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At least on the train I could be ain There were no rules to abide by No etiquette I had to follow in order to avoid offending anyone

The only challenge was sleep, because that hen est I dreamed still My dreams, and hers, until sometimes I couldn’t tell the two apart

In one, I dreamed of a newborn baby She didn’t cry or kick, didn’t breathe at all She was a beautiful child, so sile And so very, very still

I held her, rocking her in e I didn’t recognize Yet that didn’t stopwords

Close your sweet eyes

Life doesn’t last long

You’d better go sleeping

Flying through dreams

Close your sweet eyes

’Cause life is a lie

Find happiness in dreaht, my child

A knife piercedme with so much ache I wanted to open ainst everything and everyone When I openedca, that said nothing

Then he was there, taking the baby frolanced up, into his golden eyes, and back down at the downy patch of golden hair on her tiny, lumpy skull I wanted to press one ainstthe blanket over her face Concealing her Hiding her

And, soon, he’d bury her, too

There were other births, and other graves, but never that same sense of loss Even in the dream, I wondered: How many babies had Sabara conceived? How ht those whom I loved Yet she’d done it for decades, centuries, eons

All except for Niko

Niko, who caration of leaving her just so they could be together once more