Atoms Never Touch by micha cárdenas

Author:micha cárdenas [cárdenas, micha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AK Press
Published: 2023-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9.

13:00:45 <@nepantla> still looking for a waterwitch. need to cast a finding spell

13:01:30 <@quimera> have you tried asking en los canales patriarcados?

13:01:31 <@quimera> the patriarchal channels??

13:42:49 @nepantla (+i) Away. 2:#akellare_cyborg (+Cnt)

The light of the characters—neon green against a dark background—flickered as the text chat scrolled upward. By candlelight, in near darkness, Luz sat cross-legged in meditation, eyes closed, hands folded in her lap. Her long curly brown hair lay across the black scarf draped across her shoulders. She often thought the scarf, thin but woven of thick thread with frayed edges, looked like a mourning garment. But more importantly: it looked witchy.

Luz inhaled deeply, stretching her spine upward as she envisioned connecting to the stars and galaxies far above her head. Then she sent her attention rushing down through her body, and through the earth. She pictured in her mind the arms of the trees she walked among at night along with her black dog, the way they moved slightly with the cold wind, the bright moonlight through them. Trees are the goddess incarnate, hundreds of years of strength and energy flowing through them. She was preparing to ask the goddess to help her find the hacking hardware that she needed to locate her mother.

Luz was sharing an apartment with her friend Gloria. For years, she had moved from place to place, finding a home wherever she could. She had been told that her mother had given her away to a friend’s family when she was just two years old. And then her mother disappeared. Luz had no memories of her after that point.

She had moved so many times as a child that she couldn’t even count the number of places she’d lived. When she was thirteen, she had been able to live with a friend, Luisa, and her friend’s mother, Connie, for a few years. She grew to think of them as family. One night after school, Luz waited for hours to be picked up by Connie. No one came. Finally, she called Gloria, Connie’s older daughter, and asked for a ride. Gloria was eighteen at that point, and attending college to study psychology. Driving home from the school, they sat in silence. Luz watched the stripes of light and dark moving across her arm and the car’s interior. Finally, Gloria began to speak in low, sad tones.

She said, “My mom was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. She has schizophrenia. We don’t know when she will be out.” Her own devastation was clear in her voice. “I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to move again. The plan is for you to go live with my dad—Connie’s ex-husband. His name is Jesus.”

Luz kept watching the moving lines of black shadow and cold blue streetlight moving rapidly inside the car. She turned away from Gloria as the tears streamed down her face, as it involuntarily wrinkled, and she sobbed. She didn’t grasp the full meaning of Gloria’s words, but she knew she was losing Connie, losing someone who had mothered her, someone who had been kind to her.

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