Aya had never known what it was like. For her, it had always been an elusive mystery. Something that was only possible in theory. A rhetorical question meant to be unanswered.
She didn't have any siblings. She had never been called a sister. Not once; not ever.
Like so many others that came before and preceded her, Aya couldn't help but wonder, deep down inside. Part of her had always fantasized. Part of her had always yearned, longed for it still.
When Aya was young, she had oftentimes imagined someone older—someone with her face, her hair, and her eyes. A smile just like hers.
Sometimes, she would dream of small hands. Hands that she would take into her own, leading them to each and every place she went. Other times, those hands would grab hers, and she would follow them faithfully, trusting them, to wherever they took her.
As the years passed and as she grew older, so did the disparity. The gap between her and those figures widening like tectonic plates.
She thought of them as spectres. Phantoms. Ghosts that didn't exist, but ones that haunted her all the same.
In the end, they were only figments of her imagination. And in her imagination they would forever remain.
Aya never knew what it was like to have a brother or a sister. And when war broke out near the borders of her kingdom, when an army of fire and steel burned down her entire village overnight, scorching the earth, levelling their homes, laying waste to her forest and her people, Aya realized that she never would...
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Respite
FanfictionA collection of small ideas, short stories, and flashes of inspiration. Cover: @IceCalm
