way her hair curled, like a sculptor running his thumb over the face of one of his carvings. She had made this as well. Rangi was awake and feeling this, and trying so hard to not let it be shown how badly she needed this, how much she wanted this to be kept secret, perhaps fearing her scorn or what she would say -
The line had been drawn, many times. Hei-Ran had never loved the heat of her words, the bite in her tone. They were necessary, but a part of her regretted that it was necessary. Even if it made her own blood hesitant to be so open, to ask for something as simple as a gentle hold. A soft caress. A true, honest show of I love you.
Hei-Ran's heart was no longer in her chest. For sixteen years it had been outside of her, running about. Asking questions, training, tugging on her skirt when frightened. Her heart was laying on her lap right now, trying not to weep her pain and terror into the room. Didn't want her mother to see her like this. She should speak, to reassure Rangi, that this wasn't a weakness to be punished.
She knew she was harsh in the past. All for reasons, all to prepare her for the world. A harsh world that expected much, that would easily prey on her soft, kind heart. That had never gone away. Sometimes that heart had been wounded so much, that Rangi refused to speak to her for days, even a couple of weeks. She would always return, but that love was sensitive and easy to wound, flickering like fire; easily tossed about, flaring too bright or too cold.
Her hand continued to brush through Rangi's hair, and when Hei-Ran felt another stiffening, ran her thumb between her eyes, in the gentlest strokes of all. It always made her shiver and fall asleep when she was little.
Hei-Ran's heart had been so far away before the poisoning. It'd escaped with the Avatar and ran across the Earth Kingdom, and every second of that hurt. She had full confidence in Rangi, this her mind knew, but to become a mother was to no longer have one's heart inside them. They were outside now, free to get hurt, lost or burned.
Her thumb moved back down to stroking her face, her cheek. Had she been eating enough? It was a subtle loss in weight felt from here, but it still was a worry. Unable to move from this bed, barely made stable and only recently able to wake, Hei-Ran's worry was not for herself. Whatever was meant to come would come.
Rangi sighed earnestly this time, a long breath she'd been holding. The hand stroking her stopped most of its shaking, and tucked a curly strand of hair behind her ear. At this, Hei-Ran risked one more thing. She hummed low in her throat, a familiar tune. It was a whisper, shivering and reedy, but it was familiar enough that the tightly curled shape in her lap eased and relaxed with no ruse.
A few minutes of that, Hei-Ran's thumb going back to gently stroking her on her forehead right between the eyes and humming, she heard the soft and steady breaths of Rangi drifting off. It didn't take long, they both could sleep anywhere.
Her lap wasn't going to get circulation back anytime soon. She was fine with this, a price she would gladly pay over and over again.
The only regret Hei-Ran had, feeling some strength return but not quite enough, was that she couldn't lean down and kiss her hair. Not tonight. Another one.
And Hei-Ran would find the next night Rangi snuck in when she was 'asleep' to curl up in her lap again, that her hands shook less. That she woke up with more awareness in the next morning; that her progress had finally gone from barely stable clinging to life to improving, bit by bit. Atuat had stabilized her body, but the heart?
The heart was something else, complicated to heal. One step, one beat at a time.