And then—silence.
A sudden, heavy silence.
The cries stopped.The air grew thick, suffocating.Cold fear gripped me, wrapping its fingers around my throat.My heart thundered, trying to drown it out.I clutched Roman tighter, my only light in the growing darkness, unwilling to let fear claim this moment, unwilling to let death creep in.
But something was wrong.
My arms ached with the weight of my son—and yet, they felt unbearably empty.My soul split in two, searching for what was missing.
“The other one,” I whispered, my voice cracked and fragile.“Give him to me.”
The elder woman looked at me, and in her eyes, I saw sorrow, deep and ancient, like the shadowed sun outside.She knelt beside me, and her words destroyed me.
“Your other baby… he didn’t make it.”
Her voice was gentle, but it hit me like a scream.Like the sky itself had broken open.
“No.”The word ripped from my throat.“Give him to me!”My voice a shattered plea, a command, a mother’s cry born from the marrow of my bones.“Please, I need to hold him.”
She shook her head slowly, her face lined with the burden of many such moments, but this was mine.Mine to carry.Mine to grieve.
“No,” she whispered.“The child is dead.We can’t.”
The world collapsed.
A guttural cry ripped from the depths of my soul, as if grief itself had found a voice through me.My body convulsed around the sound, and in that moment, I ceased to exist as anything but pain.
The entrance of the teepee darkened.A silhouette filled the space—broad, strong, yet burdened.Dancing Fire stepped inside, and in his arms lay something impossibly small, impossibly still.
My breath caught.
He was holding my child—my lifeless baby—and the sight cleaved through me, a blade of agony so vicious I thought it might kill me where I lay.
“Marcellious…” The name was a whisper of despair, a fragile prayer to a god who had not answered.I stared at that tiny face—peaceful, untouched by breath or laughter—a little warrior who had never drawn his first breath yet had stolen every part of me.
Dancing Fire’s eyes, always fierce, were dim now, dulled by sorrow.He held my baby close, his arms trembling.
“Give him to me, now!”I gasped, my voice hoarse, torn raw by anguish.
“Elizabeth…” His voice cracked, and he turned slightly, shielding the baby from my sight as though he could spare me.As though he could stop the bleeding of my soul.
“Give him to me!”I screamed, the words shredding my throat, a mother’s plea.
His face twisted in pain as he relented, stepping forward.With shaking hands, he placed my stillborn child into my arms.
Tears poured from me—silent, ceaseless—as I held him, my fingers tracing his perfect, lifeless face.I kissed his forehead, my lips trembling.
“My sweet boy,” I choked out.“Your father would have wanted you to be strong.”I pressed him close as if I could will life into him.“I love you so much, my little Marcellious.I love you so much.”
Against my chest, Roman stirred, his small body pressing into mine as he suckled hungrily, alive and warm.One child in my arms, clinging to life—one lost to death’s quiet claim.
The contrast was unbearable.Roman’s heat, his breath, the rhythm of his heartbeat—against his brother’s cool, unmoving form.My arms were full, yet I had never felt so hollow.
Tears ran like rivers down my face, and I clung to them both—one of flesh and fire, the other now a memory etched in sorrow.Death had come for my son, but it could not take my love.Not ever.
Sobs racked my body, violent and unrelenting, each one a dirge, a farewell to dreams never lived, to whispered promises now lost in the void.I clung to Marcellious, desperate to hold onto the fading warmth in his fragile body, as the shadows of the eclipse seemed to pull him from my arms, from this world.
Dancing Fire knelt beside me, and with a tenderness that defied the hardened calluses of his warrior’s hands, he reached for Marcellious.I resisted, tightening my hold, unwilling to surrender even in death—but the cold had already claimed him.With shaking hands, I let go.
