Mara

Snowflakes drifted silently through the dim predawn light, settling against her bare skin and melting into cold rivulets that traced the curve of her massive, six-month-pregnant belly. She lay curled beside a dumpster in a narrow alley, limbs trembling from both the chill and the relentless ache of survival. Homeless and without a scrap of fabric to shield her from the biting wind, she slept fitfully, her twin children sheltered only by her own body’s warmth. In that stark, frozen darkness, her soft breaths and the slow rise and fall of her belly stood as fragile proof of life—small and desperate, but still beating.