Jajistenem

The little girl waited for winter to pass, for the snow she had loved to play in to melt, and for warmth to finally arrive, so her mother would no longer mention the cold, the frost, the bellies of the dead.

*

And winter passed slowly, very slowly. The little one awoke one night to a strange whimpering. It was still quite dark; her sister slept peacefully beside her, breathing evenly. The strange, unsettling sounds filtered from the next room, her parents' room. The little girl began to stir under the duvet, whimpering herself for a while, struggling to fully awaken, because somewhere on the border between sleep and wakefulness, a heavy weight composed of unusual, tangled sounds pressed down on her. With a sweaty face, she sat up in bed, and stared at the dark glass panes of the opposite door. Alarmed, she listened to the rhythmic, yet unfamiliar and irritating sounds of the creaking bed, muffled from the room, intermingled with the heavy airflow of human sighs.