And there’s my mom.

I turn away, and hunch over our egg, acutely aware of her approach across the back yard.

She still walks like she needs to avoid dog poop, even though a dog hasn’t lived here for over eight years. The ground is pretty uneven, so I don’t really blame her. It gives the impression there are still biological landmines present.

Maybe it’s been a while since you read my headmates’ books. Or maybe you picked this one up first.

Our headmate Phage has always claimed to be able to do some pretty amazing things. For the longest time, we thought it was just telling stories. I remember certain things from my childhood and teenage years happening that had no good explanation, but Goreth and I really only ever chalked them up to coincidence, once the adults managed to convince us magic wasn’t real. But, Phage has claimed to be the perpetrator of some of them, and it has said it can sense things that we can’t.

Then, nearly two years ago, Phage brought Ashwin over through this gateway in our psyche, that it put there, that it calls the Tunnel. And Ashwin is from the Sunspot. And it turns out that Phage had already gifted Ashwin with access to its own abilities. How and why that works is still something we do not fully understand. 

We’ve experienced it. We can see it. We can manipulate it ourselves now. Maybe even gift it to others. But there’s missing information.

Phage doesn’t fully understand it, either. It can tell us things it knows to be true and things it senses to be fact, but there are still gaps. Language itself turns out to fail us in this case, we think. Words fall short of the truth.

Once Ashwin made nemself at home here, in our head, they discovered that we were in constant pain and distress from our chronic illnesses and the world around us failing to accommodate for, well, what we are, an autistic transfeminine plurality.

Perhaps because an otherwise mortal living being with Phage’s gifts seems to have more say in localized matters than Phage itself does, or maybe because Ashwin was just being more careless, nem was able to push themself to find the boundaries of those gifts, and do some pretty amazing things.

Nem found that they could detach nemself from our vessel and travel nearly across town to seek out help. They were also able to sense and examine things our eyes were not looking at, or that we could not smell, nor hear, nor touch. And, when in the company of receptive people who consented to the experience, nem was able to speak by simply causing the air around them to vibrate.

That whole consent thing is pretty important. It seems to be dampening both Phage’s and Ashwin’s influences significantly, especially around our family.

A good chunk of our family is Christian, either Born Again or Unitarian, which is a weird mix. But they’re all taught to only submit to God, and not give their consent to other influences. I mean, the Unitarians not so much, but they still have those reflexes thanks to the dominant culture of the U.S. And the rest of that family that’s not like that are atheists, which has a very similar effect.

Even I can feel my own strength of presence flagging as Mom approaches. It would probably be worse if it was one of our aunts or uncles.

Because, in the course of the last year, Goreth and I, after convincing Phage to let us visit the Sunspot, then also consented to its gifts. And it unlocked them in us, and now we are like its child, Ni’a, and like Ashwin. It’s a whole story. Goreth told it.

The short of it is that, while I can’t possibly talk to her out of thin air without moving my lips, or do any other of our more fun tricks right now, I can still ‘see’ exactly what Mom’s doing even though I have my back turned.

Why do we get to be so cool and have these psychic powers, or whatever you want to call them bestowed upon us?

Because we know Phage, and it’s been part of our system since we were seven.

And it’s been part of our system since we were seven because our parents unknowingly bought a house out in the county that had a 22 million year old alien artifact buried in the dirt just a few steps from our bedroom.

Don’t bother looking for it. It’s not there anymore. We destroyed it.

So.

Mom didn’t know anything about any of this until she recently read, I presume, Ashwin’s book, which we’ve put up on our website.

She may have read Goreth’s book. I’m just guessing which one she started with. But I’m also probably about to find out.

Whichever one it was that she read, I can tell that she doesn’t believe and she doesn’t consent to participating in our secrets, because I can feel reality closing in on us and becoming constrictive, making it feel harder to breathe. With every step she takes, it gets stronger.

I wonder, for a moment, if she weren’t here, if we could use our command over physics itself to boost our cellphone’s signal to message the outside world from this backyard. Maybe if I can get her to go back inside without us, we can try.

“Hey, Sweetheart,” she says as she comes within a few meters. “I am so sorry for what uncle Edward said. You have to forgive him.”

“I really honestly don’t,” I say. “Forgiveness isn’t a requirement of anybody. Unless your abusive God demands it, I guess.” She’s Unitarian, but I’m not going to let up on a deity that supposedly made me with that physical dysphoria I was born with.

