“So you’re really leaving. Over a rat.”
“It’s not as if I have a choice, Mother. I’m exiled. I won’t waste my time with appeals. You know how headstrong everyone on the council is.” Headstrong might be the wrong word choice here. Pigheaded, perhaps. Unfair to pigs, though. And bigoted to boot.
“You’ll die out there, Penelope. Over a rat?”
“Over Jeffrey. And he’s not just a rat. He’s Rattus rattus anosophoros.” He stirs in the side pocket of my jacket. He always reacts to my distress. Now it only adds to his own. He misses the familiar scent and texture of my lab coat’s pocket. I stroke his head. Soon, love. Wait until we’re out.
“You can slap any fancy name on it, it’s still just a rat! And what about me? Your own mother?” A sniffle. Here come the waterworks.
How predictable. And how damned effective. It’s the last time you break my heart, Mother. “You’ll manage. You always do.”
I keep shoving things into my backpack: warm clothes, energy bars, ammo, med-kits, socks — one can never have too many socks in the wastelands. Or caramel-flavoured bars — to reminisce about the times I shared those with Jeffrey on my breaks. You keep sniffling. I keep my eyes on the task. I need to leave while the sun’s up to find shelter outside, in a world full of hungry, desperate survivors. Jeffrey’s warmth in my pocket adds to my resolve. I won’t be alone.
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And we’ve been through this before: you, sitting at the edge of my bed, weeping perfectly timed tears, clutching crumpled tissues now that you don’t have pearls to clutch any more, your back cemented straight in that proper, dignified posture.
“How can you do this to me? After everything I’ve done for you? So you could study that nonsense of yours? That nano-stuff!”
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