∗ ∗ ∗
Aoi's age-begotten caretaker wasn't the least bit disappointed in his failure to keep down any of the beautiful dishes she had so lovingly prepared–in fact she was downright doxological. Deconstructing her cheers and prayers of gratitude, Aoi deduced that Mita's reasoning for not being upset at the potential of wasted food was simply that it was never going to be wasted.
Is Mita..
"Lo bendiga mi niño, our Mother revealed the secret to me!"
She seemed to have a revelation before walking, quite animatedly, into the bedroom that slowly became Aoi's entire world. She was inching along the wooden bedroom floor carrying her silver tray topped with bowls. Simple soups, broths and decoctions. They were to be the start to his personal healing journey.
"Mi niño, guarapo. For you!" She beamed.
A delicious infusion of lemongrass and soursop leaves, vibrant citrus though not quite as tart, and perfectly balanced by a hint of wild wood— offered for light nutrition and hydration three times a day–for the first day; paired with what had to be the wastewater of a yield of sweet potatoes, though it was tasty.
"Primero la obligación, después Devoción—pero primero la digestión!" She warbled cheerily.
Once the moon had once again begun hiding her face his drinks were paired with a root stew, Sopa de Viandas; malanga, yutía and calabaza, slowly simmered in agua de batata. His sinuses were opened, the softened roots lightly seasoned melted apart in his mouth, to fill his stomach with a warm relaxing fullness.
When was the last time I was able to eat like this?
"Keep eating mi niño, Our Lady of Providence brought you to me," Her tiny frail smile was outshined by tremendous Selenic eyes magnified by her thick lenses. "And Benito." Aoi's face was moistened by Mita reciting prayers in offering to her Goddess right alongside his bed, her beloved son's beaming smile watching from over her shoulder.
"Mita, are you even real?"
"Aye!! Mi niño!!" She cackled. "So funny!"
But I'm not being funny
Aoi's half-hearted grin, wide eyes and glacially paced nodding went seemingly unnoticed by his caretaker as she hobbled off to whoever else in the home probably needed blessings. Not that he could feel anyone else, there was just something about this place. And Aoi was too tired and too full of hot soup to villanize the kind little lady who had saved his life, and been praying at his bedside. She was unusual, sure.
Considering who raised me though..
And with a smile, he was lured in by the promise of safety and such a comfortable bed. He didn't even mind the disembodied, ethereal face of a handsome war hero. In fact, Mita and her home were just odd enough. And deep sleep took him.
∗ ∗ ∗
Mita sauntered into the room with a new vigor and a trail of smoke in her wake. She was holding a dried gourd, carved with the winged visage of the Divine Mother. Rustling and crinkling with the sway of her hips, the long, dried tobacco leaves she held in her arms accented her new gait, strangely. She was magnificent. She was unreadable.
What a presence..
Surely an homage to the Goddess, she was dressed in a floor length white skirt. Her tunic–white as bone– tied into a knot over her bosom, her blue hair a soft violet hue. Wrapped around her forehead was a white sash, with red seeds woven into the fabric She was elegant–swan-like as she glided toward him.
Magic of the Goddess?
Aoi was mesmerized by Mita's skin, revitalized, and painted with gold and annatto petroglyphs. She was radiant, as if time reversed its cruel effect on her. He was caught in a memory evoked by the resinous clouds of smoke she wafted along the room from the burning of incense. The familiar, ancient scent of wisdom long lost…
The levee broke. Salt water descended his face, each tear falling along his hollowed cheeks.
Keep it together, what is this
The air was filled with a citrus-pine zing and cooling camphor. The freshness became old growth, ancient bark and soil, but sweet and peppery like fireweed nectar. To finish in thick billows of a clean, light smoke devastatingly reminiscent of myrrh.
I..
Her dewy lips moved at light speed, making no sound as she walked in circles around the room, waving a piece of lit charcoal, coated in resin. As the smoke swirled and rose to the far reaches in the quaint bedroom, it caught the light of the flickering flame above which burned an image of his savior's lost son.
