Extract One
When they burn Father, she doesn't understand why Mother doesn't cry.
Noah is young, too young to witness such a thing, but the High Priest demands it and Mother obeys because she is in God's favor and therefore God loves her.
But Mother says that God doesn't love Father, though.
Father is different from the rest of the village because he always smiles, he always laughs, he always loves.
Because things grow with him around, and Noah loves him for it.
Noah loves it, more than anything in the entire world does, but Mother doesn't—not anymore, at least.
Noah remembers when Mother used to smile with Father, when she laughed with him too, but she doesn't do that anymore. Instead, Mother uses all her time in the small Abbey where she works with the High Priest and eagerly laps up every word he says.
I've sinned, she says whenever Noah asks her why she doesn't laugh with Father anymore, but Noah doesn't understand why.
Father still laughs and smiles and loves—just like always—but it doesn't reach his eyes anymore and Noah can't help but feel that something's broken and she doesn't know how to fix it.
Father's beautiful laughs and smiles and love doesn't stop the men with long robes to try taking him away.
Noah screams and pleas and cries while Mother holds her tightly with a blank face, ignoring Father's yells and curses and prayers, only to smile when he's finally out of sight and she can start burning everything he ever built with her.
She kills every flower he ever grew in the small garden that only Noah and Father knows about, she kills the trees he spent so long to nurture, and Noah can only watch with silent tears running down her cheeks as Mother destroys everything that Father ever did with her.
Mother doesn't say a single word despite Father's desperate pleas for help—his pleas for redemption.
She doesn't say a single word as the fires lick against his body and leaves nothing but burnt flesh and smoke behind.