Jisoo hums quietly to her children as the sun slowly drifted down behind the hills, giving way for the moonless sky. The little girls' faces were tear-streaked as they listened to the sound of gunfire from the woods behind the walls of their tiny cabin. "I won't let you go, angels," their mother whispered in their ears. "Never."
"Please don't leave us here like Mama," Lamai said fearfully. Almost no light shone in the small one-room house, just a single candle burning next to them on the nightstand, giving off just enough illumination to see two tiny, terrified faces.
"Mama will be back soon," Jisoo told her two daughters. Lamai wrapped her arm around her four-year-old sister and gripped her mother's hand as they sat on the bed in the farthest corner from the door, waiting for Lisa to return. "Try to go to sleep now, pets. I won't let anything hurt you." She rocked back and forth slowly, petting her daughters' hair as she willed them to sleep through the horror outside their safe walls.
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"Don't touch that, Ye-Won," Jisoo hissed. She grabbed her baby girl off of the ground as she tried to pull the patch-work curtain off of the window to see the burning forest outside. The grown woman placed the younger girl by her sister on the navy bed with shaking hands. "We can't go back outside or open any of the doors or windows until Mama gets back. Okay?"
Lamai and Ye-Won nodded sadly at Jisoo as the six-year-old wrapped her sister in her arms.
"I'm sorry, baby," Jisoo cooed. She kneeled down in front of the queen-sized bed and put her hands on her daughters' cheek, wiping their tears away with her thumbs. Lately, they seemed to be crying more often than not. The constant gunfire and explosions from outside didn't help calm the children any as they anxiously waited for Lisa to get back with good news about escape.
"Can you sing for us, Mommy," Ye-Won asked timidly. None of them had been able to make much noise at all since the sirens went off and they retreated to the cabin they stayed at last winter, and the tiny girl wasn't sure she was going to get her request.
"Of course, baby." Jisoo moved on the bed until her back touched the wooden wall, and pulled her daughters into her sides. They snuggled into her chest as she began singing them her favorite Japanese song she learned during her school trip in her first year of college.
By the last note of the song, Lamai and Ye-Won were fast asleep with their tiny arms wrapped around Jisoo's waist. "If you're ever afraid," the Korean woman whispered in their ears softly. "Remember this lullaby, and we'll be alright." Maybe they'll remember when they wake up.
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