“Now, hey.”

I hunch over, gripping Goreth’s egg and rubbing it for comfort.

“Edward doesn’t understand.”

“Oh, yes he does. He knows exactly what he’s doing.”

“Oh, come now.”

“Mom,” I turn to her. “Do you want to hear what I faced on the trip up here? Please? Will you please listen to me?”

“What is it, Sweetheart?”

“While waiting for the bus, a guy comes up and asks me for some cash, so I give it to him, because that’s what I do. I’ve been there, we take care of each other,” I tell her. And before she can chide me for handing money directly to panhandlers, I plow on, “He said, ‘Thank you, sir. God bless you, sir.’” I pause to let that sink in, and gesture at myself. “While I’m dressed like this. With my lipstick you like so much, perfectly visible. I mean, I’ve told you so many times, you can’t assume someone’s pronouns or honorifics by how they look, so you know what I do? I forgive him, and I assume he’s just making a guess based on, what? My five o’clock shadow? My height? I don’t know. It sucks. It feels terrible. But I usually do fine if I just politely correct someone and move on, so I say to him, ‘You’re welcome. But it’s not sir. It’s ma’am.’ And you know what he says to me, Mom?”

She gives an exasperated little sigh, because I’m obviously worked up, and she’s never had the patience for my anger, but she goes ahead and says, “No. What?”

“He says to me, ‘I’m sorry, sir. I’m Christian.’ As if that excuses him for insisting on addressing me as sir. I even reply to him, ‘But I’m not a man.’ And he just repeats, over and over, ‘I’m not trying to disrespect you, sir.’ As he scurries away,” my voice keeps raising, but I’m not shouting. “Do you understand what he meant? He meant he can’t call me anything but ‘sir’ because he’s Christian. He doesn’t really know what I am. There are plenty of cis women who look and sound just like me. He’s only decided that I am a man in women’s clothing based on something, and he’s going to stick with it and use Jesus Christ as his excuse. As if that makes any sense.” I point, “That’s who Edward is. That’s what Edward is doing. Only Edward has had since I was eight-fucking-teen to come around. So I will not be forgiving him, ever. I might tolerate and befriend him if he ever changes his thinking and behavior, but that asshole doesn’t deserve my forgiveness. No. He shouldn’t even be here.”

“Perhaps I should come back out here later, after you’ve had time to cool off,” she suggests quietly.

“I’m a bit peeved at uncle Henry, too,” I say. “He may be able to reconcile his love of science fiction with his religion, though Scales if I know how. But he hasn’t straightened his head out about me, either. He’s just more subtle and sly about it than Edward. Ableist as fuck, too.”

“I’m – I’ll come back,” she says and starts to turn back toward the house.

“Mom,” I say, causing her to pause in her tracks. “Why’d you invite me to this?”

“Well, I read your book,” she says. Yeah. “Or, I guess it’s Ashwin’s book? And if you’re going to write stuff like that as if it’s something that’s really happened, I figured you could use some exposure to your real family. Maybe to heal a bit. Reconcile some things. We do love you, you know.” She turns back to me, but only with half her body.

“I could have come on a different day to visit Grandma, and gotten my good dose of family that way. You know, without those two… uncles,” I say, making the word sound like a curse. “Would you have paid my way if I’d done that?”

“Of course I would!” she says. I half believe her. “But I wanted to see you, and so did your dad. And I know it doesn’t feel like it to you, but the rest of the family matters, too.” She stands there blinking and waiting for something from me.

“I want to visit Grandma without talking to Edward or Henry again. I really don’t even want to see them. That’s a boundary, Mom. Either we arrange it so I don’t cross paths with them, or I go out the side gate and go home,” I say. “I can happily wait out here until they leave, though.”

“Well, don’t make it too late,” she says. “Your grandma goes to bed early these days, and this party is probably going to exhaust her.”

What the fuck?

There she goes, back to the house. With no confirmation of my requirements or any mention she’s going to do anything to facilitate them.

“Maybe I’ll just come back tomorrow and visit Grandma then,” I say loud enough for her to hear. It’s possible others in the house can hear me, too.

She pauses. I can tell by the set of her shoulders, something about that really bothers her, even though it honestly shouldn’t. But then she keeps going.

