She is the girl with the sand-swept skin, with grains of freckles tickling paths up her arms, and eyes large enough to consume all of the oceans in the world. She is the elusive light in the ink-stained sky, twinkling above others in never-ending mirth; she is a recorder, a lovely song that sometimes doesn’t comprehend the meaning of pause and stop: only knows how to play, and only play. Sheis the innocence Eden had coveted.

The newly made big sister held her for the very first time in a sterilized white room, all awkward joints and unsure eyes.

Her very first homecoming was to her crib fitted in the comfortable crevice of her parents’ bedroom. She had been a stereo in those initial few nights, whose volume had been pushed to its maximum capacity. She shattered the borders of day and night and took care to learn that with a cry from her lips, the earth would have bowed down for her. That the three blurs she managed to see were all catering to her whim. She was a spoilt cherub that had fallen into one lost girl’s searching arms as soon as fall had come to blow the leaves of summer away.

When that little bundle of innocence began crawling towards her older sister on one particularly inconspicuous afternoon, the latter felt like the desperate protagonists of her novels. A sudden impulse flooded her system, induced her desire to erect skyscraper-high castle walls around their home; do anything and everything that was necessary to protect that little girl with fireworks in her eyes.

However, she realized how unrealistic that was, yet continued to wish for more. This was her younger sister, the one who would interrogate her for answers that even history hadn’t found yet. Answers that she, herself, was still fumbling for. But again, this was her sister. For her, the older girl realized that she would do everything. She would grow and become dexterous with her hands. One would hold the scars of her learned mistakes, and the other would give the lessons her sister will never have to suffer for. She would be the experiment, the test subject, so that her little sister would not have to know the meaning of trial and error – and more error.

This, she swore to by a sterilized hospital bed, bathed in nothing but a peek of fluorescent light emitting from the crack of the doorway. The nurses have carted her little sister away for monitoring, and in their wake she began to make her promises. Eden had bequeathed upon them a precious gift, and she would do everything it took to preserve its smile.

For dearest little sister, it is a cold world out there, and one day it will need your warmth.