Of Smoke and Dust 🖋

Chapter Seven: a little star, a sister never met, and the dead girl on the bed

CHAPTER SEVEN

Present

June 4th 2021

1:03 AM

Once upon a time, Maia Eleanor Owens thought herself a star.

(She doesn't anymore, of course. But once upon a time, she listened as her mother explained that Maia is a star in the constellation Taurus, and that that's how she got her name.)

Once upon a time, she felt only love and pure, unwavering belief when her father held her close, the scent of his cologne invading her nose, his warm arms wrapped around her torso, and told her that she was his light in the darkness; his guiding presence.

(This was before she noticed the solemn looks her parents exchanged behind her back when they thought she wasn't watching. This was before she sat alone in her room and listened to her mother's sobs through the wall)

Once upon a time, Maia was not a replacement; she was not a little girl living in a dead child's shadow.

(Well, she was, but Maia didn't know that yet)

Once upon a time, two parents (Eleanor and Kaleb Owens) told a grieving thirteen-year-old girl to mourn her friend, but then to move past her; to forget.

They told her this because they are no strangers to the power the dead hold over the living; they are no strangers to the power of the dead, because they have been haunted by a little girl with Maia's face and Maia's curls and Maia's crooked smile for eighteen years.

(Theta Owens was five when she fell into the river, not able to swim and woefully underprepared for the raging waters. Kaleb and Eleanor were told she died almost instantly)

Yes.

Once upon a time, a little girl called Maia lived in the shadow of her long-dead sister - the sister she had never met and never would.

(But Theta is never real to her. Theta never speaks to her, never sits beside her and rubs circles on her back. Theta never wraps her into a hug and lets her sob into her chest. Leonie was more Maia's sister than Theta ever was)

(Theta is but a word on paper. A name scribbled in crayon on a print-out paper family tree passed out in third grade. A girl to imagine, yes, but...)

Leonie is not Theta, however. Leonie is real.

Leonie is sitting at the foot of Maia's bed staring at her with wide, unfathomable eyes and a broken smile.

__________

(Theta - german in origin. Eighth letter of the ancient Greek alphabet. Meaning: People)

(Maia - greek in origin. A star in the Taurus constellation, a nymph in Greek mythology. Meaning: Great or mother)

Theta Tauri: a star in the Taurus constellation.

Maia: a star in the Taurus constellation.

Which sister was born first?

__________

Maia knows that once a person is dead, you aren't supposed to see them again.

She knows that plausibly (if she follows the unspoken rules) the Leonie sitting cross-legged atop her yellow blanket is nothing more than a figment of her imagination. A hallucination. A memory, maybe, preserved inside her mind.

But as Maia stares in silence, still wreathed in the shadows cast by her nightstand, it sure doesn't seem that way.

The Leonie shade waves, still smiling sadly.