Reina’s heart sank as the room was filled with a marked silence. No piercing screams, no heart-wrenching wails. What had she done wrong? Unbidden tears fled from her eyes, forging a path over her flushed cheeks. Oh God, why me? Why my baby? She looked over to the physician, a pleading look in her eyes. Don’t make me look at my dead baby. Please, don’t. I’ll die. She was so broken, so wounded by her newly perceived loss…and yet it had only been five months go that she had regretted keeping the babe. Oh, how the tables had turned the moment she felt her unborn child’s kick. Now he was as dear to her as the world and all in it. Reina saw the physician standing with the baby in his hands, eyes set on it. She felt his discomfort at her tearful gaze and averted her eyes.

“Ms. Tye,” the physician muttered. “I…I think…” His voice trailed off, leaving Reina to only guess what he was thinking. “I…I think you ought to see to your child now,” he said, finally placing the baby in its mother’s arms. He hadn’t even bothered covering it.

“What? You mean my baby’s alive?” Reina looked down at her silent new daughter, confusion flooding her mind, but joy quickly taking hold. She was immediately consumed by thoughts of what to name the baby girl and what she was going to be like as a mother.

The physician’s attendant, now in the corner cleaning up the mess of supplies that had come along with the physician, raised his eyes to the doorway his brother had just gone through. It was odd, peculiar if you will. Tain had never just left a patient, and yet this time he hadn’t even smacked the babe to make it cry. Nor had he wiped the blood off before handing it to its mother, nor had he spoken to or cared for the mother post-birth.

Having finished cleaning up, the attendant went over to the new mother. “Congratulations, ma’am,” he said. “Your babe will likely want to suckle almost immediately now. I apologize for the physician’s abrupt exit. I will go speak with him and then I’ll be right back in to check on you. You might want to be thinking of a name for your daughter.” With that, he turned and left after the physician.

Jamar found his brother right outside the room, his face shockingly pale. “Tain!” he exclaimed, fraught over the older man’s sudden onset of feverish symptoms.

Tain, leaning against an alabaster wall, slid down until he was sitting on the floor against a golden trim. “Did you see it, Jamar? Did you see that baby? It didn’t make a sound. Not a sound.” He sat with his knees pulled to his chest, as if trying to protect himself.

“Tain, brother, many babies are silent. Why do you so fret over this one?”

“You didn’t see it? You didn’t feel it?”

“Tain, I beg your pardon, but feel what?”

“Oh Jamar, the baby…” Tain’s voice trailed off, thick with conflicting emotions. “The babe…it…it seemed to just reach out. Not like you or I would, with a hand, but with its soul. I felt it. It was like I looked into the wide open eyes of that baby, and I knew the world. Then just as suddenly as that knowledge came, it was gone.” He stopped again for a short moment. “Jamar…” Tain hesitated, unsure. “I’m not sure, but I think…I think that baby’s a god.” He looked up to his attendant and brother, eyes wide with a combination of fear and awe. His hands trembled.

Jamar snorted, straightening from where he had bent over his brother. “You have gone mad,” he said simply, turning away from the other man and stepping back toward the door. He turned back around again, changing his mind. “You let that poor lady in there think that her child was dead because she did not hear its wail. You gave the babe to her, unwrapped, so that the lady had to use her own blanket to cover it from the cool chamber. You didn’t even wipe off the mess, for the gods’ sake! All that because you thought that a tiny creature like a child, useless and defenseless, was a god!” Jamar’s voice was heavy with cynicism. “You fool,” he muttered, going back into the new mother’s chamber.

Tain watched as his younger brother walked away, shocked at his outburst of temper. In the excitement, Tain had forgotten to mention what he had seen, rather than what he had felt or thought. Sure, his feelings were very convincing of the child’s ethereal status, but it had been that glowing, reddish-orange orb around her that had convinced him that she was a goddess. The orb had been brilliant, beautiful. It had protected the babe from any mess that came from her mother. And it had disappeared as soon as the physician had touched it, replacing his awe with that uncanny sense of infinite wisdom and knowledge. Then that too had disappeared.

Now that Tain’s wonder and fearful reverence had faded, he was confused and filled with a sense of morbid curiosity and excitement. Eagerly, he rose to his feet to see the babe once more.