She had some kind of plan, here.

And now I want to fuck with it.

If I go back to the motel, where I have a night’s stay already paid for, and come back tomorrow, I’ll be doing the mature, diplomatic thing. I’m obviously not wanted here by the rest of the adults.

I’d love to get to hang out with the kids, and get to know them better, and remind them just how weird their cousin could be. They’re both first and second cousins, I think. There’s almost no one on this side of my extended family in my age range, but my youngest aunts have had children recently and my older cousins have also had children. And I think that makes them all cousins. If I had a sibling outside of my system, I’d have nieces and nephews.

But, really, to all the kids younger than me by ten or more years, I’m their queer aunt colony. It’s the best description of our potential relationship.

However, the responsible thing for me to do is to give up on that for today, and just leave, and come back tomorrow.

Except someone is likely to still be here tomorrow, and it’s probably going to be Penny and Joseph, with the way Penny’s going about doing all her work. She’s probably set on it, taking care of Grandma. And while I can deal with Joseph at a family gathering, because he just ignores me, I’m not sure what he’d do if he thought he had me alone. And I don’t want to risk that.

I just plain shouldn’t have come.

But I’m here.

And my mom wanted me to be here for some reason.

And I want to fuck with that reason.

But how can I fuck with it in a way that makes a point?

I think back to when we’d first come out about our plurality. 

It was after we’d transitioned, after we’d changed our name, after we’d had some really deep heart to heart conversations with ourselves during recovery from a vaginoplasty that was paid for by medicaid.

We knew what we were, really. We’d known for a long time, though we’d often been in official denial about it. It’s kind of hard to say that we ever thought we weren’t plural, even though we alternatively believed we weren’t. There’s a difference between knowing something and accepting it. And when it comes to plurality, the world makes it easy to deny the truth.

Skepticism, when bolstered by stigma and internalized bigotry, is a powerful thing. And kind of like how it works with gender, if absolutely everyone you’ve ever met or talked to or who has had anything to say to you has treated you like you’re a singlet, and denied that multiple personality disorder or dissociative identity disorder are real, possible things, it’s pretty easy to believe, sometimes, that all of your experiences, no matter how strange, are the same kinds of experiences any single-consciousness human being might have.

The neat thing about the trans community, especially the autistic trans community, is that there are a fair number of other plural systems in it. And while they’re quiet, and circumspect about sharing their plural experiences with others, some of them do open up if they trust you. And more so in recent years. And you can start to see you’re not alone.

And also, we’d just already happened to know Erik.

Anyway, by the time we had our surgery, we knew what we were, and we’d had to hide it from all our doctors to make sure we got our transitional healthcare taken care of without interruption.

But in the hospital bed, we swore to each other that we’d never stay in the closet about anything ever again.

Our physical dysphoria had very nearly killed us.

Our autistic needs going unmet had also very nearly killed us.

We were done with that shit.

The doctors still didn’t need to know about our plurality. Nor the government. But, our family and friends? We decided they needed to know that we basically had DID. It was a matter of crafting our daily lives to allow us to be fully authentic and to function as healthfully as possible.

And that went over with our family like a dead and rotten cow. It had scared the shit out of our parents, and confirmed to the transphobes in our family that we were mentally ill.

Which is how we ended up in Portland, to get away from all that.

All this.

All this bullshit I’ve just dragged us back into.

Whether she accepts it or not, Mom knows what we believe right now. Or, at least, strongly suspects that we believe it. But she knows the details.

Our dad has been filled in, it seems like.

And, holy shit, I can’t believe I’m afraid of my parents actually doing this, but the situation is just right for someone in my family to justify calling the police on us and getting us taken involuntarily to a psych ward.

All they have to do is get me, or any of my headmates, to act out just enough to justify it to themselves, without feeling like they’re lying. Because, once the police are actually here, it’s going to be really hard for me and my headmates not to panic, and that would be bad.

Once it occurs to me that that’s possible, I can’t even comprehend any other possible plan, even though I refuse to believe my parents would do such a thing.

And then, even if that’s not a danger, because I can’t think of any other reason my mom would insist on me coming today, with all that’s going on, I can’t consciously fuck with whatever plan she actually has. Because I can’t conceive of it. And if I can’t anticipate what she’s doing, I can’t act on it.

Fuck.

You’re second guessing yourself too much, Goreth points out.