The wind howled.
Can't sense anything.
The clinking of colliding cane stalks and crashing of the tempestuous ocean, paired with the rattling of her ornamental stone and shell necklace percussing a beguiling mystique upon the ritual unfolding. As the smoke presumptively achieved its goal Mita, a Saint of early years, rested the sacred tobacco on her heart and there was absolute silence.
But…
The winds outside wouldn't dare interrupt as his mysterious savior hung her head in prayer, as such Aoi was compelled to bow his head along, in silence.
The High Priestess beheld the unfettered flame, as a gust swept through the room closing a large, holy tome, not unlike, in design, the grimoires his mother authored, and mentor brought as gifts when he was but a child. The man's smiling face disappeared in the breeze, at which time she offered the tip of the bundle to the flame.
The room was filled with rich, lurid, earthen and ashen fever dreams. The tobacco burned and released clouds of thick smoke, riddled with ancient secrets and divine energies. The beautiful ghost of Mita's past drew in the smoke with pursed pouting lips where she directed puffs to the four cardinal directions and back down into the earth.
"Matum, Yaya. Matum, Atabey. We offer this sacred breath to you. We ask that the Mother clear our minds, give us strength to walk a good path today, and protect our families. Carry our words up to the sky. Divine Mother, we thank you." She beheld Aoi, who beheld her.
Is she..was she in my head?
She was again as radiant as before this rite, though not the visage of divinity she had just portrayed but Mita, the divine mother that she is. She held out her hand, thin-skinned and wrinkled, trembling slightly as it made its way to Aoi's face; his mouth agape and mind vacant.
"Mi niño. Divine Mother be with you."
"Mita." Aoi smiled.
Her eyes giant, silver saucers, her meek smile simultaneously made his heart ache and ease. She patted his cheek, and kissed his forehead.
The entirety of the world fell away..
∗ ∗ ∗
I see
"Mm…is this..plantain?" Aoi was chewing a spoonful of the dome-shaped golden garlicky crispy mashed dish on his plate. He had inhaled the passion fruit, and mango. They were okay.
"Mofongo." Her silver saucer eyes drank him in, as they had been since he woke, which he had done in return, though less conspicuously. They were wonderful, he decided. He was starving and maybe affected from the fall or any of the many recent injuries his body suffered, which could explain his tastebud's lack of enthusiasm.
Her mana flows beautifully though she seems to have very little
"I like this. Thank you Mita." Aoi smiled at her, secretly willing the flow of her mana be scrutinized. Intensely, though not outwardly, he honed his awareness ever sharper. Mita's mana held clarity, and calm; pure and steady–refinorcing her body. Nothing wasted, but absolutely nothing being constricted, nothing being held at bay scratching at its prison for release.
"Mi niño, thanks be to the Goddess, She brought you to me. Her grace blesses this meal."
"Hey Mita, where are we?" He sipped the drink, warm and creamy, so rich. There was a slight tang and acidity to it, and a familiar sweetness. "It's delicious Mita, where did you get the cacao? I mean just the resources.."
"Chocolate, mijo's favorite."
"Yes," He began, mulling over his own pending question, and her nonresponse. "Hey, Mita? Do you have a map that I could look–"
"They all come from one seed-cane…from home." She pointed to the sugar cane–jutting up through the ground everywhere–decorated in a fine silk mist through the window beside his bed.
"Benito was the cortador, he watched me as a baby, oh I was so strong." She smiled, vacant.
"To teach Buñuelito I had to call on the strength of the Goddess, oh he was a perfect baby." Her glazed eyes seemed to be ever more so as she recounted her story, slowly. "Mijo was a guerrillero. At the first sign of war on our coast he moved me here." Tears and fog eclipsed the moons that were her eyes. "He came back here with Buñuelito the baby, and left him with me. Buñuelito's mother was killed, Mi hijo fought bravely, all of us here made this place our home."
She's…it's just her.
She grabbed the mug filled with, honest to Goddess, chocolate and her homegrown panela and thrust it upon him.
