Raime & Nora || Maddening Shroud
"Shh, Maxine, shh," Nora cooed softly to the tiny bundle in her arms. The very same tiny bundle that was screaming at a volume Nora didn’t think infants could reach. "Is this normal?" She yelled. She hoped Raime—who was trying to sleep—would hear her and come into her room; Nora could use all the help she could get. Right now, she was, unsuccessfully, attempting to calm Maxie with the motion of the rocking chair. Before that, she tried feeding and changing her niece, but no matter what she did, Maxie screamed, and Nora was finally starting to lose her patience. She didn’t know how Jude did this, how he managed with Maxie and her sister. Nora had only had Maxie for a day and she felt like a failure, a miserable, exhausted failure. "I don’t know how you did this, Neens," she whispered.
What the actual fuck? Raime’s eyes cracked open and she stared into the surrounding darkness of her room. She was still getting used to the place after growing up in the same house for eighteen years. She liked this house better, here, the sun always shown, and she had the bigger room, but she was painfully aware of the way her family was falling apart. We wouldn’t even be here if Anna and Nina were still alive. My mom probably wouldn’t be pregnant. The raven-haired girl grumbled as she kicked her way out of bed and stormed into the nursery that was meant for her future sibling, but was working out nicely as Maxie’s temporary room while she was visiting. “Give her here,” Raime demanded, not waiting for Nora to respond before she lifted her baby cousin from the young woman’s arms. Half asleep, Raime paced the edges of the room, her breathing heavy with annoyance. After a moment, the screaming subsided. “She likes it when you walk and hold her,” she explained to Nora.