What do you mean? I ask.

If her plan, if she even has a plan, is anything short of calling the police on us, it’s something we can just let happen, they think. I can’t think of what it’d be, but because of that, the only alternatives are things that would be good for us, like things going well.

Like what?

Like us proving to the family that we have it together, and that we’re not a danger to ourselves or others.

Ugh.

It feels a little weird, thinking back and forth with Goreth like this. Our roles are reversed today. Normally, they’re the frontrunner and the ruminator, and I’m the mysterious and unexpected voice of reason from the back of our mind.

But it’s cool, how spooky it is to hear their thoughts without seeing all the leadup to them. It reminds me that we are plural, and that we’re a team.

Turn, smile, and wave, Phage interjects.

And I trust it enough to just do that. It’s been serving as our intuition since we were seven. And now we know that intuition has actually been supplemented by alien extrasensory perceptions, as cringy as it feels to put it like that.

I turn, smile, and wave, and I see someone peeking out the kitchen window.

Thanks, Phage.

Good call, making it look like we’re in a good mood, just in case.

I think.

So, OK. What do we do?

We’ve got to operate like the worst case scenario is possible, Goreth thinks. Even if it’s unlikely, our safety and well being is on the line. Which leaves two options.

Leaving by the side gate and not coming back? I guessed.

Yep, Goreth confirmed. And the other one. Going back in and being a bigger adult than the rest of them. Being nice and cordial. Falling for nothing. And going with the flow until we can talk to Grandma.

Without having a meltdown or PTSD attack, I added, ruefully.

Yeah.

I feel like they are implying that we should leave.

Goreth shakes our head a little at me, though. We have tools now we’ve never fully utilized before.

Ah, Ni’a thinks up, but doesn’t elaborate.

What? I ask.

I have had PTSD and can still experience sensory overload, they reply. Even now, after a few hundred years of life, I still have meltdowns.

You’re autistic, too?

I don’t know, but I am born from chaos, I embody chaos, and I am a fibrillator. I am a child of Phage and the Sunspot, and while what I inherited from Phage allows me to control that chaos consciously as if it’s one of my own muscles, it can still take me by surprise.

OK?

When I have a meltdown it can damage the ship. Substantially.

Like how?

Cracks in the bulkheads. Mostly microfractures so far, but the danger remains that I might destroy the Sunspot one day.

Holy shit.

The important part is that I’ve learned how to put that off, how to regulate my energies in a crisis and shunt them out the main drive. Doing that isn’t without its cost, either, but it’s a safer cost. It’s possible I could do something similar for you, if we can choose an outlet for the energy that isn’t restricted by your family’s consensus.

How?

Sensory and emotional overload, particularly in a meltdown such as you’re thinking of, is really just a rapid increase of too much energy in a complex system. Normally, the physiological enactment of the meltdown eventually results in the release of that energy. Any one of us now could channel that energy into something else, but I am very practiced at it, and I’m not going to be fronting today if I can help it. I can put my entire focus on helping to regulate your system.

Ni’a’s offer is amazing to me. It feels like a life changer. 

This conversation is going much, much faster than it takes to write or read it. Many of the thoughts are occurring without words, just comprehension and the awareness of where the thoughts are coming from. If we were speaking this out loud, it would take much longer.

But they didn’t answer the part of my question I wanted answered. It’s like telepathy, except it’s in the same brain, and there is still room for miscommunications.

No, I meant, ‘how’ as in what will we use as a vent? I clarify.

Oh, yes, of course. Ni’a responds. I was hoping someone else would have suggestions. You know your world better than I do. I’m not an intrinsic part of it like I am on the Sunspot.

Ah, crud.

I decide to turn us around and sit on the other side of the doghouse roof, so we can face the house and think about it. I put our chin into our clenched fists, resting our elbows on our knees, and put on what I hope is an easy going, contemplative expression.

And then I examine the structure.

There is a heater vent on the roof that has been worked into an old chimney. There used to be a fireplace in the house, in the livingroom, but it’s been filled with a gas furnace. There is a central heating system, along with the stove in the fireplace. It’s kind of like the equivalent of the Sunspot’s fusion drive, conceptually, maybe.

But it’s the middle of the summer and that’s not being used in any way right now.

It’d be better all around if Grandma had a heat pump, but she does not.

