The good days stopped.
Not all at once. That was the thing about decline — it didn't announce itself with a single moment. It arrived in increments. A Tuesday that was harder than Monday. A Thursday where the clarity came for an hour and then left. A Saturday where she slept through most of the visit and woke briefly and held Mira's hand and didn't speak.
Seren had read about this.
He had read about it the way he read about everything that frightened him — thoroughly, in advance, so that the information could become familiar before he needed it. The body's gradual withdrawal. The way consciousness went before everything else did, sometimes.
Reading about it and being in it were different things.
He still went to work.
That was a decision he made deliberately and kept deliberately. Not because the work was more important than his mother. Because the work was one of the things she had told him to keep. Go be where you're supposed to be. This was where he was supposed to be too.
