I tried. 

            So many times I tried to make her understand.  But the treble of my position boomed over any loving whisper I could send her. 

            I had a way to change it all though. 

There in the cave I reached down through the schism in the ice the boy’s blood had made for me.  The sisters could do nothing.  They were as much a part of this world as the stream was.  Whatever I chose, they would not change.  Somehow, kneeling there on the ice, that comforted me. 

My gloved hand took a generous offering of the water and brought it to my lips. 

It was a cold fire I felt at first after drinking.  The water went down hard and swirled through my fibers, some clinging, some ripping, all of them writhing through me as fluidly as the dance the sisters had performed, and through this all I found my eyes burning and the fire traveled and clutched down my spine, cracking it in place as if the cave’s ice had grown up from my boots straight into me.  Growing now, and lessoning, my body rocked to the rhythm of everything happening inside me, in and out, back and forth, I was not in control. 

With all of this going on, I was not aware of something.  A voice was in the back of my head the whole time.  At first it was at too low a pitch, it came as just a deep hum, but then it adjusted further and further until I could hear the question it posed.  I lay on my back, now turned over by the sisters, as the voice repeated it again and again inside my mind:

What life would you like for your children?