It was midnight, the night was silent, and I lay awake in the tiny warm patch my body heat had created. I decided to give up on trying to find sleep and rolled out of bed, flinching at the cold. I quickly wrapped myself in my fluffy robe and pulled on several pairs of socks before padding downstairs.
The kitchen was a landscape of tiny blinking bulbs and screens that provided just enough light to make everything else seem darker, but not enough to navigate by. Rather than risk waking my parents, I opened the fridge and used its faint light to find a glass and fill it with the mineral water my mother kept in a pitcher. It seemed strange to me that simple noises always seemed so loud without the bustle of daytime to drown it out.
I took my glass and sat in an armchair near a window through which I could see a part of our garden. The moon, hidden from my line of site, still cast its careful light over the shrubs and flowers, the small, mossy pond, the high wooden fence and an empty bench set against it. I set my glass down on the windowsill when I realized I could neither stomach the icy water, nor wanted a drink in the first place. I stared at the glass of water for a moment, the moonlit garden distorted slightly, and a high sigh threatened to overwhelm me as my eyes fell on the little glass bird.
I lay back in the chair, curling my cold feet beneath me and closed my eyes to the world around me; closed them to the tears now threatening to trace rivers of salt down my face. Through all of this, there was something vital missing, something that had been taken from my perfect life. To an outsider, everything would seem normal, even mundane, but to me that normality was only a mask to cover up how wrong the world had become.
A careful observer would note, for instance, that while three people inhabited this home, there were four chairs at the dining table, four toothbrushes in the bathroom. Family photos dotted about the walls and shelves showed four happy, smiling faces, but only three of them could be seen about this home, and none of them were smiling.
The overwhelming loss I felt broke the barriers I had set up to contain it and washed over me. Hot tears rolled down my cheeks, cooling rapidly in the frigid air so that they chilled my skin. I held down a series of gasping sobs, not wanting to wake my parents, but I couldn’t stop myself from beginning to shake, and it wasn’t just because of the cold.
Esther. Her name was Esther, and she was my baby sister by about six minutes. We were twins, but I had always been the bigger, stronger, the protector and courageous one. She had followed me around like a loyal puppy desperate to impress people, desperate to be loved. She was so small, so innocent and sweet, so full of joy at every little thing.
On cold nights she would come to sleep in my bed and we would share the kind of warmth that does not come from our bodies. We would share stories and whisper secrets and yawn together until our bother told us to settle down and go to sleep. That is why I am awake on this miserable night, because the absence of her tiny form curled in my arms brings a fresh reminder that the world will never be the same again, because Esther’s laughing form will never inhabit it again.
The lack of noise in the dead of night was hardly any different to the days. Where Esther used to make us all laugh and we would all be busy about our lives, her absence has left us without a direction, and since there is nothing to do, and nothing to say that will heal these wounds, we say very little and do almost nothing. The silence of the day is unbearable.
I opened my eyes and glanced around the room, tears making my vision blurry. The chair next to mine is empty, and has been since Esther passed. No one can bring themselves to sit there or remove it. Everything she owned is still scattered about the house. Her bed still lay unmade and her sketchbooks still lay open on her little writing desk. The little glass bird I gave her for her birthday several years ago still lay on the windowsill near my glass of water. Its presence was oddly reassuring.
I picked it up with trembling fingers, careful not to let it slip, and brushed the fine layer of dust from its glossy surface. During her last days, Esther would often sit in her chair by the window with the little bird facing the outside. She said the bird was watching the world, waiting for its chance to fly, just like she was waiting to die. When she said these things, I would often get angry at her, sometimes I even shouted because I was scared and sad, and I didn’t want to lose her, but she would always forgive me and I would always cry even more.
A thought occurred to me and I stood, sneaking through the front door and out to the paved area where my breath misted before me. I looked down at the tiny bird in my hand and made up my mind. In an instant, I had drawn back my arm and thrown it as hard as I could. I saw the glimmer of moonlight on glass as the bird sailed over the fence, the delicate thing almost weightless in the howling winds. It was caught in an updraft and I saw it sail joyfully out of sight.
This is what Esther had meant all along. This is what she had wanted.
The freedom to fly.