She had put it off, making excuses the entire time. She put it off last year, too.

Elaine often struggled with the idea of kindness, at least as it pertained to her own being radiated outwards, rather than an expected tribute from the world at large directed at herself. Cruelty - at least the kind no one asked for - wasn’t a part of her, and she despised it. But the more demanding ask of bending her own comfort for the sake of another was something else entirely.

It’s just a phone call, she told herself. She sprawled out on the foot of her bed, leaning off it to stroke Petitu’s silky little forehead, and forced herself to smile so that it could be heard through the line.

“Misty!” She flinched, as generally did at the sound of a name she no longer used. She had never asked her own mother to observe the name change - it would have been one of those pointless acts of cruelty she shied away from - and had in fact told her that it had just been a professional move. That was the other great trial of speaking to her own mother. She found herself forced to lie, and Elaine hated lying.

“Merry Christmas, Mama,” she said. There was the general background ruckus of children and a TV turned up too high, and the sounds of wrapping paper being crushed and new toys being tried. She heard her sister calling out a greeting from somewhere, and added: “Tell Brandi I said hi, too.”

The message was relayed, and Elaine buckled down to the toil of her mother’s usual lengthy chatter and many questions, all the while feeling wretched and disgusted that it was a toil. She was fortunate - she knew it - to have a mother so thoroughly doting on her, who had ground herself down to a husk of a person with no energy to do anything but sit in an armchair and gaze on her white trash kingdom of happy, well-fed children and grandchildren, with pictures of her own daughters in their college graduation robes on her worn-down walls. More fortunate still to have a mother who, in defiance of all odds of birth and upbringing, was open-minded, generous with her principles, and firmly on a path of righteous goodness in a world where the people around her increasingly weren’t. It was an ingratitude in her, and she knew it, to treat speaking to this woman like a chore, but it was.

She was reminded of it almost immediately by her mother’s usual inquiry as to whether she had a boyfriend yet. The conversation always went the same, and she inwardly sighed.

“Not yet, Mama. I’m real busy,” she added, casting a glance up at the black leather skirt hanging on the back of her closet door.

“Misty Lynn Grundy,” her mother said, half-stern, half-gentle. “What about a girlfriend, honey? You know I’d–”

“I know, Mama. I’d tell you. I don’t have a girlfriend either. I’m real, real busy,” she repeated, as usual feeling herself annoyed by her own drawl creeping back in, the usual response to her mother’s.

They trod the usual ground: what everyone got for Christmas, Elaine saying thank you for the little package she’d received with as much in it for Petitcru as herself; what the weather’s been like (she kept to herself the more pressing elements of weirdness in the winter weather of Destiny City, for fear of frightening); her mother’s concern about Elaine’s safety in that big old city that always seemed to be on the news and Facebook for one bad reason or another.

“Mama,” said Elaine. “You know I told you about listening to that nonsense or you’re gonna turn into one of those crazy trailer park ladies trying to shoot the mailman.”

“I know, honey. I know.” It was meekly said. She often had a sort of meekness in submitting to her daughters’ greater education and wisdom. “I just worry.”

“Well, don’t. I’m fine. Better than ever. I love my job - even being busy is fun,” she said, again with that wretched twinge of self-reproach at her own lies by omission. “It’s not dangerous here, Mama, not really. Or people wouldn’t move here like they do.” She thought briefly of Todd and his warnings of magical rabies. “Not as many of them, anyway. Anyway, I’m tough. You know that.”

“I know.”

“And I keep my head down,” she added. “I ain’t getting involved in none of that.”

She did not know how far from the truth that this would soon become. It was, at the moment, one of the few things she could say without having to conceal something from her mother, and she basked a bit in the relief of knowing that she was, at least, free from any of that Destiny City Bullshit.

Her mother paused. “You gonna call me on your birthday?” she asked, her voice wheedling, and Elaine sighed silently, pressing her hand to her eyes as she rolled onto her back.

“Yeah.”

Another long silence ensued, and before Elaine could break it, her mother did instead: “I just feel bad for you all alone in that apartment on Christmas Day. I wish you coulda come been with us this week.”

“I know, Mama. I’m sorry. Maybe in January. If I can get the time off work,” she added, knowing full well that she could if she wanted to and inwardly making her excuses even to herself. “But I’m not lonely. I got Petitcru with me, and we’re gonna put on some music and I’m gonna read that poem I read every year, just like I would if I was there. I even got some hot chocolate,” she added, leaving out that she’d also gotten plenty to spike it with. “You got enough to worry about at home. How’s Brandi’s baby doing?”

The topic was diverted, for a time, into a safer one. It was easier to convince her mother to forget about Elaine’s own unwillingness to provide her with grandchildren when they dwelled on the other daughter’s enthusiasm for it. It meandered here and there, all noisy, happy chaos on her mother’s end and peaceful stillness on her own, and finally petered out to the inevitable end.

“Well, honey,” she said at last. “I’m gonna go. They’ve been tugging on my sleeves for fifteen minutes. Merry Christmas, Misty,” she added. “I love you. You keep your head down. I don’t wanna see you on the news.”

“Not a chance of it,” she assured her. “I love you too.”

She spent a moment gazing silently at the ceiling, braced for what was coming and what did: a pang of loneliness, borne not from her empty house but from the sense of directionlessness that sometimes plagued her. She was not unhappy. But there was a hollowness, at times, and it reared its ugly heads around holidays and birthdays - so close together, in her case - that seemed to taunt her with restless feet. She had resolved to stay here at least two, three years. To settle, at least for a while. The constant moving was getting exhausting. But “getting away from Kentucky” hadn’t had the magical, seismic effects she had imbued the fantasy with, not even after she had changed her name and expected her new life to turn her into a new person. Every conversation with her mother reminded her that she might be Elaine Carlisle, but that maybe Elaine Carlisle wasn’t actually all that different from Misty Lynn. Misty Lynn in new clothes, new teeth, new tits, but Misty Lynn all the same.

Snow fell on the City and Elaine Carlisle, feeling separated from it, was unaware of its hands reaching out with the cold fingers of Destiny, preparing to pull her close.