Enzo… I commit the name to memory, an unnamed feeling curling uncomfortably in my chest, a sickly smoke I don’t like the taste of. Not quite grief, not quite anger. He was a cousin I’d never meet—another one, I didn’t know about this one. Just Aoife, since my mother knew her as a baby, and most recently, Seren, since I’d been keeping my ear to the ground lately.
I can’t imagine losing a brother. Losing my dad had been devastating—how did she withstand the loss of three siblings? It’s all that loss that kept me in hiding with my parents, all that pain they wanted to save me from. Meeting Flora, part of me wonders if I’d be among her dead family if my mother had stayed, if my parents were right all along.
But then Flora says exactly the right thing, and I breathe away the feeling. “Yeah. I can’t just put my head in the sand. Can’t just pretend I don’t have some of the most heroic family in Caido—I’d be putting you all to shame, just hiding like that my whole life. Even though puberty did rock my fucking world.” I flash a crooked grin.
My hopes of just heading back to Torchline when Flora was done in the Greatwood are dashed, and I try not to look crestfallen. Flora is so soft when she goes on, like she knows how fragile my optimism is. I glance toward town, where the Skyport waits, and I’m a little more hopeful when I look back at my new cousin. “I’m gonna try and earn enough for a ticket, or find one that’ll let me work through the trip,” I say, a determined current carrying my words. “I’d really like to come see you. We could hang out on the beach, or do… anything!”
but my god, you're alive and it's spectacular
