When I first met her, I was taken aback by her appearance: jagged and shoddily-cut hair, rugged and scarred hands unsuited for a girl her age, and baggy clothes that barely showed her frame. She looked absolutely revolting.

I knew better than to let my emotions show in front of our father though, so I smiled.

“Maire, this is your new sister Sophie, please look after her,” he told me.

“I’ll try,” was all I could really promise.

Our short tour around the manor only reinforced my perception of her. She was easily distracted: stopping to smile at absolutely everything colored brightly and anything that moved or talked. The way she walked (and I could hardly call it walking) even had a bounce to it. Worst of all, though, was the way she conducted herself with the servants. Walks that should have taken no more than five minutes through simple hallways took double or triple that (as she felt it necessary to introduce herself to each and every last one of them and ask their names in kind).

After making our way through the manor, she insisted that I take her to town where the streets were filthy, just so that she could gawk at the vendor’s pitiful wares and buy a few of their clearly overpriced items. The merchant looked horrified when I stepped in, but I kept the price reasonable and promised not to let dad know. She thanked me profusely when I taught her to haggle properly, but whether or not she’d be able to apply anything properly was another matter entirely.

The last straw, though, was when she asked me to take her deeper into town.

“What about the things Dad sells? Could we go see those?”

My nose scrunched, and any sort of facade I was still keeping up for her sake fell apart.

“You want to what?”

Clearly she couldn’t even tell when someone was annoyed, because that dumb smile of hers remained plastered on her face as she replied.

“I want to see the things Dad sells.”

So I took her to the filth-ridden streets where the smell of excrement was only masked by the whiffs of white smoke. Some bowed as we passed, others cursed in tongues I wasn’t taught to recognize, and each and every one of them watched our every action as we passed.

“Careful of the Ashwit’s child, but who is the girl next to her?” the rabble whispered.

Sophie followed along quietly, no longer bouncing as she once did. Perhaps even the least intelligent of animals recognized danger when they were in the center of it. One man was foolish enough to lunge at us, but was quickly detained by the guards. They got ready to make an example of him, but I quickly stopped them.

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“We have a guest today,” I said sternly.

“I don’t mind,” she said cheerily, catching me of guard for a moment.

“I do,” I replied bitterly.

A few slumped figures with foaming mouths littered the floor along the way, but we reached our destination with no problems. My lips couldn’t help but twitch in disdain when I saw the facility we’d reached. It was a tall wooden building: three stories tall, and built with a firm metal frame. It stood out like a house built atop the rubble of a city that once was. Maybe because it was exactly that. Sophie ran around the facility, poking her head into every nook and cranny of where the white powder was made.

“So, what do you think of it?” I asked her, unsure of what kind of reply I wanted to hear.

“It’s amazing,” she said without betraying any hint of remorse. I twitched. Idiot or not, perhaps I hoped I might have found an ally.

“It’s terrible,” she admitted, “but it’s amazing.”

The expression on her face stayed in my mind for years to come, and even now I can’t be sure what it really was. Her eyes were wide with an innocent fascination, but for a fleeting moment I was convinced that she was aware of all the nuances of what this facility meant.

We talked more after that: about what our favorite foods were, what it was like for her to suddenly be a daughter of an Ashwit, and many more things.

“So, your mother was an Efliss right?” I finally decided to ask.

“Yep, what of it?” she asked back.

“Is it true that you guys never stay in one place for long?”

She shrugged while pouring out a clear brown liquid into a cup.

“Not usually. Though, it seems like I’ll be staying here for awhile. Want some tea?”

I gladly accepted a cup and smiled. Despite her lack of proper etiquette, she was well traveled. She spoke of distant lands with rolling hills where the air was fresh and lacked any white smoke or powder. I smiled at the thought.

“You didn’t seem surprised today. I’m guessing you’ve seen similar things in your travels?” I asked while taking a sip of the tea. It didn’t take me long to set the cup back down due to the taste: an unusual mixture of bitter and salty.

“Loads of times. It’s things like this that hold some places together, as unfortunate as it may be,” she replied nonchalantly while swirling her teacup. “That’s just how things are.”

Hold them together? You mean rip them apart, I nearly scoffed. I didn’t though. Ally or not, it was nice to talk to someone for a change.

“This tea tastes… interesting,” I commented instead.

“Really? I thought so too,” she said with a smile. Not a reassuring one at that.

So we spoke of the rolling hills and plains of white flowers and clouds: where streets housed animals instead of people. I noted the scars on her hands were burns, and she noted that I had no etiquette for pointing out such a thing. We spoke until our voices tired.

I enjoyed her presence. I really did. That’s why I didn’t comment when I saw her proudly show a flask of white powder to my father, or when she began to disappear to the facility on her own. Keeping things like that unspoken were what held this family together after all.

That was just how things were.