Now She Speaks a Different Tongue

When she was seven, your sister found a book. It is like your sword hilt, not in that it is golden in any way, but that when anyone tries to remember where it had come from, time and space seem to waver and distort. Memories are a resource your family trades in, but they are not always willing transactions.

Sometimes they are taken.

You suppose it’s probably for the best that you don’t know. It doesn’t bother you, the not knowing.

After all, you’ve grown up knowing barely anything that you didn’t learn for yourself.

Your sister was different. She had to know everything, every time the clock chimed, every time a bird fell. And the universe listened. She asked and it told her everything.

So it wasn’t surprising when she found a book no one could read and traced a word in the air that turned her eyes silver. (Your parents know all languages spoken yesterday, today, and tomorrow, but that book is hers and hers alone.)

She tried to teach you how to read it. But you were never one to sit still for academia.

Sometimes you hear her whispering at night and her voice sounds like starlight.