Unknown

Mother.

The word mean hope, warmth, safety. She shut her eyes tightly, as if it might erase the images seared into her mind. 

The look in Daisy's eyes—wide and innocent, then hollow, filled with confusion, and finally fear. The desperate, wordless questions she couldn't answer.

"What kind of mother kills her child?" she asked herself bitterly. "What kind of mother chooses cruelty over love?" The truth was far from simple.

Lily had tried. 

God knows she had tried! Every scrap she scavenged, every meager crumb she found was always for her child. But the world wasn't kind.

Days stretched into nights without food, without help. And as hunger clawed at her own body, despair twisted her mind, turning her into someone she didn't recognize. Once, she had picked up some thrown up bread. It was for her child, of course, but the baker had caught her. She remembered running, the shouts behind her like a pack of wolves. She couldn't outrun them. When they caught her, they beat her until she could barely stand. By the time she stumbled back, hands were empty.

And then came the day Lily did the unthinkable. Weak, starving, and desperate, she became broken. Now, even in the quiet moments, she could still feel the phantom weight of that guilt pressing down on her.

"I didn't deserve to call myself a mother," she whispered, her voice trembling. "I failed. I let the world break me, and in turn, I broke them."

Rose's voice cut through the silence, firm but gentle. "Lily, you were human. You were fighting to survive in a world that gave you nothing. You can't keep punishing yourself for what you couldn't control."

Lily turned to her, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. "But I didn't just fail her, Rose. I hurt her, I hurt you. How can I forgive myself for that?"

Rose didn't answer immediately. Instead, she placed a hand on Lily's shoulder. "Maybe forgiveness doesn't come all at once. But it starts with understanding that even in your mistakes, you loved us. You never stopped loving us."

The voice was deep and steady, resonating in the quiet like a forgotten melody. The words danced in the air, tugging at the edges of Lily's memory, stirring something long buried.

"I be free to goo abrode…"

Her breath hitched. She knew this poem. She couldn't place where or when, but the words carried a familiarity that both soothed and unsettled her.

"To where, vor me, the apple tree…"

Images flickered in her mind: sunlight filtering through the leaves, the sway of a tree heavy with fruit, laughter—her laughter. A simpler time, a safer time with Rose.

But the voice reading the poem wasn't from someone she knew, and it wasn't from the past. It was here, now, real.

"Who… who's that?" she asked, her voice trembling.

The voice stopped for a while then reads again.

The air felt heavier, charged with a presence she couldn't see.

That voice was quiet but firm, as though soothing music. Her heart raced. She clutched her arms to steady her heart.

"Is that Mr. Rigil?" she asked Rose, though her voice cracked halfway through. Her head spinning. The words of the poem kept echoing in her mind. The voice recited the last line again, slower this time,

"Do leän down low in Linden Lea."

And at that moment, Rose said, 'It's not him. It's our father, Tao Xin.'

Lily's tears came suddenly, hot and uncontrollable, as if the weight of her past had collided all at once with the beauty of her present. The poem, the voice, the warmth—all of it felt too much, too overwhelming for a heart that had known only loneliness and struggle.

"Father?" she whispered again, the word trembling on her lips like a fragile prayer. Her chest ached with a mixture of joy and disbelief. The idea of a father, of someone who cared enough to read poems, was foreign to her—too good to be true.

Rose beside her, wrapping an arm around Lily's trembling frame. "Yes, Lily. We have a father. And a mother. And more love than we could've ever dreamed of back then."

"But why?" Lily cried, her voice thick with emotion. "Why did it take so long? Why did we have to endure so much before we got here?"

Rose's own eyes shimmered with unshed tears, but her grip on Lily's shoulder was firm. "I don't know, Lily. Maybe… maybe it was fate. Or maybe we had to survive the worst to truly appreciate this."

The male voice spoke again, gentle but steady, like a thread weaving them back into the moment.

Lily looked up, her tear-streaked face meeting the warm, kind eyes of the man she somehow knew was their father. He was perfect—his gaze was filled with a love she'd never known.

The poem lingered in her mind, a promise of peace and a future she hadn't dared to hope for. The ache in her heart began to fade, replaced by something unfamiliar.

When Lily allowed herself to believe, tears flowed down.

'Oh my! Why is she crying? She never cries.' a voice said noticing the tears on Lily's cheek.

Lily's tiny body hovered in the air, swaddled in faint, golden light. The maid froze mid-step, her hands clasped over her mouth in shock.

The man, sitting with a calm smile, bring her closer. His hazel eyes, sharp and kind, gleamed with an otherworldly confidence—a mirror image of Rose's face. He extended a hand toward the floating Lily as if greeting her, but as someone he had waited a long time to meet.

'What made you cry,' he murmured, his voice deep and soothing, 'You didn't cry when you were born.'

Lily's wide, curious eyes fixed on him, her tiny fists uncurling. The glow surrounding her shimmered brighter for a moment before gently fading. Slowly, she descended back into the arm of her father. As Tao Xin held her for the first time, Lily's tiny fingers reached up as though she recognized him.