Aria woke up and looked around her room in surprise. How is my room still here when our apartment blew up?
She jumped out of bed and quickly went toward Clarice's room. Even as she walked, the memories tried to fade into the back of her mind. She gritted her teeth and fought to keep them fresh.
"Clarice, are you there?" she pushed into her sister's room and the memory of her sister's death a week ago suddenly washed over her like a tsunami. She fell to the ground as an overpowering wave of grief hit her. She remembered the doctors telling her that she was having a nervous breakdown and experiencing delusions as her mind looked for a way to survive without her sister. She felt tears running down her cheeks and wiped them away, noticing that they were just regular tears. She let out a wail of soul crushing grief as she saw a future devoid of her sister's light stretching in front of her like an endless road into the night. There would be no more jokes, no more emotional support when the horrors of life overwhelmed her. She sunk further into despair as she wept for all of the things she would never do with her sister now. She lay on her sister's floor crying for hours as time melted away like the last rays of a dying sun. She heard the sound of the front door open and footsteps moving throughout the house.
"Aria, are you here?" her mother's voice called out, concern thick in her voice.
Her mother finally found her on Clarice's floor and knelt down, wrapping her in comforting arms.
She didn't say anything. She knew there were no words that could help the kind of pain tormenting Aria's soul. She just knelt with Aria in her arms for several hours. Aria eventually got up and stared at her mother with eyes filled with pain.
"Was it all fake?" Aria asked, her voice breaking as she spoke. "Calypso, the angels, all of it?"
Her mother watched her compassionately, smiling at her sadly through her own tears. "I'm so sorry, Aria."
THE END OF BOOK 1