Chapter  379

XENOIS "I know," I said, putting my arm around her carefully. "I miss her too. Sometimes I'll be in the middle of pack business and think 'Xena would have a funny comment about this' and then I remember she's gone and it hits me all over again." "Does it get easier?" she asked. "Does the missing ever stop hurting?" "No," I said honestly. "But you learn to carry it better. You learn that grief and love are two sides of the same coin. That missing her means she mattered. That the pain is proof of how much we loved her." We sat together in the quiet, both crying now, both holding each other while we mourned the person we'd lost. I'd spent so much of the last five years angry at my mother. Angry for what she'd done to Lumina, angry for how she'd manipulated me, angry for the way she'd let her grief poison everything around her. But sitting here, listening to her break down and admit her failures and show me the raw wound that had never healed----I understood her better. Understood that she