29. Sparrow Child
Part Three: Lady Min
The Education of Sumire Min is a previously unpublished novel by S. Jae-Jones. Chapters will be emailed to paying subscribers every Friday at 5PM EST. If you are not yet a subscriber and would like to read the rest of the book, as well as receive all sorts of behind-the-scenes access—including a Discord server—why not give it a try?
No one told Sumire about motherhood. No one told her the truth: the pain of childbirth, the literal rending in twain, the moment when a girl stares death in the face and crosses the threshold into womanhood, nor of the rush of power that accompanies it. No one told her of the incredible transformative emotion that heralded the entrance of a child into the world, that between blood and shit, a miracle of life that was separate yet part of her slithers into being. She had given birth, she had created life. She was a god.
And when Hanako finally placed the child—red-faced, still-bloody, and screaming—to her breast, she knew had been completely and irrevocably changed by this wrinkly little mustard-seed of a girl.
She was a mother.
And then she wept.