I thought I was getting better at pretending.
Smiling when people spoke to me, laughing at the right cues, breathing like I belonged in this body. But that morning, the world slipped again.
It started with the mirror.
The reflection wasn't wrong, exactly — it was me, but… not. The scar on my collarbone was gone. The tiny freckle under my lip had vanished. My hair, which should've caught a reddish glint under sunlight, stayed flat, dark, unfamiliar.
And yet, when I leaned closer, I saw her.
Mara.
Standing behind me.
I spun around — nothing.
Just sunlight, curtains, silence.
Still, my pulse wouldn't slow.
Downstairs, Mara was arranging flowers in a vase — lilies this time. White, fragile, too much like the ones they'd placed beside my coffin.
"You're up early," she said, smiling.
"I had a dream," I whispered.
"Good one or bad?"
"I don't know. It felt like both."
She looked at me for a moment longer than necessary — as if trying to read what I wasn't saying — then turned back to the flowers.
"Dreams are strange that way," she said. "They remember things we're trying to forget."
Later, my brother suggested we visit town together — some festival thing, an excuse to pull me out of the house. Mara insisted on coming. I wanted to say no, but the word wouldn't leave my throat.
The streets were loud with color and sound, but it all felt… wrong. The smell of fried dough, the children's laughter, the music — everything was familiar, but from another lifetime.
And then I saw it — a booth with paper lanterns.
My breath hitched.
The lanterns were painted with symbols — our symbols. The ones Mara used to draw when we were sisters, secret little marks she'd hide on my notebooks, on door frames, in the corner of our old photo albums.
I reached for one. The world tilted.
"Ayla?" Mara's voice was close, worried.
The lantern swung in my hand. "Did you make these?"
"No, of course not." She frowned. "Why?"
Because I remember you painting them beside the window, your hair wet from rain, humming that same song you still hum when you think no one hears.
Because I remember you saying, 'Every mark I make means we'll find each other again.'
But I didn't say any of that. I just handed the lantern back and muttered, "They're beautiful."
Mara smiled faintly, but her eyes had gone far away. "I used to dream of lanterns once. Funny, right?"
"What kind of dream?"
She hesitated. "A house. Fire. A hand reaching for mine."
The sound left my throat before I could stop it — a small, broken laugh. "Maybe we dreamed the same one."
That night, I couldn't sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the fire again — not the chaos, not the pain, but the moment before it: Mara standing in the doorway, her eyes wide, her hand reaching toward me, whispering, "Don't be afraid."
I woke gasping.
The room was dark, silent.
Then I heard it — humming, faint, from the hallway. That same lullaby.
I opened the door. Mara stood by the window in her nightdress, eyes half-open, lips moving around a melody older than both our lives.
Sleepwalking.
Her voice trembled on the same line she always paused at, the one that used to make me laugh.
"Mara," I whispered, stepping closer.
She turned her head, eyes still closed — and for an instant, her voice shifted, layered, like two people were speaking through her at once.
"You shouldn't have come back."
I froze.
When she blinked again, the light returned to her face, confusion washing over her. "Ayla? What's wrong?"
I didn't answer. I couldn't.
Because right then, behind her, the shadow on the wall looked like flames.