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Mama was strange. She isn't like you or your sibling.
She is fuzzy around the edges; details like her eyes and patterns barely visible. The finer things were always shifting every time you blinked, like someone trying to recall an old memory and bringing it to reality, doing adjustments as they continued to remember new things.
Her body was warm, Near-uncomfortably so. Snuggling up to her felt like sitting by a fire; a hug was like being enveloped in flames.
Mama's body doesn't react the same way yours does. When she holds you, its solid. But if you try to hold her hand without her notice, it passes through her as if she wasn't there. Her arm scattering into dust before pulling itself back.
Your sibling enjoyed playing with that a lot.
Her home was called a 'Cosmic Reef', with others like her making their homes here too. Your beds are made of soft moss. Mama tells you bedtime stories as she tucks you and your sibling in with blankets as warm as she is.
Mama gets very tired sometimes, and when she does she tries to hide. You've followed her a few times, only to find a pale, purple-ish fish. Clouds of dust floating away from it as it sleeps on a rock. Closer to the others who lived on this reef than them.
One time, there was another fish watching over it. He told you that the fish was your Mama- what she really looked like. And what you normally saw of her was her trying to look like you, so you and your sibling wouldn't feel different.
He said that mama was scared that you would reject her for not being like you, even if she would never admit it.
You don't care. In fact, you find it nonsensical.
Mama is mama. Regardless of what she was.