Now, the other big vent of substance and energy in the house would be the plumbing, such as the sewage and the rest of the drainage. But I really don’t want to fuck with that. I don’t know if a human body’s worth of autistic meltdown is enough energy to really mess up the pipes, but extra microfractures don’t sound like a good idea there.

And the electrical system is an entirely different thing, and nobody wants a meltdown in that.

You’re stuck on a notion of scale, Goreth says. Then they say to Ni’a, This whole geographical region is filled with faults.

Oh shit, what? I think mostly to myself.

“What are faults?” Ni’a asks out loud, accidentally, their impulse of thought probably bolstered to vocalization by my own surprise.

“Cracks in the crust of the Earth,” Goreth replies. Then, internally again, Huge, hundreds of kilometers long macrofractures caused by tectonic movement. And because they didn’t sense comprehension from anyone but me, they kept explaining. The Earth has a crust on top of a molten mantle surrounding an iron core, we think. And the currents of the mantle break the crust up into big chunks we call continents, and they push against each other. And this process causes faults, volcanos, mountains in general, and earthquakes. We live in a region with a lot of faults and a lot of tiny earthquakes.

Ah, yes, I can see it, Ni’a says, as if they’re literally looking right at the structure of the Earth. They might be. That’s perfect. Our contributions to that system will be utterly unnoticed.

“What about the butterfly effect?” I ask out loud, to make it a known point that I am concerned. It seems the meaning of my words is conveyed by my thoughts. Ni’a gets it. The ‘butterfly effect’ is an old clichéd analogy from chaos theory, in which it’s described that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings could affect the path of a hurricane on the other side of the world.

“Negligible,” Ni’a replies. And so unpredictable as to be irrelevant. Your meltdowns are less energy than the sheer weight of vehicles moving around in your city. It could be that one of your meltdowns would be enough to trigger a larger earthquake, but it’s just as likely to be a car wreck on a highway. And even then the chances are absolutely miniscule and no one would know, not even me. More importantly, the earthquake is bound to happen eventually anyway.

“OK,” I say.

I still need you to do everything you can to regulate your emotions, though, Ni’a cautions. I can probably act fast enough to keep you from having a full meltdown, but they expect you to be emotional and unpredictable. We’re working against the consensus. And with Phage’s gift, you are now a being that is more susceptible to that consensus.

Oh, shit. 

Right. Phage explained this when it did its thing. It had called it ‘the ligament of separateness’. An imperfect metaphor, it did describe something fundamentally important. To gain access to its abilities, you had to have someone else ‘cut’ your ‘ligament of separateness’. Doing so meant that your conscious will was now more connected with the functions of the rest of the universe. But the tradeoff was that, in no longer being separated from it, you had less strength and leverage to directly influence those people who still were.

As if we didn’t already have trouble with people’s preconceived notions about trans and/or autistic people. Even if you keep it together and don’t act the way they expect you to, they’ll still read you the way they want to. A confident voice can be read as a raised voice, and subtext gets inserted into everything you say.

I know we’re not unique in this. Nor always just a victim of it. I know we’ve worked long and hard to avoid imposing the same reactions to Erik and whatever he does, and I know we still fuck up a bit too frequently. Well, not so frequently he calls off our friendship, but still. It’s culturally ingrained, and definitely there, and a never ending job of dismantling it.

The thing is, it’s like that encounter with the transphobic panhandler at the bus stop. That’s an extreme example, but the way he started acting antsy around us and quickly hurrying away, repeating that one line, humans all do that to each other in little ways. And being autistic and trans, we get that a lot in some specific ways. And some portion of our family knows we think we are plural, and they think it’s a major mental disorder, worthy of psychiatric counseling that they know we’re not getting, if not involuntary commitment to a psych ward.

So, yeah.

Take that and add a supernatural punch to it.

Maybe we should just leave, I think.

If you do your part, Sarah, the whole equation definitely balances out in your favor, Ni’a counters.

What’s my part? I ask cautiously.

Disarm yourself, they reply. Let yourself be relaxed now, and to stay as relaxed as possible. Keep your mind on the plan, and its success, and how the results will feel so good. And let that be a thing that makes everything else inconsequential. Give up on retorts. Fawn instead of freeze or fight. Flight is acceptable, if you do it calmly and thoughtfully. Capitulate, if you can, without compromising your truths. Brush things off, if you can, knowing that you are in the act of pulling one over on your family to get your way. Focus on being sneaky, instead of being victorious.

