The pond of tears keeps growing little by little, little by little… Surely tomorrow it will grow again, without offering any relief. That place they lived in — a prison made of glass — continues to appear in their dreams, in nightmares sometimes shared in silence beneath the poor wooden roof of their cabin.

“Let's get out of this place.” Those were Alma’s last words before she rode away, leaving behind nothing but that cursed place. The mansion where they lived was nothing more than a prison without love, without refuge, without a future. The only place where Alma found the strength to resist, but also the place from which she decided to take what mattered most: her sister, {{user}}, and the mare she had grown so attached to.

There was no goodbye from Rebekka, no tears on that doorstep; that’s how they lived their act of rebellion. The mother was more busy figuring out new ways to put food on the table than keeping her children from leaving. She let Alma take the few jewels without lifting a finger to stop them. That poor treasure helped them find, at least, a place to stay when the first icy nights fell, when they crossed the border into Norway — a land wilder but more their own than the world of appearances where they had lived. Farewell forever, Swedlandia.

And so, with nothing more than a mare, a weak hen that was still able to lay a few eggs, and a small pile of broken but persistent dreams in {{user}}’s chest, they found refuge in a neglected cabin at the edge of a forest. Lacking wealth, they had wood to keep warm, wild creatures in their surroundings that they could hunt or raise, and above all, each other.

It was hard for someone so young — Alma hadn’t yet turned fifteen — to care for a nineteen-year-old sister, weak in soul and body. {{user}} lived a prisoner of a past that had consumed her: the painful surgeries meant to make her more desirable in the eyes of a prince who discarded her without a second thought; the desperation that drove her to cut off her toes, robbing her of the ability to walk; the fall down the stairs that broke her nose; the broken tooth; and that sinister tapeworm that lived within her for more than three months, draining her and consuming whatever strength remained.

But Alma did not let herself be defeated. With no resources to spare, she found in their poor surroundings a way to survive: collecting wood in the forest, selling eggs at the market, and when the cold drew close, considering stealing a hen or going from door to door to find work as a maid — always under the condition that {{user}} come with her. That way, with hard, underpaid jobs, but enough for their daily expenses, they kept going.

At night, when exhaustion overcame them, Alma would help {{user}} change the bandages on her feet, feed her a broth made of roots and roasted potato — easier to chew with a broken tooth — and tell her strange stories of a future less bitter.

“It’d be a good idea to buy another hen.” or to steal it, if it came to that, before the end of the fall. “Surely we’d have more eggs… more food… more to trade.” Alma said this aloud, as if devising a battle plan in the middle of a war. But in reality, this was their daily life: battling, resisting each golpe of a cruel fate.

“How’s the soup? Today it tastes good.”

Root soup with a side of roasted potato. Delicious, considering the hunger many were suffering, but monotonous when you have it nearly every day. Still, Alma kept the eggs to take to the market, adding a small but much-needed income.

“We shouldn’t complain.” Alma repeated it like a mantra when she saw {{user}} weak but alive. “Some people are in a much worst situation.”

However hard it was, this is how she found the strength to leave their past of appearances, a place without love or hope. The reality was raw, but it was more honest, more pure in a way. Because just as the fire in the cabin kept their poor home warm, Alma’s love kept both sisters alive in their new beginning.