the day we met
Agatha woke up to find Rio fidgeting with an oleander beside her as the sun rose.
“Mornin’.”
“Agatha!” Rio put down the flower and hugged her. “Are you okay?”
“Uh, yeah. Why?”
Rio let Agatha go and took her hands. “You… you don’t remember waking up?”
Agatha shook her head no. “Why?”
“You were, uh, crying and saying “I killed her” over and over again. It didn't really sound like you were talking about yesterday.”
Agatha’s eyes widened for a moment before she looked away.
“Agatha?”
“It’s– it’s not important.” Agatha tried to pull away, but Rio tightened her grip on her hands.
“It is to me.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re important to me, and I want to help you.”
“It’s not gonna help.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do. Because you’ll hate me.”
Rio stroked Agatha’s cheek, looking into her dazzling blue eyes. “I could never hate you.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
She hesitated, then gulped. “Remember when we first met?”
“Clear as day.”
“That was my… my trial.”
Rio stroked Agatha’s cheek, and Agatha looked down.
“My mom found me with a… a friend when I was a kid. She and I were pretty close, and something happened, and… my mom didn’t like that.” A tear streamed down her cheek, and her voice quavered as she leaned back on the headboard. “After that, my mom locked me in my room, didn’t let me leave the house, barely fed me… It wasn’t fun. I just– I just wanted to learn magick and how to control… whatever this is, so I grabbed the first book I found and hid it in my room. I started learning from it, but my mom caught me. She said it was dark magick and sentenced me to death, and that’s when I… I…”
Agatha pulled away, crying softly. Rio watched, trying to process.
“And that’s when we met?”
“And that’s when we met.”
Rio couldn’t comprehend how anyone could do something like that to their kid for something as innocent as wanting to learn. She wondered why she didn’t hate all mortals. Then, she looked at Agatha and remembered why.
Rio paused. “So what happened yesterday…”
“It wasn’t the first time. Far from it.” Agatha pulled away, the tears in her sea-blue eyes shining in the light. “It’s okay, I know you hate me now, I’m used to it.”
Rio’s brows furrowed. “I don’t hate you. Why would I?”
“Because I’m a bad person.”
Rio shook her head. “All I see is a girl who was refused help by the one person who was supposed to give it. I saw you yesterday. I saw you last night. I may not have talked to that many people before or know that much about mortals, but I know that that’s not how bad people react to doing something like that.”
Agatha wiped away a tear. “You still believe that? After everything I’ve told you?”
“Without a single doubt.”
Agatha smiled, and another tear streamed down her cheek as she put her head on Rio’s chest. “At least if I write a memoir, it’ll have a bunch of stuff in the childhood section.”
Rio raised an eyebrow.
Agatha sighed. “You have to go, don’t you?”
“Yeah, but I have a little more time.”
They sat there for a little bit before they got up, and Agatha escorted Rio to the door.
“Breakfast is on the counter, and I’ll be back as soon as I get everything in order. Stay off your feet this time.”
Agatha smiled. “I’ll try.”
Rio forced a smile as the ground swallowed her. “Te veo.”