Turn Back The Clock - Part II

And now...for the part where things begin to happen...

It had been another long day. Emma Morris had just sunk into her spot on her couch when the a faint chime echoed through the house. 

The doorbell, much like the rest of the house, had been left unused for far longer than intended. As Emma Morris had continued to descend into half-madness, so had her home and her life. It was impeccably tidy, preserved in an idyllic manner that could have been mistaken for cleanliness rather than disuse. She had no one to call upon her, and no need for the doorbell.

Within a few moments, the bell had rung again, this time louder and clearer. 

She sprang to her feet with more enthusiasm than she had done anything else with for months. The doorbell rang a third time, singing it's melody sharper than it had the two times prior. 

"Coming!" she called, her voice tired. But the faint glow of once-present youthfulness crept back into it.

She limped to the door, pausing for a moment, hand on the knob. The thought flashed across her mind. Who would be ringing her doorbell?

But it did not linger for long - not much did in Emma Morris' mind any longer. The ability to be suspicious and to overthink anything had long faded away. Now she was weary. Too weary for such dramatics.

She turned the knob and stepped back, mightily yanking the old door toward her. She stumbled back, staggering on her weak left leg, as the door swung on it's hinges for a long moment. 

Emma stared, unfazed, at her guest, as the door lolled weakly in between them.

The girl was anything but familiar, but Emma's heart panged at the sight of her. Her violet eyes were wide and hopeful, her dark hair chopped short to her shoulders. She was not the girl in her dreams, and yet...her demeanor. The way she stood. The hanging silence between them.

"Emma Morris?" the girl asked quietly. Her expression morphed as she took in the woman before her. Her gait, the circles of exhaustion that ringed her eyes, her pale knuckles. 

"This is she..." Emma responded, equally softly. She spoke at the factory, but never to individuals. She was always shouting over the din of whirring machines and cardboard and plastic wrap, over footsteps and the crinkle of blue uniform fabric. Shouting for safety, shouting for the hundreds of workers beside her to keep turning levers, shouting in pain when her hands cramped and longed to be set free.

But she was a silent woman. She had not always been, but she had become one. She had not spoken to a single soul in many weeks. Nor had she been sought out to be spoken to.

"Emma Grace Morris?" the girl inquired skeptically. Her eyes narrowed, turning from hues of violet to a dark blue. She glanced up and down the woman's body, and peered past her, into the house. Her eyes darted to the rusted doorbell.

"This is she," Emma repeated, her voice stronger. The girl watched her, unmoving. She blinked slowly, as though she were more confused than the resident of the house she had searched for. 

"Oh. Age...thirty-one?" The girl looked down at the potted plants beside the house, at the gravel leading up to it, at her black sneakers. And then up at Emma Grace Morris, thirty-one. 

It was evident that Emma had once been beautiful and carefree. But it looked as though it had been at least thirty years since that had been so. The gray in her hair and the limp in her walk did not add up to thirty-one years of age. Emma Morris pursed her lips. Her age was a sore subject. It had been...for fifteen years. The girl did not seem to recognize this. She cleared her throat slowly. 

"I'm...my name is Xila," she began. What an eccentric name, Emma Grace Morris thought. She had been blessed - or, perhaps cursed - with a common name. A simple, sweet, common name - very well suited to her person. She had never cared much for those who set themselves starkly apart. She had never much cared for feathers or flashing lights or eccentric names. Much less violet-eyed teenaged girls with shiny black sneakers and names that started with the letter X. "Xila..." the girl said, as though she would go on. But she did not. She did not introduce her surname, her purpose, where she had come. 

Emma waited, but Xila stood in front of her. They watched each other in tense silence. "Um...you must be...ago, and..." Xila mumbled the ends of phrases, most of her words lost to the wind. A few long minutes later, she brought the syllables into cohesion. "You're my mother?"