Orphans
I am quite tempted to claim myself as an orphan. It would insult my parents, however, if this part of my sojourn on Midgard were ever found out. So I tell Atlanta about my parents, as she requested by implication, but in general terms.
I do not tell her about Thor, nevertheless.
“If you would not mind, I would be interested in a tale of your birth and early childhood,” I write at the end of my narrative.
I hear her sigh. Then she sits up in bed, so I mimic her.
“Tell nobody,” she signs, while giving me a serious, penetrating stare that is… rather impressive, for one of her age and level of experience, then continues via text messages between the phones:
“I am actually an orphan. Mom was best friends with my birth mom. But my birth mom was never married too. I was part of her experiment. She was a geneticist. She died in a car crash when I was 3. She died protecting me from the impact. I became deaf after that. My sight is not quite good either after that.”
`Oh.` I stare at the texts. `Oh. Oh.`
I cannot decide what to feel.