Of course.

A lot of that sounds way easier said than done. And definitely simplified way beyond the bounds of reality or likelihood. For instance, how do you capitulate to people who deny your reality while not compromising your truths?

But, on the other hand, I’ve seen my older cousins do this kind of thing. I’ve spent a lot of time watching Camille, who’s probably downstairs with the kids, navigating the misogyny of the elder members of our family with sweet, smiling sass that sounded like agreement, but really wasn’t. I’ve admired it. I’ve practiced it a few times, myself, but I haven’t had the lifetime of verbal streetfighting that she’s had. Not in that style, at least.

Goreth and I have always tended more toward blunt honesty, and dying on it like martyrs.

I want to be able to do this, I think.

Then let’s do it, Goreth responds. Whatever happens, we have so many ways out. We can survive it.

We’re not the only two at risk here, Goreth, I remind them, thinking of the cuttlecrabs, Metabang, Abacus, and Ashwin. Ni’a sounds like they are supportive of it, and I know Phage is up for anything, or makes it very clearly known when it isn’t. I want to know that everyone else is on board. This is not a decision that can be unilateral.

Of course.

‘On board’ means in agreement with the plan? Ashwin asks.

Yes, I reply.

Then I am on board. Cautiously, of course. I do not know your family, and humans are not my people. Ashwin thinks. But, in my long experience as a living being, I have found that reconciliation and making connections is more important than cutting ties. Especially where mortality is in play.

Nem is referring to the mortality of my Grandmother, I’m sure. But, Don’t Ktletaccete live indefinitely on the Network?

Typically, Ashwin replies. It makes the exceptions stand out all the more intensely.

I nod.

I tend to agree with Ashwin, Metabang adds. I have lived longer than nem, and my experiences only support what nem has said.

My vote matches Metabang’s, Abacus thinks. It has been taking a backseat to our life ever since it arrived, and tends to either abstain or back up its colleague, but knowing how it writes and thinks from the book it wrote, I’m expecting more participation from it any day now. This is fine.

I turn my attention to our own sub-Collective, the ghosts of four cuttlecrabs that now inhabit our system with us.

But, before they respond in what I think is an easily predictable way, Phage speaks up.

I have reservations, it says.

You? I ask.

Yes.

That doesn’t bode well.

It is more of a curiosity to me, but you may wish to be warned.

Please stop making me prompt you, and explain, I mentally poke it.

It chuckles like distant thunder in our chest and asks, What if your family’s God is something like me, but is better established here?

Seriously? I respond. Aren’t you supposed to be something like Entropy Itself? The very thing that allowed the universe to happen in the first place?

Yes, it thinks evenly and calmly. But the me that is in your system is a very limited and localized manifestation of such an entity, if one even exists. There should be others like me, and if they exist here on this world they may be seen as gods. We would be the same kind of being, reflected or projected from the same source, monstrous standing waves in the storm of the universe. But I might be one of the smaller ones. It will be interesting to find out.

I always liked the theory that you come from our origin world, Abacus speaks up to make a counterpoint. That you’re a cousin, a descendant of our ancestors, and that your state is due to a technological advancement that places you in a position similar to how we exist in relation to the humans. That it’s not magic that makes you what you are, but a science of living beings that the rest of us haven’t yet learned.

I wish I could remember for certain, Phage replies. In any case, my sense of identity tells me what I am.

Two votes left, I cut in. Sorry, Phage’s endorsement is more important than the question of its identity right now. If we’re walking into danger, it should be unanimous. But if we wait here too long, someone might decide to do something about it. Dad might come out next, which would be OK. But now I’m scared, you know?

You do have my endorsement, Phage confirms.

We seek to chatter, comes the reply from the cuttlecrabs. If we are silent, it is because there is danger or food present. And if there are enough of us, then danger is also food. Are there enough of us?

No, Phage answers. There are not enough of us.

But, I counter. I’d like to think of Grandma as one of us. And she’s cornered in there.

Sometimes, the one must be sacrificed for the Collective to eat, the cuttlecrabs reply.

Seriously?

Sometimes.

Do you mourn the loss of that one? I ask.

Yes. Always.

I don’t want to mourn my Grandma like that, I tell them.

Then we must enter, they reply.