K
Kitti
Guest
Original poster
Through the narrow hall, the walls dotted with plain wooden doors, two figures pushed past people, moving as quickly as their white robes would allow without tearing the fine byssus silk. Had they known how little time they had, they might have ignored caution and disregarded the cost of another such robe but they were not fully informed; information vital to their knowledge was too imprecise no matter how they wished they could extract more cooperation from their informants. As the pair approached their destination, their bated breath was exhaled in a bitter stream from between pursed lips; from the inside of the door they stood behind came the discordant mewling of two newborn babes crying at the same time.
A faint ray of hope prompted them to knock at the door still, loudly to be heard over the sound of the infants by the people within. The pair moved in perfect symmetry, more one person divided than two separate individuals working in tandem. Identical in height, their faces shadowed by the hoods of their robes, they were indistinguishable from one another, a fact that did not fail to unsettle the man who answered the door moments later. Relief, however, quickly washed over his face when he saw them and it was their turn to be perplexed; confusion angered the pair, they seldom had to encounter the same emotions as others and they were loathe to start with such a dissatisfactory one on this most auspicious day. At his beckoning, they followed him into the room expectantly, preparing to ask him the question that would validate their presence in this room, along with the harrowing journey they had undertaken in an attempt to arrive in time to witness the birth of the children.
Of the two robed figures, the one on the left began to speak at the same instant as the doctor did, causing the entire room to fall silent. In the air hung the voices of both the doctor and what was now clearly a woman by the voice. "Which child was born first?" she has hissed, falling to stunned silence when she registered his statement "You're the last family these children have left". Sharp glances from the pair to the bed confirmed the lifeless form of the mother, their sister, draped with a sheet. Judging by the doctor's baleful stare, they correctly assumed he had paid more attention to the failing health of the mother than to which of the infants had arrived first.
After a period of unbroken quiescence, the doctor nodded his head awkwardly at the taciturn statues before hastily departing to leave them in what he assumed to be grief. His assessment was incorrect; the hushed air lay dead in the wake of their calculated analysis. At last, quietly, they approached the basinet that cradled the newborns and received the second shock of their day. They lowered their hoods for a better view, exposing their femininity, the only commonality in their visages once the hoods were dropped. Unlike them, the infants were not of the same gender and this excluded them from carriage of the same destiny. For the first time in their lives, the somber women made a decision that came without extended study, the first truly foolish decision that they had made since the day they were born. Each lifted a child into the air with apathetic hands, exposing the full length of their tiny bodies. The female child began to cry again, only comforted into quietness when one of the sisters stroked the fine hair atop its head, marveling in the coloration. It was a sign, they decided simultaneously, a female child with hair as white as virgin snow.
In the dead of the night, the male child, as dark in hair as his sister was fair, was left for dead curled in the embrace of his dead mother but still he did not cry. There the child would have died, had a curious nurse not discreetly lifted the blanket to see the mother one last time.
A faint ray of hope prompted them to knock at the door still, loudly to be heard over the sound of the infants by the people within. The pair moved in perfect symmetry, more one person divided than two separate individuals working in tandem. Identical in height, their faces shadowed by the hoods of their robes, they were indistinguishable from one another, a fact that did not fail to unsettle the man who answered the door moments later. Relief, however, quickly washed over his face when he saw them and it was their turn to be perplexed; confusion angered the pair, they seldom had to encounter the same emotions as others and they were loathe to start with such a dissatisfactory one on this most auspicious day. At his beckoning, they followed him into the room expectantly, preparing to ask him the question that would validate their presence in this room, along with the harrowing journey they had undertaken in an attempt to arrive in time to witness the birth of the children.
Of the two robed figures, the one on the left began to speak at the same instant as the doctor did, causing the entire room to fall silent. In the air hung the voices of both the doctor and what was now clearly a woman by the voice. "Which child was born first?" she has hissed, falling to stunned silence when she registered his statement "You're the last family these children have left". Sharp glances from the pair to the bed confirmed the lifeless form of the mother, their sister, draped with a sheet. Judging by the doctor's baleful stare, they correctly assumed he had paid more attention to the failing health of the mother than to which of the infants had arrived first.
After a period of unbroken quiescence, the doctor nodded his head awkwardly at the taciturn statues before hastily departing to leave them in what he assumed to be grief. His assessment was incorrect; the hushed air lay dead in the wake of their calculated analysis. At last, quietly, they approached the basinet that cradled the newborns and received the second shock of their day. They lowered their hoods for a better view, exposing their femininity, the only commonality in their visages once the hoods were dropped. Unlike them, the infants were not of the same gender and this excluded them from carriage of the same destiny. For the first time in their lives, the somber women made a decision that came without extended study, the first truly foolish decision that they had made since the day they were born. Each lifted a child into the air with apathetic hands, exposing the full length of their tiny bodies. The female child began to cry again, only comforted into quietness when one of the sisters stroked the fine hair atop its head, marveling in the coloration. It was a sign, they decided simultaneously, a female child with hair as white as virgin snow.
In the dead of the night, the male child, as dark in hair as his sister was fair, was left for dead curled in the embrace of his dead mother but still he did not cry. There the child would have died, had a curious nurse not discreetly lifted the blanket to see the mother one last time.