Open Arms

Reunited

Feet no bigger than a pocket-sized wallet pad against unforgiving tile. The fire lily-patterned hall blurs into smudges of white and red with each rattling step. If any taller, she'd surely disturb the stillness of the dark home.

Only a humming lamp light reveals the winding expanse of the hall. Its luminescence waxes and wanes in time with the child's step. The gentle buzz of the flickering yellow creates a minor harmony to the maraca-like shakes of the cicadas cocooning the manor.

Off-key.

The orchestra only reinforces the pounding of a fragile heart against tiny ribs.

With labored breaths, the toddler clashes against a towering white door. Chubby cheeks flatten against the biting, paper-thin Mohogany, "MiMi..."

"What the..." a soft voice mumbles, the sound muffled by the door.

Faint shuffling stuffs the child's ear as she presses it against thin wood. The door opens with a burst, doorknob creasing into malleable paint. A dark-haired girl pushes up her round-framed glasses beneath the ominous doorway. She snakes a fist below the lenses and twists at her eyelid. The lenses smudge. Dried with sleep, lime-green crusties sprinkle the gloss of timber floor panels. She slouched at a mere foot taller than the toddler, with hair pulled back in loose pigtails and belly swollen with youth.

"Ji-a?" the girl grumbles, her voice still crunchy with sleep. Before the older girl can blink away her drowsiness, a smaller body slams into her, tiny cheek and ear pressed to her heart. "Oof."

"I heard scary noises in Umma's room..." A hot hand settles at the tiny one's back in jerky rubs. They must be fighting again, Mira surmises.

Without another word, she outstretches her palm for the little one to take. Silk fingers curl around Mira's middle ones, and she guides her sister deep into a spacious room. Dark wallpaper and the rhythmic swirling of the ceiling fan invoke a slow blink of drowsiness.

With a flick of her wrist, Mira flips her duvet over so the pair can snuggle beneath the weighted blanket.

An malleable ear presses to her chest, lulled by the thump, thump beneath. Ji-a asks, "Can you sing to me?"

Mira doesn't sigh. She doesn't protest. She merely coughs into her fist to freshen her throat from the crackling of sleep.

The song may seem a bit peculiar.

"Los pollitos dicen pio pio pio

Cuando tienen hambre y cuando tienen frío..."

Yeaaaah. It's not in their native tongue at all. Mira took the song home from her Spanish class, earning praises from her little sister, who cheered each time.

"Again!" eagerly stamped on her tongue, and porcelain hands around her sister's forearm before Mira could finish the last note.

Maybe it was the way her big sister was able to make her mouth form all those funny words? Or, maybe it was like the angels descended to praise the earth each time her sister held a note?

Either way.

Round eyes flutter shut, and a delicate fist rubs at her eye in a lazy attempt to fight sleep. Mira rubs the child's warm back in slow circles to keep from giggling at the sight.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Like a phantom, an ache lingering beneath tendrils of muscle, Mira's chest still swells and caves in an irregular wheeze. The same way it did when Ji-a dm'd her: starry-eyed and round-faced Ji-a, a blush always dusting her cheeks, and teeth glistening like diamonds beneath heart-shaped lips. Mira's mouth always twitches and curves at the ends at the thought.