silenced tears

She hated seeing them cry. That was the worst part. The coughing, the vomit, the blood that she wiped from their poor cracked lips was nothing compared to watching them cry in pain.

Neighbors had stopped coming by. She pretended that it wasn't true, but her house had been marked for death. A bare door on a street with houses with doors swathed in lamb's blood. At her house, death would take her first born.

And her second.

Dawn was barely breaking when the screams woke her up. Her babies, in tears, bloody foam at their lips as whatever's inside them rips them apart. "Shhhh," she cooed softly, stroking damp foreheads. "Shhh." There's no medicine, and no doctors.

Another pillow, that's what they needed, small heads pressed together on the same one. The extra was in her room.

There was a quiet moment, the briefest of hesitation before she did it. A moment where she did nothing before pressing the pillow hard against those small faces.

It took less time than she expected, less thrashing, but their bodies were already tired, already dying. Just a few moments before they were still again. She wiped away the last of their tears, and stayed there until their foreheads were cool again. Only then did she go back to her own bed and weep.