“The Two Cries”

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Part I

The first scream was sharp enough to startle birds from the trees.

It rang through the fog-heavy clearing like something cleaved from the world—wet and furious, animal in its urgency. The midwife, bent over the blood-slick cloths, flinched as the newborn howled in her arms, its little fists clenched in trembling defiance.

The second birth came silently.

No cry. No motion. Only a long, slow blink from eyes the color of old ivory.

The midwife hesitated. She lifted the second child gently, checked for breath. The chest rose and fell. The pulse was steady. But there was no sound. The infant simply stared at her, head tilted slightly as if assessing her.

The midwife murmured a prayer and looked toward the mother—pale, hollow-eyed, her white hair soaked to the root with sweat. She nodded faintly, as if she'd expected this.

“They come together,” she whispered, her voice brittle.

The midwife turned back to the twins. Already, the second child had reached toward the first, fingers curling around her sister’s wrist. The screaming had stopped the moment they touched.

The midwife straightened, breath uneasy.

She felt something wrong in the room—not evil, not yet. But ancient. She had delivered babes born with scaled limbs, forked tongues, even wings. But this was different.

These two felt… finished. As if they hadn’t been born, but returned.

She backed away from the low cot.

The fire in the corner crackled once, a sharp pop of resin. Something shifted in the shadows. Behind her, the wasp hive in the rafters began to hum—not frantically, but in rhythm, like a heartbeat.

The midwife turned to leave. Her steps were fast, her muttering louder than a whisper now. She left her satchel behind. Didn’t notice. Didn’t care.

By the time the mother had swaddled the two girls and rocked them against her chest, the midwife was gone.

She never came back.

No one did.

Outside, the swamp closed in again, as if sealing the birth inside it.

Inside, the mother rocked. One babe curled against her breast, already sleeping. The other stared upward, wide-eyed and alert.

The wasps droned above, slow and even.

She didn’t notice the hive had grown larger.

She only noticed the satchel the midwife had forgotten—still open, half-full of roots and scissors—and the silence that followed the scream.

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Part II

The satchel remained where it had fallen.

Its leather had softened from years of damp, the metal clasp rusted through. The roots inside had dried and twisted into gnarled spirals. The scissors, long since dulled, sat untouched beneath a thin coat of dust.

Rosabella stepped over it without looking.

Juno followed.

They were three now—though they did not measure time the way others did. There was only light and not-light. Wet and dry. Bloom and rot.

They did not speak as others spoke. Their mother, still pale and thin, tried to teach them names for things—words like tree, root, moon. The girls would listen with tilted heads, nodding solemnly. Then one would say half the word, and the other would finish it.

“Sw—” Juno would start.

“—amp,” Rosabella would conclude, as if they were reading from the same page.

It was not done for mischief. They were simply… precise. Complete only together.

They dressed in the same rough-woven shifts, their pale white hair often tangled with leaves and tiny beetles. Their horns had begun to show—curving out from their brows, still soft but glowing faintly in the dark. Rosabella’s shimmered gold, Juno’s a ruddy red like smoldering bark.

Their skin betrayed their other difference—Rosabella’s pallor almost translucent, Juno’s touched by the sun through trees, tanned and warm.

But in every other way, they mirrored.

When Rosabella moved to the hive to listen, Juno would follow without being called. When Juno knelt beside the bogwater to watch the frogs die in silence, Rosabella brought her a stone to hold. When one laughed, the other would laugh with the same pitch, same note, same flick of the head.

Their mother had tried to separate them once. Just for a day.

Juno had not spoken. Rosabella had not blinked. The wasps had not calmed.

It never happened again.

That day, the girls had climbed together onto their mother’s lap and stared into her face. Not accusingly. Not sadly.

Just… with stillness. Twin stillness. And something behind their eyes.

The mother had nodded faintly, her fingers trembling as they reached to touch the curve of their horns. “You’re mine,” she whispered.

They nodded. Perfectly. At once.

Outside, the swamp dripped and shifted.

Inside, the satchel lay untouched, half-open, as if waiting for someone who had merely stepped away.