"Mita…I am so sorry about…um Buñuelito's," He enunciated the phonetics, though he was still unsure. "Mother. Where is he now?"
"You drink aguapanelita three times a day niño" She took the tray, slowly made her way out of the room, taking a minute or three to stare at her deceased son's gorgeous face leaving Aoi in shock, unable to muster strength enough to follow her from the room to, presumably, the kitchen. Or even get out from underneath the covers.
Umm..
He could only think of the uneven pillars of stacked papers that rose from an equally uneven floor, the frantic squawks of his wild green friend, and the scent of roasted beans–the caffeinated sort, as he smiled at the back of her bantam frame.
If only..
"Mita, thank you for this. It really tastes a little like heaven."
He spoke no lie.
∗ ∗ ∗
Two moons had waxed and waned with Aoi being tended to in bed with Mita answering questions he never asked and refusing to answer the ones he did. Either she was hard of hearing, or she possessed the preternatural ability to hear only those questions she deigned to answer.
Aoi spent the lulls in her visits with him, listening to the passionate stories she recounted to the miraculous effigy of her late son in the center of his room. It wasn't wholly clear to him whether they were personal accounts or the stories that were recorded to capture the essence of Her miracles.
She was undoubtedly human, and taken by time, although her moments of clarity and sharp wit were equally as unsettling as they were hilarious.
"Mi niño, it's so good to have you." Mita was eating dinner, while speaking with the revenant of her late son, but had turned her attention back to Aoi. "I have prayed and prayed for you. Drink your aguapanelita."
"Speaking of…Mita, how is it that you can harvest that sugar cane by yourself?"
"Oh pobrecito, by myself?" She laughed. "Eat, eat. Get big and strong. Mita is too old to wring out laundry!"
"Mita, are you a mage?"
"Aye, mi niño. Me, una Bruja?" She held her hand to her chest. "¡Yo soy la abuela!"
Pacified by the resilience of the tobacco clinging desperately to the walls of his birdcage and endeared by her ulterior motives he yielded to the laborious future she had in mind. Mita, unsurprisingly enough, started to spend most of the day on her own, only really attending Aoi to feed him, pray over him, and force aguapanelita down his gullet.
"I–" He reached for an excuse that he was unable to summon, deciding instead to grab the cup. "I was wondering if you had any coffee actually?" His hands trembled.
"Mi niño, no sé qué es 'caw-fee'." Her eyes were bigger than ever before as she held the unemptied cup toward his face. "Do you not like Mita's aguapanela?"
"I think your aguapanela is delicious, Mita." He drank the rest. "I would love to sweeten a cup of coffee with it, like I used to.."
"Mi niño… no sé. I don't know 'caw-fee'."
"'Don't talk to me unless I've had my coffee' coffee." Aoi laughed–through a forced smile and twitching eyelids–at the back of the confounding woman's petite stature.
What an unpleasant joke
"Coffea are tropical or subtropical flowering plants whose fruit–delicious coffee cherries you'd love them–contains a seed, called beans, when dried, roasted, then ground and brewed you get coffee." Aoi's eyes and mouth watered as his thoughts drifted to a hot green mug and the sunwarmed shell of his lost friend. "There's nothing quite like it, Mita, sorry. I love aguapanela but.." Centuries of idle conversation and countless cups of the legendary elixir brought a twinkle to his eye.
"Lo siento mi niño, did you say something?" The disembodied warbling echoed in his room, she was gone; off to wherever she was, Aoi wasn't truly concerned for the aching in his heart consumed his centre.
She doesn't have coffee..
The walls were closing in.
She hadn't even heard of it
A cold sweat lay upon his skin.
What do you mean..
Dread consumed every fiber of his being at the woman who was a coffee mug–no, an uncaffeinated woman fussing over far-off dirty dishes.
'caw-fee'
"What the fuck."
