Snow covers everything. Under different circumstances, Magda would say it's beautiful.
It is.
Beauty can be so unfair, the young woman thinks. Beauty never disappears, not even when you're broken, and when your soul is dark and lost.
And when you're long gone, and you're not in this world anymore, not even then beauty ceases to exist.
Beauty remains.
It's a relieving thought, perhaps, or perhaps a cruel one.
Magda keeps running.
She feels she's never done anything else in her life but running in the snow: she'd run away with Max, all skin and bones, with few hair and even fewer life left; she'd run away from Max, the night the flames had devoured their house and his very soul. And now she has to run again.
Winter night's air cuts her throat every time she breathes, but she keeps running. It's not her body that pains her anyway.
I'm doing it for them.
Pietro.
Wanda.
Those names warm her heart and dig holes into her soul.
Magda misses them already: her beautiful, perfect babies. But she had to leave them. She had to.
They'll be safer this way.
She falls on her knees.
No, she tells herself. Not now.
Not yet.
She must resist. She must find the strength.
Closings her eyes she can almost see them: so tiny and warm, pure. Innocent.
She gets on her feet once again.
She knows she's lucky: she'd found a help when every hope seemed lost, and—for stormy that that night had been—she had given birth to two healthy, beautiful, perfect babies. She had held them in her arms; she had felt their breaths, their hearts beating.
Her daughter has her grandmother's green eyes. Her son has beautiful silvery hair.
At least I had the chance to know them.
Magda has reached the wood. She doesn't even feel the cold anymore. Pain is gone, and soon it will all be over.
She knows she's doing something unnatural, unconceivable for a mother. But she also knows that she has the courage to do this only because she is a mother, and a mother would do anything to keep her children safe.
Wanda.
Pietro.
She is not going to watch them burn.
Snow starts falling again. Wind howls and crashes into her thin body and she's forced to slow down her pace.
She's exhausted.
At least they have each other.
Pietro will always have a sister; Wanda will always have a brother. They will never be alone in the world, even if they've been abandoned by their own mother.
They'll always have each other.
A tear freezes on her left cheek while she falls one last time on her knees.
Pietro… Wanda...
I hope that one day you'll understand why I did this.
Magda closes her eyes. Her body lies abandoned in a white, cold embrace.
Please, children, forgive me.
God will not.
