#Prompt 23:

A deep voice sings each night, a haunting song unlike any you've heard at the recording studio where you work. Each night you listen and fall in love, until one moonless night you seek its origin, finding someone unexpected.

***

Tonight, she heard it again. Jan tilted her head in fascination.

She had worked with voices of different timbres, tones, pitches. A hundred different singers who had trained to make their voices dance with emotion. Who had studied how to play with the strings of a guitar, the notes of a piano, creating melodies to give off the impression of bottomless sentiment.

But nothing compared to this.

"The world goes around and around and around... "

With a peculiar haziness muddling her sight, the girl heard a sound. A voice of warmth. Warmth of the sun, enough to embrace her. Enough to scorch her skin. But that's what she liked about it. 

A voice of another woman. The calming tune filled her blurry senses, letting all bygones be bygones. A memory or two itching to remember itself, but she barely had the energy to get up from bed. She surely wouldn't now.

Not when after days and weeks of restlessness, she finally got a fruitful escape that was the tranquil melody coming from this mysterious person's lips. 

The girl, in all that daze, reached out to touch her face, only to find her hands wet and sticky. Jan rubbed the residue on the sheets as she tipped her head slightly from left to right.

Left to right.

Left to right.

"The world is yours, only yours... "

A faint smile graced her lips as her half lidden eyes gleamed with blissfulness. 

Never had anything in the world brought her something so infinite. A voice that put her beating heart to rest. A voice that calmed her anxieties. A voice that embraced her like the arms of a mother. A voice of love, boundless and endless.

For a split second, Jan felt a spark ignite her chest. And then she realized, that's what this was.

A voice of a mother.

Was this her mother singing to her? She could hardly tell. Why couldn't she tell apart her mother?

"My love will only live a good life for me, will only bring a good life to me... "

Giddiness colored her insides as her fingers fidgeted with odd elation. 

Her mother. This was her mother. 

Jan felt her heart beating out of her chest again, but this time out of joy. Her shaky fingers reached out to touch. 

"Ma... mama," her voice croaked, the words scratching against her throat. As if the girl had never spoken in her life.

Once again, as if God had been reading her thoughts, a glimpse of her vision cleared as she noticed a face staring at her. The hair on the back of her neck stood up as she began to let out sounds of exhilaration. She laughed and laughed and laughed. The way her mother taught her to, before everything descended.

Before her mother succumbed to a grave illness. An illness that messed with the head. Something she had to prepare for because she saw it coming. Some illness. Jan shook her head, unwilling to revisit the darker times of her life. 

Not wanting to remember how tired her mother had been. All the times Jan sat near her knees and listened to tears of humiliation, heartache, agony. Hands wet. Small wet spots on the carpet. All the times her mother sat quiet in the corner when her silence was loud with desperation. The times Jan stayed at her bedside as she doted on her mother. The hopelessness she felt. Jan only wanted to erase her pain but how could she. She was young back then, and the young was always immature.

So instead, she remembered the nice parts of her mother.

Her mother liked action films, lavender-scented candles, romance books. She liked January because it was the first month of the year. And she believed in fresh starts and the sun rising early morning. Something about beginnings calmed her because things were always the best in the start, before they soured and went into ruin as time passed. She remembered her mother saying she wished she could wrap up all the good things in her life in the month of January and give it to her daughter as a present. 

Then came the songs. Jan got her passion for music from her mother. She would sing songs about the joys and regrets of life, and every lyric remained coated with the love that radiated off of her. Jan knew right then that she would pass down all this motherly love to her own children. She would be their best friend, just like her mother was for her. She would be the one to hope for good things for them, and teach them the songs her mother taught her.

A deep, dull ache coursed through her body as her eyes closed overwhelmed.

"Nobody can love you like me... nobody."

The voice stopped.

The girl felt her heart scrunch in discomfort as the pain of that empty void etched itself into the back of her mind. She felt restlessness again. 

What happened? Why did it stop? Was it time to go to work? Was her mother okay?

An intense panic settled in the valleys of her chest as her fingers scrunched the fabric of her bedsheet. Where was her mother? Her chest rose and fell as the familiar spark of apprehension colored her veins. 

It was nothing but frustration. The more tired she got, the less she could think. 

And right when the anxiety shifted to exhaustion, she saw the face that was there come closer to her. For a blimp of time, her vision cleared as she made out the face that oddly looked a lot like Jan. But it wasn't her mother. And then the face spoke.

"Mom, are you okay? You're crying so much. You want me to sing to you again?"

The woman could only let the lethargy overpower her as her eyes gradually shut. She sunk into a deep slumber, her mind fading into nothingness.