*****
"Sorry, dear ones, Mommy is tired, I can't play with you today. Forgive me, okay?"
Eira had heard those words more times than she could count. Her mother always apologized when she couldn't spend the day with them.
Eira, at five years old, didn't understand why, but she noticed the weariness in her mother's eyes, eyes that always held love but at the same time seemed empty, as if something had been stolen from inside her.
Still, Eira trusted her mother's smile, the one she wore even when it barely existed, like a fragile mask.
They lived in a place they shared with many "aunts," women who cared for them as if they were their own flesh and blood.
Despite this, Eira and her sister always preferred to be with their mother. They knew that when she took them out of her room, they had to obey without asking questions.
