I've known Mother to be dead for longer than I knew her alive. I remember small moments: Falling asleep on her shoulder as she carried me home at night after a holiday party. Teaching me to swim. Singing as she washed dishes. I remember feeling safe with her. Even when Father shouted, her voice would silence him. Protecting me. Memories that comforted me.
Until I saw her.

The market at Bonnet Plaza, in the West District. I was getting lunch outside the Mechanica home office. Caiatl's logisticians, Father's lickspittles, hiccups at Factories Three and Four—a miserable day.

I had interred her. She was ash. But in this moment, I saw my mother moving through the crowd with her Ghost flitting around her head. She had been dead for three years at this point. Somehow, the Light had found her. It seems all it needed was ash.

Two others chosen by the Light marched at her side, bristling with weapons, leashed to their puppeteers. The Chosen, on some holy business to save humanity. She glowed, flush with heat, as if the fire that cremated her now animated her from within. I cried out in horror, unable to stop myself. It made sense: of course the Traveler would grant my beloved mother the gift every child in the Last City dreams of, every dying elder longs for, as they move away from the main of life. Eternal life without fear.

But when I embraced her, crying her name at the center of a cheering crowd, what did my mother do?

She shoved me away.

I felt the searing push of Solar energy in her strength. A sizzling reminder on my chest as I stumbled back and fell. Not a twinkle of recognition in her eyes, just discomfort, the look one gives a clamoring beggar that gets too close. Cold She was cold; she was hideous, a doppelganger, homunculus. Her chirping idiot of a Ghost commanded me to clear the way, and off they went. Bystanders helped me to my feet. Strangers, kinder than my own mother.

Is this the truth of the Light? Is this what it does? Animate the dead and possess them with Ghosts, puppeteers who keep them hooked to life like a fish on a lure? To prey on desperation and transfix the City in this poisoned dream? What miracle makes a mother spit on her child? My memories of her are now curses. Leaden dead weight. Every single one a searing ember.