My sister vanished on April 1, XXXX, in a spring where warblers flitted and grasses ran wild.

I can’t recall the year. Even soaked in time’s brine, those long days before she vanished blur. We never kept a calendar at home.

I learned time from her, a water clock in a human voice. She was a famed spirit medium; one skyward glance, and she named the hour.

After she vanished, my mind is a fog where her outline won’t hold. Yet counting backward is a bead-string: one day before, two, three—each bead bright. It all feels like yesterday.

Clearest of all is her question, a moth at dusk: would I go to the photo studio?

At dusk, the house was an overturned boat: towels, wooden bowls, shards of glass, and her things strewn like wreckage.

Her face, even her lips, had the bloodless chalk of winter. She curled like a wounded fawn in a deep, black corner.

Outside, dusk held its breath; inside, her sobs drifted like smoke. Her slight tremors cast twin shadows that quivered on the dingy wall.

Only three steps lay between us, yet I stood alone on the rim of the world. Now, I see my place never moved; the room widened, and she receded into a corner until she vanished.

From that moment, I vowed an endless tenderness, a love too heavy for a child’s arms.

It was closer to pity for the frail—absurd, maybe, when carried by someone not yet grown.

She’d flare, then crumple, then be ground underfoot without warning. So to me, not loving her like a storm, not soothing, not talking, not plotting care for her would be the real cold blood.

Still, why did her misfortune on this earth pull pity like a tide through me?

Wasn’t it the grain of her wood, the temper in her steel, that caused it?

Yet I couldn’t stop my heart from cradling her stumbles, a soft lamp in a crooked road.

“Selina, want to go to the photo studio?” she asked, counting coins aloud, indecision tapping like rain. Then she shook her head and murmured, “Forget it. You want to sleep?”

“Mmm, I want to sleep.”

Back then, I took it for a passing whim; her mind shifted like wind over reeds.

Now I see she sensed the oncoming storm. Mediums can’t read themselves, they say, yet that dusk she divined a shape—mist to me, a blade to her.

Because of that, those memories wear a low, iron sky. Fear pooled without a name, and need clung like wet cloth. Sometimes I woke hazy, slipped from bed, and hunted her shadow, afraid she’d vanish into some far city.

I couldn’t love her out in the sun; she bristled at my touch like a cat in winter.

Later I learned this about children like me—orphaned, raised by a sister: in a garden with stunted light, even a drop of kindness blooms into a fierce vine.

One evening—her memory seems nailed to twilight—I cleaned the wreckage until the floor breathed. She sat on a stool, quiet as rain, leafing a treatise on magic. The name on the cover was Hedi Melvina.

I wasn’t like her. Academic pages never lit for me; I did the barest prep, the thinnest review. Yet she kept trying to stitch me to magic, tossing me odd questions—names of scholars like beads.

“Who wrote that book?”

“Hedi Melvina,” I said, a small pout in my voice. “You ask about her all the time.”

“She’s something else.”

“It has nothing to do with us.”

She fell quiet and watched me. I met her eyes, trying to read the lock on her tongue. But those eyes, ringed like bruised moons, held nothing but knotted storm-clouds.

Then came the change that startled me. She paced like a caged tigress, sleep burned away. All night, she walked back and forth for hours, murmuring as if the house held only her echo. Sometimes she spread her palms like empty plates; sometimes she hugged herself; sometimes she sighed, dragged under by a bottomless dusk.

I didn’t dare break the seal of quiet. I watched tears slip down her face like cold rain. The air pressed heavy, and I sank under it. I tried to think her thoughts and let a night-born suspicion gnaw me.

She caught my stare. “Why’re you looking at me like that?” she asked. I don’t remember my reply, only her look—sharp as a ruler over a child’s knuckles. I must’ve stammered, trying to please.

“Viola,” she said. “Selena Viola.”

“Did I do something wrong?”

“You’re the mistake,” she said, words cold as knives. “Without you, I’d be happier.”

I curled on the bed, letting stray thoughts tangle my skull like weeds. Confusion stripped my bearings; I wasn’t even sure what bed held me. Panic surged, and I rushed to beg forgiveness. She only sighed that I was a muddled child and told me to sleep, now.

“Viola.” She stroked my hair, calling—Selena Viola. “Don’t speak,” she whispered. She bent to my ear as if to pour words in, but sleep took me before a second word arrived.

The next day.

For once, my memory flowed like a stream; before, it was only broken shards.

She did something rare—she told me to go play. I didn’t stray; her gaze was a leash I wasn’t allowed to slip.

A few people arrived, the air snapping tight, and asked about how she lived here.

A woman with eyes like green glass led the questions. “Alone?”

“Two.”

“Family?”

“My sister.”

“What work does she do?”

“She isn’t of age.”

The formal talk ran long, a dry river I struggled to follow. It circled her work—mental power, foresight, the Dark Realm—and even my own mental strength.

She stayed on the stool until they left. When I came in, she spotted me at once and praised the strength of my mind. She smoothed my hair, gentle as river grass, then talked for a long, long while—as if tipping all her stored words into me.

“Who are they?” I asked.

“Work.”

“Your work?”

She pulled me into her arms, thoughts raking slow like wind through pines. “Yeah,” she said.

“They looked scary.”

“But I have to go,” she said. “Or they’ll take you instead.”

“Will I be a spirit medium too?”

“If you can help it,” she said, trembling, “never take this line of work in your whole life... You want to sleep?”

“Not sleepy yet.”

“Mmm~~ who wrote that book?”

“Hedi Melvina,” I answered. “You’ve asked me so many times.”

She smiled, a small crescent, and left in the name of work. She never returned.