That night, Siobhan dreamed of water.
Not drowning. Not the frantic, gasping kind. Just floating - arms outstretched, belly to the sky. The sky hung low, close enough to kiss her skin. Below, the sea was warm and endless. Around her, silence - thick and soft as cream.
And inside her?
A heartbeat.
Small. Certain. Steady.
She placed her hands on her belly and felt it - not just a flutter, but presence. A light. A pulse. A promise.
A child was growing there. Quiet and sure. Untouched by pain. Their tiny hands pressed outward, not to escape but to reach. As if to say: I see you.
---
She woke to dawn light bleeding through thin curtains.
The dream didn't leave her all at once. Her skin still buzzed with warmth. Her arms felt suspended. The air tasted like salt.
Vivian was there, curled in the bed beside her, her body already half in her arms - like the dream had followed her into waking.
Siobhan didn't speak at first. Just stared at the ceiling, listening to her own heartbeat. Slow. Solitary.
She pressed her palm to her belly, the way she had in sleep.
Empty.
Yet not.
Vivian stirred beside her, soft as silk unraveling. "Hey," she murmured.
Siobhan turned toward her. When her voice came, it felt breakable - like warm glass. "I dreamed I still had them."
Vivian's brow furrowed gently, but she didn't ask who.
She didn't have to.
"They were alive," Siobhan whispered. "Swimming. Safe. And I was still me... but better. Whole. Not bleeding all over the place." She said thinking about the incident resulting in the loss of her baby.
Vivian's hand found hers beneath the blanket, fingers interlacing, immediately bringing Siobhan back to earth. Anchoring. "What did it feel like?"
"Like I could breathe underwater." Siobhan let out a soft, bitter laugh. "Stupid, right?"
"No," Vivian said, quiet and firm. "Not stupid at all." She said thinking about all the strength motherhood had given her.
Siobhan sat up slowly. Her ribs ached. Her body carried pain in strange, forgotten places. Her womb felt weighted - not with life, but with loss. Like it hadn't gotten the message that the tenant had moved out.
"I want to try again one day," she said. "To be a mum. For real."
Vivian didn't answer right away. She just looked at her, eyes soft with something close to reverence.
"I believe you will be," she said finally. "But not yet, sweetheart. Not while you're still waking up from nightmares. Not while you're still trying to survive every hour."
Siobhan's throat tightened. "I thought... if I gave love, maybe I could fix the broken parts."
"You already love," Vivian said, thumb tracing circles on her wrist. "So much. But loving someone else - especially a baby - it's not a bandage. It's a mirror. It shows you everything. Even the parts you've tried not to see."
Siobhan closed her eyes.
The baby from the dream blinked back at her in the dark. Still reaching. Still waiting.
"I don't know if I can heal."
"You can," Vivian said, with the kind of certainty Siobhan didn't know she'd been aching for. "But you have to let the wound close. Not ignore it. Not keep tearing it open just to prove you're still hurting."
Siobhan leaned into her, forehead against Vivian's shoulder. Breath shallow. "You make it sound possible."
"It is," Vivian whispered. "You've already started. You just don't know it yet."
A silence settled around them. Not empty - just full of all the things they weren't ready to say aloud.
Siobhan swallowed. "In the dream... they weren't scared of me."
"They wouldn't be," Vivian murmured. "Because even in pain, you loved them with everything you had."
---
The baby hadn't cried in the dream. They'd looked at her with ancient eyes, wide and knowing. They'd touched her face in that underwater hush and said: Live. Please. For me.
She hadn't known she needed to hear it.
Until now.
