As Silika healed, she became more active.

Not to say that she was now a perfect little angel. Silika had always been a problem child and very temperamental. She constantly got irritated when she didn’t like the toys I brought her and more than once broke them out of spite. When I brought her a doll her sister Ela had asked me to give her, but she only so much as looked at it with a disgusted expression before giving it back to me like an especially dirty sock.

The only thing she seemed to enjoy were stuffed toys.

We went through a few of them, but eventually she stuck to a pink bear with blue eyes. It did not take a wise woman to see the resemblance with my sister. The same mother who had not bothered to visit her own daughter in a month. Every time I thought about it, I felt a pinching in my chest.

Are children just disposable once inconvenient?

In one of her tantrums, I clearly understood calling for her mother after falling on the ground and giving herself a nose bleed. I felt my own blood boil in rage as I tried calming Silika. For the first time, I cursed being of the same blood as hers. When she threw the bear that held her mother’s resemblance, I had no doubt in my mind that my niece and I held the same hate in our hearts.

To change both of our minds, I decided to have a bit of an activity with her. I brought all the materials to make a made-to-order plush toy. I brought a dozen different types of fabrics and all the coloured buttons I could find.

The choice for the buttons went without an itch and Silika chose brightly coloured yellow buttons, but when it came to the fabric, the lady’s temperament showed. She looked through the fabrics many times over, but couldn’t find one that fitted her taste. Eventually she looked at me with a frustrated look and pointed an accusatory finger at me.

When I failed to react to her frustration, she pulled me toward her and grabbed my hair roughly to get my attention. At first I thought she wanted more colour options, but I thought that following all her little whims would make my niece grow selfish. I tried to insist for some of the coloured fabrics, but she did something I did not expect. She took the lock of hair she had taken a hold off and tried to show it to me.

For a moment, I felt shocked.

“You want a black plush?”

She nodded as she looked at my hair.

“But there’s so many pretty colours. Don’t you want a pretty colour instead?”

She kept showing the hair to me and I understood. She picked yellow buttons and wanted a black plush. She wanted a plush that looked like me. I felt tears coming to my eyes, but I stayed strong. I couldn’t look weak, not in front of Silika.

I nodded and left the room. I went down the stairs and through the kitchen to get to the storage room. There I found some fabric meant to mend the staff’s uniform.

“She wants a plush that looks like me…”

Yesterday, she threw away the plush in her mother’s image, and today she wants one that looks like me.

“I’m so sorry Silika…”

I cried alone in that storage. All the tears I had been hiding from her all that time. A child should never have to go through this. I had to be strong for her. I dried my tears, picked up the fabric and headed back up.

As I walked through the hall back to the room, I heard people talking. When I was about to round the corner, I spotted two maids talking in front of Silika’s room.

“This is the lady’s room, right?”

“Yeah. I heard she’s gone insane. You know, like screaming in the night and talking nonsense.”

“Really? I heard some people say it sounded like she was speaking in tongues… Maybe she’s actually possessed?”

“Do you… Do you think it’s because of her?”

“You mean the black maid? Maybe… I heard that she’s actually a witch contracted to the marquess. Until the lady became ill, she would always go on errands all day… And when the lady became sick, she insisted on becoming her caretaker.”

“You think she’s trying to make the lady into her disciple?”

I had heard enough. I walked around the corner and glared at them. When they saw me they ran away in fear.

Those rude maids… They spoke in front of Silika’s room.

I opened the door. One would expect to find the lady distraught, but instead I found Silika still sitting on the bed waiting for me expectantly.

“Gledi! Hiir eur!”

I smiled, but I knew. The lady was simply and utterly deaf. A truth I had to hide at all cost.

Deafness, or any handicap for that matter, was not an actual sin to any god in existence, but then again the Orthodox Meiriem church did not truly follow their gods’ teachings. They were false fanatics, misguided religious extremists, who took the message of love for the world delivered by Meiriem, and twisted it in order to control their followers.

‘Love all godly creations’ A simple thing and the first commandment Meiriem ever divulged. The Orthodox had used the vagueness of the words to their own advantage. Using this and other misinterpretations of the Meiriem scriptures, they twisted words to create fervours into their followers. After all, unity had no better birthing place than when faced with a common enemy. They made their followers believe that any individual who was unable to fully appreciate the entirety of all gods creation was a heretic. The deaf, the blind… Hell, some countryside Othodox Meiriem kinsmanns were known to go after amputees as well. It was an easy thing to do, seen countless times in history. Going after those who could not defend themselves and use them to fuel fervour, blaming them for all of the world woes… And the followers are none the wiser. Convincing themselves of the righteousness of punishing those who deprived themselves of the gods gift, as if that had been a choice in the first place.

I finished the plush toy and handed it to Silika.

She came up with a name on the spot.

“Alki!”

She made it wave at me and I waved back. She hugged her plush with all her strength as I held back tears. She looked up at me.

“Eur mur beu fu ewe, Gledi!”

She said as she looked straight into my eyes, a beautiful smile on her plump peach-coloured face.

Oh gods. What can I do? Please tell me, what can I do before it’s too late?