Five months into her pregnancy her mother began to carve her candle. Lakal raised her voice in protest the entire time but her words fell onto deaf ears. Her mother would take knifes and needles to the hard wax, smiling as if she knew a secret Lakal didn't. Time and time again she reminded Lakal that her body was her own and therefore she was the only one that could tell exactly what was and what was not wrong with it.
Lakal wanted to scream every time she returned from the healer with cream to ease the pain in her mother's joints and discovered a new detail etched into the plain white candle. There was nothing she wanted more to do than to grab the offending item and fling it into the ocean where it would be eaten entirely by the depths. It was respect for her mother, and fear that she might follow the candle herself, that prevented Lakal from acting on that urge.
She tried to make her voice louder instead.
The day her mother gave birth to Lakal's new sister, who screamed from lungs that were surely not large enough to hold such volumes, she bestowed Lakal with four kisses. One to her cheek, one upon her forehead, another against her lips, and the fourth pressed gently to the tips of her knuckles.
"Four," she said weakly. The screaming taking its toll. "For your brother, for you, for Itano, and the very last for Sira."
Her eyes, barely open since the birther rushed to dip the screaming child into the icepool before the hour turned, finally – slowly closed. Lakal held her hand and cried silently.
When the birther returned with the young child wrapped in many layers of furs Lakal was drawing fresh bedding over her mother's still form. She had dumped the old ones, soaked through with sweat and blood and tears, into the fires. The birther nodded solemnly.
"The child's name?" she asked, unwrapping the sleeping bundle.
"Sira," Lakal answered.
