“S’only a scrap,” the man muttered, a mild smile tugging at his mouth. He glanced to Raquel for peace. His wife bobbed her head beside him. “Child be child.”

“A child?” Raquel’s voice was dry bark breaking. “You call that childish?”

She stepped in. No warning. Her palm cracked his cheek—stone on bone. He rocked back, blinking, one hand to the heat of her print, eyes gone wide with shame and bafflement.

“What?” she spat. “Just a slap. Does it sting? Is it shameful? Does it feel so fine when someone lays a hand on you?”

Her stare held him on the hook.

Her stare pinned him.

“Bring me your brats. Now.”

He worked his jaw, color rising where her palm had landed, then turned toward the shadowed doorway. “You two—ven acá,” he called, not loud, not harsh—just a father summoning his own.

Small feet scuffed the boards. The boys came shuffling, twelve at most, heads down, sniffling like pups caught in the henhouse. They dared not look at her.

Raquel did not hesitate. One—crack. The other—crack. The sound rang in the tight room like a hammer on iron.

The boys’ eyes slid to their father, pleading.

“What you ’spect?” the man said with a nonchalant shrug. “Eye for eye. Now all fair.”

“Fair?” Raquel folded her arms; winter moved into her voice. “This is the beginning. The rest is your work.”

Husband and wife traded a blank look, and the emptiness of it stoked Raquel’s anger.

“What?” Raquel went on. “You think I’ll raise your pests for you? They’re yours. Raise them—or don’t.”

The wife, so ready with her nod a heartbeat ago, stiffened. Anger climbed her throat. Thump, thump—she surged from behind her husband, a heavy woman with fire in her eyes. “¡Ya basta! You—”

She stopped when his hand closed on her shoulder, callused fingers fixing like a smith’s vise.

Raquel didn’t blink. “Go on,” she hissed. “Try me. Then see how you’ll feed that great ass of yours when there’s no grain, no beans, no right to draw at the well. No blessing on your field.”

They froze. Now they understood.

Both turned toward her as if seeing her for the first time.

“You’ll discipline your sons,” Raquel said, cold as iron, “or you can forget food. Forget the grain, forget the vegetables, forget your draw at the well. Forget the harvest.”

The woman’s eyes flashed—outrage wrestling with fear.

The man’s jaw locked. Slowly, without a word, he crossed to the wall and reached for the thing that had waited there like a witness. An axe—dull at the edge, heavy in the head—settled into his palm. His gaze went to Raquel, to the boys, back to Raquel.

Raquel’s pulse kicked. Heat ran out of her anger and left a clean, hard line. A thread of fear opened under her ribs. Yet, she did not look away, determined.

He glanced down at the axe, muttered something into his beard, then worried the iron head loose. The blade thudded to the floor. He turned the haft in his hands—already tired—and faced his sons.

“Turn ‘round.”

“Papá… por favor…” one whimpered.

“Turn. ‘Round.”

They obeyed, slow as cattle, shoulders trembling, faces buried in their palms. Their sniffles scratched the tight room like rats in the walls. The man raised the stick. Held it high, arms shaking.

For a heartbeat he stood taut as a drawn bow. The heavy haft started down—

“Enough.” Raquel’s voice cut him mid-swing.

“Ya sure?” he asked, back still to her. “Ya ain’t tellin’ Maestra Tabitha?”

“I won’t,” she said, flat. “But this is the last warning. Your brats will leave my daughter be, or you’ll learn how thin a winter can be.”

She turned, raw-nerved and done with them. One step, then two—the door slammed hard enough to rattle the plates on the shelf.

Outside, night had its claws in the land. The day’s warmth was gone, leaving only the hush of cold earth and the dry whisper of leaves scudding along the lane. Over the village the sky sagged under a thin lid of cloud.

“I’m not ashamed,” Raquel muttered as she strode off, breath quick, anger still tight in her limbs. “I’m not…”

Her steps hammered the cart track; pebbles snapped underfoot, the weeds along the ditch bowing as she passed.
  “I wanted to be a princesa,” she said, bitter and breathless. “And here I am—the bitch children fear.”
  The words ran out before the road did. Her pace slackened; the heat in her chest cooled to ash. By the time the lane opened into the square, her breath had steadied and her shoulders felt heavy.
  The well waited there, quiet between the trees and the old fence, its bucket where someone had left it hours ago. Not dry, not broken—just there, like everything else in this village, waiting.
  Raquel let out a slow breath and sat on the bench beside it. Her skirt clung to her legs; the wood was damp with evening. She looked up.

The sky was dull, heavy with clouds. Somewhere, far above, stars still existed—but not here.

“You never told me it would be this hard,” she said through her teeth. “And lonely.”

Her voice wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be. No one was listening anyway.

Raquel rubbed her hands together, then pressed them to her face. Not weeping—just emptied out. Just done.

“You said you’d look after us, so where the hell are you now? Left everything to the already overworked Tabitha and Baruch and vanished,” she said into her palms. “Probably off fucking around with other stupid, naive girls…”

She stayed like that when the first cold drop struck her arm.

Then came the rain.

Thin at first. Cold. Insistent. A whisper that would not be ignored.

“Of course,” she said. “Perfect. If you’ve something to say, say it to my face.”

Water ran down her cheeks. Not tears—those were rare as gold in Raquel’s world. Let the sky cry. She would not.

“To hell with it,” she said, low and sharp. “To hell with you. ‘The Heavens’—what a joke.”

Above her, the gray said nothing.