Gathering Blue

Pain makes you strong, her mother had told her. She had not said quiet, or nice.

A wave of sorrow swept through Kira, a feeling of loss

A cloud shadowed the moon, and the room darkened. Finally, she slept, without dreams; and in the morning when Kira woke the little cloth was limp, no more than a wrinkled scrap of pretty fabric in her bed.

“Take pride in your pain,” her mother had always told her. “You are stronger than those who have none.”