Mira had always believed love could protect.
She had survived the cruelty of men, the rumors of witches, the death of kin-but she had not been prepared for what the village would do to her daughter. She had raised Luxia to be quiet, careful, small. But no amount of silence could shield a girl cursed by beauty in a place ruled by fear and desire.
She watched Luxia more closely after that night.
She saw the stiffness in her walk. The way her eyes never met another's. The way she flinched at the sould of men laughing too loud. Luxia was slipping dipper and dipper into herself, shrinking into the shell of cold marble.
Mira held her at night, stroking her hair, whispering the lullabies her own mother once sang.
But Luxia never wept.
And Mira began to feel it: something moving inside her daughter. not grief. not fear.
Something older.
Something terrible.
That summer, Mira confronted Gerren's mother at the well.
She didn't accuse. She simply asked:
"Did your son touch mydaughter?"
The woman spat at her feet.
"Maybe if she didn't walk around like a siren, she wouldn't tempt the devil out of men."
Mira slapped her. hard.
Gasps followed. The village turns its eyes.
Later, the chieftain summoned Mira to the chapel, where the men of the village sat in judgment.
They called her hysterical.
They accused Luxia of vanity, of seduction, of unnatural silence.
They did not spoke of bruises. They did not ask about blood.
And when Mira begged them to protect her daughter, the priest leaned forward and said:
"your daughter brings sin to this village like flies to rot. A mute girl so beautiful?? That's no child of God. That's temptation."
Mira stood.
She said nothing more.
But as she left the chapel, thunder rumbled overhead- though no storm had been forecast, and the skies had been clear.
That night, the crow circled the steeple three times, then vanished into the woods.
Luxia watched it go from her window; her pale hand pressed to the glass.
A few weeks later, Mira was found bruised and beaten outside their home.
No one saw who did it.
Luxia cleaned the blood from her mothers face in silence.
She didn't cry.
She didn't rage.
But when she touched Mira's swollen cheek, the firewood by the hearth burst into flame.
Unlit.
Untouched.
Luzia simply blinked.
And the fire died down, as if it had never existed.
Something was growing in her.
Something not of this world.