FADED DAWN

Night fall

She always came at night.

Not as a child, not as herself.

At first, it was a face—small, oval, and blurred. Standing at the edge of her mother’s sleep like a forgotten song, humming softly with eyes that watched but didn’t blink. Then it changed. Became heavier. Familiar, but wrong. Sometimes, the face was her own. Other times, it wore the shape of Sefi’s father, twisted and stretched, mouth open in a scream she couldn’t hear. And always, always, there were the eyes. Bottomless. As if they knew. As if they remembered everything.

Sefi’s mother had once blamed it on guilt.

She told herself it was motherhood's echo—growing pains.

That every woman bore this strange shadow when her child was different.

But Sefi wasn’t different. She was wrong.

The first time she had the dream, Sefi had been five. The day she'd locked herself in the small store behind the house after a beating. She hadn’t cried. Just sat still, breathing like a statue. When they finally found her, her eyes looked older—centuries older. That night, her mother dreamed of a field soaked in oil and blood, a child standing in the center, hands clean, eyes quiet.

From that night forward, the dreams came in fragments.

And they always came after she hurt the girl.

It became a ritual.

Strike. Dream. Fear.

Strike again—this time before the dream could return.

Perhaps she thought pain would sever whatever tie Sefi had with the spirit world.

But the dreams only grew louder.

Sometimes Sefi came crawling along the ceiling like an insect.

Sometimes she hovered, humming the lullaby her grandmother once sang to her.

Once, she came weeping, dragging a bag filled with faceless dolls that bled from their seams.

Each time, her mother woke drenched in sweat.

Each time, she beat Sefi harder.

What is it about fear that makes a mother savage?

She never knew. But she feared Sefi more than she loved her.

And that made her a coward.

The day she decided to abandon Sefi was quiet.

No warning. No storm. Just dust and the smell of fried plantains at the junction.

They were heading to the city.

At least, that was the lie she told the neighbors.

She said Sefi had won a scholarship. That some distant aunt had agreed to sponsor her.

The truth was simpler: she wanted to leave her daughter behind.

To forget the eyes, the silence, the way shadows clung to Sefi’s body like old lovers.

At the midway stop—a crowded filling station that smelled of petrol and stale urine—she told Sefi to wait near the gate.

She watched her drink water from a dusty sachet, her lips cracked, her back hunched like an old woman.

Then she turned.

She didn’t look back.

On the bus home, she told herself it was justice.

Sefi was not normal. Sefi brought things with her—strange luck, animals that stared too long, people who stumbled after speaking to her.

It was not wickedness.

It was survival.

But the dreams followed her.

And now, they had teeth.

The night after she left her daughter, Sefi came again.

This time not as a girl, but as light.

Blazing. Silent. Piercing.

She stood in the center of a burning room. Nothing touched her.

She said nothing, just stared.

Then her mother heard it—not in sound, but in soul:

"I am not yours to fear. I am the mirror you ran from."

When she woke, her own face was bleeding.

A long, clean scratch down her cheek.

No mirrors were broken. No animals in the room.

Just her, alone in a house where the walls had begun to whisper.