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Part III

The night the voices began, the swamp had gone still.

Not quiet. Still. Like something holding its breath.

Even the frogs—nocturnal and mindless—had stopped their guttural songs. The water outside the hut was black glass, the wind too afraid to move the leaves.

Inside, the girls slept.

Rosabella on a bed of moss and spider silk. Juno beneath the old hanging furs their mother had once worn as a shawl. They did not toss. They did not dream.

And yet, they woke at the same instant.

Neither gasped. Neither blinked. Their eyes opened as one.

They turned their heads, slowly, toward the door. The room was dark, the only light the soft luminescence from a vine that had grown into the wall—its pale glow barely enough to outline their forms.

Then, the voice spoke.

Not a memory. Not a thought.

It entered the room like breath over skin—hot, foul, real.

“One scream.”

The girls sat up.

“One silence.”

Juno reached for Rosabella’s hand.

“One path.”

Rosabella squeezed it.

“One fire.”

They didn’t speak. Not to each other. Not to the voice. But they listened.

Another voice came, this one lower, more bitter.

“Two heads. One fate. Choose none, and both will die.”

And then a third—distant, feminine, almost kind.

“Mother is gone. You are hers no longer.”

The twins turned their heads toward the wall—toward the old satchel.

The hive above it hummed.

A dozen faint, whispering tones followed—some in languages neither girl recognized. One cackled. One wept. One began to count, but stopped at “five.” The voices tangled, surged, and then were gone.

Just like that.

The swamp outside exhaled again. Slowly. Like it had been waiting to see if they could hear it.

Juno did not speak, but stood. She moved to the hive and sat beneath it.

Rosabella followed.

Their breath slowed. The wasps didn’t stir.

In the other room, their mother lay curled on the floor, face down, the blanket she’d meant to sleep under forgotten beside her. Her lips moved in silent murmurs, as if trying to answer someone who had already left.

She did not rise again.

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Part IV

Their mother didn’t speak of the voices.

Not to them. Not out loud. But the next morning, her hands shook.

She gathered herbs with a frantic precision—bitterroot, wet ash, firemoss—and ground them with trembling wrists. She muttered the names of gods she never taught them. Old, broken names that hurt to hear.

By nightfall, she had made a poultice. She smeared it on the end of a charred stick and set it alight, the flame a sickly green sputter.

The girls watched from the doorway of their sleeping room as she approached the hive.

It had grown fat and dark, thick with age and knowledge. The wasps inside had not stirred since the voices came. They pulsed gently in their paper chamber, content in their humming.

The mother raised the fire.

Juno stepped forward first.

She didn’t speak. She only tilted her head, red horns catching the dim firelight. The wasps inside the hive hissed faintly.

Rosabella followed. She moved between her mother and the hive and gently pressed her hand to the outer shell. Her golden horns glowed faintly, not with magic—but certainty.

The flame in the stick guttered. The smoke turned black. The mother’s arm dropped.

She looked at them—really looked—then stepped back without a word.

That night, she didn’t eat.

That night, she didn’t sleep in her usual place.

She sat on the porch, arms wrapped around her knees, eyes wide and unblinking as the swamp chirped and shifted and crawled just beyond the edge of firelight.

The girls didn’t disturb her.

At dawn, she was gone.

Her footprints led into the water behind the hut.

They stopped at the edge, where the roots made a cradle in the mud.

There was no splash. No drag marks. No clothing discarded.

The water was still.

Juno stood on the bank and looked down into it for a long time.

Rosabella knelt beside the prints and touched the place where the toes ended.

Neither cried.

They returned to the hut, side by side.

The wasps buzzed softly as they entered. The hive had swelled, now twice the size it was before.

Rosabella brushed its surface.

Juno sat beneath it and whispered, “She was too afraid to stay.”

Rosabella nodded. “But not afraid enough to lie.”

Outside, the swamp accepted its new daughters.

Inside, the satchel still lay open on the floor. This time, the scissors were gone.

Entered by: 0x6424…79B4