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“Aaron.” Miriam approaches behind him, but he doesn’t turn to face her. The night air nips at his face, but he doesn’t move—only continues to stare out at the darkness which conceals the vast wilderness beyond their camp.(Somewhere out there, his sons’ bodies lay in their tunics, scorched and singed but not consumed, waiting to rot.)“Aaron,” his sister repeats, this time laying a hand on his shoulder. “Nadav and Avihu…I’m so sorr—”“Don’t.”“What?”Finally, he turns to face her. Her face is illuminated by the fires from inside the camp, and it stands in stark contrast to the blackness. He squints, then blinks, as his eyes adjust. “Please. Don’t.”“They are—they were—your sons!”“I have others.”(Even uttering these words feels like a knife in his heart, twisting into it like Nadav would spin, giggling, as a child, like the spinning top that Avihu would play with for hours on end…and yet…)His sister’s eyes narrow. “You don’t mean that.”It’s not a question, not from her who knows him as she does, the only confidant he had in their years of slavery, the only one who might be able to understand an iota of what it is to stand beside—and behind—their brother in the eyes of all who watch them now.Aaron closes his own eyes. When he acquiesces in the small way he is able, his voice is scarcely louder than a whisper. “You heard Moses. If I allow myself to grieve, it will not just be me who suffers.”As Miriam approaches, the light of the fire moves across her face, and as it does, her expression seems to oscillate between softening and intensity. She reaches for his face, rests her palm on his cheek. “But they were your sons.”At her touch, Aaron feels the water threaten to break through his eyes and clenches them tight against the onslaught.“Yes,” he murmurs finally. “They were.”