//------------------------------//
// the mother and the son 
// Story: No. Not there. She's not on the moon. 
// by waste 
//------------------------------//

The truck drove on to the road, skids of black on asphalt. The stale sound of Adele and Cantonese pop formed into clipped sounds. The CD player is used, no radio stations. The mother is safe in this humming vault of metal. She flicks dust from her eyes. Asian, oriental eyes curved and elfish. The eyelids shuttered on to sleep or the edge of it. About a full day since she slept. She makes an effort to stay awake.  

Raised in Hong Kong by her mother, in America she married her husband. Two different kinds of love, with her preferring the husband’s shy awkward kind. Like how all things end and begin she made a family with him.

Chinese. Fair complexion and worn skin. She’s tall and skinny, a rakish figure and impossibly tall for someone of her race. All Long legs, long arms and strangely short fingers. Features she felt made her imposing but her husband thought beautiful. What did he say? Your legs run for miles. Then he’d give her thigh a kiss and make her blush.

They met when she was in America. She was stranded with a broken engine halfway through the country to meet a client, him fixing her engines in between humming tunes of soul music or hushing himself when she entered the room. Smaller and gentler then her, she was humbled and moved by him. His softly spoken voice, foreign sounding and seemingly without accent. After an hour of her in the room he was brave enough to sing.  Fond of tinkering with the mysterious innards of cars he would sing and she would listen.Finally in a quiet voice he said he finished and if she needed anything. She laughed and handed the small shy man a smile, money and her number. She closed the distance and couldn’t help but kiss him, him trembling in her arms.   

All she has of him now is:
His truck.
His shotgun. 
A landscape of good memories.
Their son.   

Her son tethered with her black hair and the father’s eyes. Six years old and constantly astounded at the world, yet in caught-out moments capable of silent far-off stares filled with feelings desolate and edged. He holds in him a brittle innocence that could shatter in the harshness outside. So its hard. Hard to make their fate in her decisions; unmade points of time not yet come. Yet this decision already made. Without regret. 
To drive to the end of the world and a little further. 

A flash of light in to the left of her. A presence in the passenger seat. She swerves and swears.

“Keep your hands on the wheel. No don’t turn your head. Don’t do that. Don’t look at me or you will spin out of control. Don’t worry you and your son are safe.”
A rummaging of panicked Cantonese. Her widened eyes wants to tear into the thing sitting in the passenger seat.
“Honey. I don’t speak Chinese, or whatever gook language you’re talking. So take it easy. Tell me in English if you still want go to the end of the world.”
“Get out of my car.”
“If I can appear out of nothing into your passenger seat do you think I’ll leave? Nice truck. Or car. Whatever it is.”
“It’s a truck”

“Mama what is it? Why is the light talking? What’s a gook?”
“Quiet Hayden. Sweetie please let me talk.”
“Okay ma.”
“Don’t ever say gook again.”
“Okay.”

She tenses out her shoulders, the stress and lack of sleep dangerous companions. Her stare on the road and the road into the horizon, into slabs of blinding American sunshine. Into unbalanced whiteness.

“You an angel or a demon?”
“What does that mean?”
“You good or you bad?”
“I’m whatever I’m needed to be.”
“You’re a smart ass then. You have a name?”
“Yes. But don’t laugh at it. I’m usually called the elements of harmony or an emissary of it. An avatar if you like. My true body is as set of glorified jewellery. And no don’t. Don’t even try to look at me yet. Wait why are you slowing down?”
“So I can look at you. Then get my husband’s gun and shoot you.”	
“Tell me first. Do you really want to go to the ends of the world and further?”

Brakes shunting. The truck reaching slowness. Stopping. All of it floated into the ridges of dirty brown and the cationic sun. Silent scorched colour.

“Yes. There’s nothing for us here. Me and my son. I’m guessing you know why?”
“Yeah. I know. Alright. You can look at me.”
“Christ. What the hell. You’re not human. You’re not real”
“Define real.”
“Why are you glowing.”
“Why are you covered in flesh.”
“God. Oh my god.”
“Why are you kissing that cross necklace?”
“Why are you in the goddamn car?”
“I thought it was a truck”
“Shut up. Just. No. Let me think.”

A white grasping of light. It floats there on top of the passenger seat. The elements of harmony incarnate. She slips the crucifix back inside the light green top she wears. She sighs and rests her forehead against the wheel.
“Mama?”
“Yeah?”
“You good mama?”
“Yes Hayden. Shh remember”

“Why won’t Hayden talk to me?”
“Does he look like an idiot?”
“Fine. Business then. Start the truck and carry on this road. Make no turns. Do it if you want to go to the ends of the world. If you find yourself somewhere unknown carry on in a straight line.”
“Do I look like an idiot?”
“Fine stay here and let the men that killed him kill you next, then kill your son.”

Fear finally cracking through her face.

“You don’t need to say that.”
“You don’t need to be a hard ass”
“So what? You save our lives and what for?”
“Well there’s a reason and a price.”
“What’s the price?”
“Take Luna back to her sister. Then you load this shell into your shotgun. Shoot the draconequus”
“Draconequus?”
“You’ll know when you see it. Like a dragon.”
“The reason.”
“Hmm?”
“What’s the reason?”
“You’re desperate. You’re an outcast that’s managed to find happiness. You seem nice”
“I had something better then happiness.”
“Okay. So help Luna get something like that. Fix my failures.”
“How will I find her?”
“You truck will break down in the first two days in equestria. Two hours after that she will appear.”
“Equestria?”
“Yes. You’re going to drive down this road and then find yourself in a different world altogether.”
“No coming back right?”
“Right.”
“What’s stopping me from not doing any of that?”
“Your conscience.”
“We can’t go home.”
“No.”

It can see all things that are and what it should be. Some things aren’t fair but they were never meant to be. A wife lost a husband. Two sisters now enemies. How is that harmony? Killing and changing the bright fires that carry dreams and good intentions. Sacrificing a sister’s vision of a world for another. Snuffing out the dwindled lights dying with hope. Hope for what? 
For something else. 
The want of change and the need of nothing to change.

The elements’ voice. Softer.
“Remember he loved you.”
“Pardon?”
“He loved you.”
“Yes. Why are you really here? Why me?”

Even Hayden stays silent in this moment. Who knows what the elements of harmony think.

“I' m meant to be honesty, kindness, laughter, generosity, Loyalty, magic. Yet all I've done is hurt. I've only ever been a weapon. A tool. You loved and lived more then any of my convoluted plans could achieve. Absolve my sins and my failures.”

So the element’s decided to make things right. To leave the ones it hurt in the care of someone unbroken that in all rights shouldn’t; a family that lost a husband and father. An event monstrously wrong that could still give the world a loving mother. A tender son. 

The elements of harmony drifted out to the shaken heat of America. One last glare of sun. 
The last sight. 
A mother and son.
Entering a place two thousand miles from equestria.