Before The Fever Breaks

Written for MLMM Monday Wordle;
the prompt words are shown below.
Here’s where the prompts took me.

dream ~ touch ~ kind ~ calm ~ forehead ~ hand
cool ~ shared ~ picture ~ cheer ~ want ~ before

Before the bad dream takes hold, she is there.

A kind hand reaches through the dim light of the sickroom, pressing gentle fingers to a burning forehead. The touch is so practiced, so certain, that even in the worst of the fever’s grip, a child knows it and is calm.

“You want to see the picture?” she whispers. It is a small watercolor she painted years ago …. a garden, a yellow gate, a sky that never quite decides between blue and white. She holds it up where tired eyes can find it.

This is a shared thing between them now. The picture and the sickroom and the soft distinct dark of three in the morning.

She hums a little …. not quite a song …. just enough to fill the silence.

Cool cloth. Cool hand. Cool voice.

“You’ll be right as rain by Sunday.”

Slowly, the walls stop tilting. Slowly, the garden in the picture stills. The child does not know yet that he will carry this moment his whole life …. the weight of a mother’s hand, the quiet cheer of being tended, the way love arrives without a word before the fever finally breaks.

NAR©2026
#MLMM
#Wordle

This is “The Mother” by Brandi Carlile

MLMM Monday Wordle #478

^{Everything on The Elephant’s Trunk was created by me, unless otherwise indicated. Thanks for your consideration. NAR©2017-present.}