Untamable Resolve: The Witheridge Witches

Ch. 40 - Sisters

The sound of a baby crying in the distance met my ears. I blinked and found myself not quite there -veiled- in the in-between I had been in before when I met the council for the first time. I was dreaming. I must have fallen asleep.

Dalila walked out the door as Charlotte paced slowly back and forth with her swaddled infant in hand. She was dirty - clothes in torn - and had a gash on one of her cheeks. She sat down in a wooden chair around a rustic table and took out one of her engorged breasts, and began to feed it, silencing the cries. She'd just gotten back home.

So she had been there.

It was quiet for a few minutes, and I watched my sister's features relax as she closed her eyes and hummed a motherly melody. This was a side of her I hadn't seen. As I looked around her home, it felt familiar. Old. It felt like mom but distinctly Charlotte. A fire was going in the stove warming the room. Potatoes, onions, and apples were stored in baskets while copper pans hung from the walls, and brooms made from plant fibers peeked from the shadows of the corner of the room.

Another woman walked from around the corner, followed by a cat. The very same that had turned into a wolf and had bitten me. That fucker had almost killed me, and it was smugly looking right at me, flicking its tail.

"Did you know?" my sister asked too calmly.

The Rectorix sat next to her and sighed, rubbing her temple.

"The death toll of civilians was a lot less than we calculated. You got them out of the way and shielded them before you set the bombs off."

"That's not what I asked." Her eyes were cold.

There she was. That was the Charlotte I knew.

"Did I know that little girl was pregnant?"

Ana paused. 

"Would you have done anything differently?"

Charlotte said nothing in uncomfortable silence as she burped her baby.She cleared her throat. "When I'm burning in hell I would like to know which sins I committed brought me there."

"Still Catholic then?"

"Growing up in a nunnery will do that to you. I even go to the traditional Latin Mass when it's offered."

Ana laughed.

"And if I'm not mistaken, you still worship the old gods, right? What do they call your main goddess now? Isis?"

"Considering I knew her, yes, and her name is Aset not Isis."

Charlotte flicked her hand in the air dismissing the topic of religion. "I used to be mad at mamá up until recently with how I was brought up in comparison to my dear sister. But I think I understand now. When the dust settles I don't know if I can..."

Her lip trembled for half a second before she smiled smally and swapped her baby to the other breast and I got a first good look at my niece. She had rosy, tawny skin with dainty brown curls atop her head. I could even see the silver through the slits of her drowsy eyes. She couldn't be more than a year old at most, not that I was an expert in babies.

"I want what Josephine had for my Margareth, and I'll do whatever it takes for that to happen. Hell, even a childhood in the nunnery looks less bleak than what life for a child is now. So to answer your question from earlier, no, I wouldn't have done anything differently. I'll do whatever it takes to win this war."

Charlotte moved to burp Margareth again as the Rectorix stood and stroked the infant's head.

"You should wean her soon. It will be easier for you on missions." Ana whispered sadly.