∗ ∗ ∗
For all that she seemed a constant bedside companion, the truth of it was that Mita was very much a woman of action, leaving Aoi to his own devices increasing in frequency alongside his increasing health. He imagined the little powerhouse bustling around the kitchen. He knew when meals were going to be served based on smell; he could estimate the timing of her prep work and its cleaning up from the clamoring of pots and pans. He imagined that she walked through the home blessing each corner and praying for his health, admittedly quite narcissistically.
She wasn't at all his Yaya. B was vulgar and profane at her most professional, and a natural disaster of the highest caliber on the days she couldn't bring herself to put on makeup. Mita wore one outfit, and tended to it constantly. They were both kind, fierce caretakers. And, he posited, even fiercer foes.
"Yaya.." He sighed, as he drummed his fingers along the stiffened sheets, lost in calculations that had been eluding him while his body was eating itself.
That was a weird dream
He moved one hand toward his face and drummed two fingers on his chin, inspecting the room but not retaining a piece of its existence. The faint clinking and clanking, splashing and chopping faded far off into the distance. He screwed up his face and closed his eyes trying to re-summon the scenes his subconscious conjured into life.
She was not Yaya, maybe she was B? Cookies why would she ask about cookies
His illusory Mother's wings spread through the recesses of his mind. Her fangs gleamed, but too large. He had been distracted by the inconsistencies in the dream, and his own longing to truly decipher its entirety. Trails of char and garlic made their way through the cozy room, his stomach mumbled in recognition, though his mind continued on.
A cookie jar…sewing kit..
The musings of his mother, whether a figment of his subconscious or the very real unfathomable being herself, were not new to him, but nor were they ever lost on him. It felt specific enough to matter though the clinking of dishes against silver lifted him from his interior.
"Mi niño, dinner!"
But he was feeling quite hungry. And at this point, his mouth was watering for Mita's aguapanela that most assuredly was riding alongside whatever delicious dishes the matron whipped up. He had work to do, things to figure out and a kind old granny to pay back.
"Mita! Thank you, I can't wait!"
He smiled at his incoming banquet, and resigned to completing it no matter the cost.
I mean it.
∗ ∗ ∗
"Mita? May I have some more aguapanela?"
"Aye! Mi niño!" Her hands trembled as she threw them up in delight and smushed Aoi's cheeks, to land on him a big wet kiss right on the center of his forehead. She smelled like lemons, and overripe bananas–Aoi's face, hidden from her view, burned and beamed.
"Mita." He breathed out through his hot grin.
"Yes, mi niño?"
"Mita, I just like it. Saying Mita brings a smile to my face."
He looked up into her sentiment soaked moons, though gorgeous they were not the lovely wine colored eyes of his own beloved mother, and with that realization his vision blurred with longing.
∗ ∗ ∗
Nights and moons and dreamless expanses of dark. Days, and suns and motionless expanses of light. Seduced, then suspended in the aqueous stagnation of a waking dream–the current ward of Mita, and forever lost son of–
Not forever..
Aoi was pulled into part-consciousness by latent sensation, yet lulled back into ether by the warmth of his stiff sheets, crashing of waves, the kuaiban soundscape of wind rushing through sugar cane, and the dark embrace of the witching hour.
He was tempted, with true success in sight for the first time, to move from bed to floor. Whether this was due to a new tingling in his toes, or the slightly jarring realization that he had forgotten the urges associated with his voluntary excretory processes, he couldn't bring himself to care. The smile on his face broke open his eyelids.
How long has it been…
The room was dark save a gleam of moonlight and the flickering of a candle he adapted to ignore. Aoi slowly slid his hands into the inviting space where his borrowed trousers hung from his hips, licking his lips…
my poor bladder
He could taste him. The lingering of ritual tobacco smoke was never going to let up. The room was empty, he was alone and his hand enacted a will of its own.
I would be done in less than a minute
He smiled at his own virility, as the object–objects–of desire formed themselves, large, in his mind. His hand was tickled by a brush of wiry hairs as it crept past his waist. His imagination only seemed to swell alongside himself as he turned his head to a cheerful deceased soldier.
I mean…Ben-i-to
His hand gave pause for the briefest of moments on its journey.
I like that name..
∗ ∗ ∗