"I was born in Briston. Mom and Dad were both teachers in my school. The irony is that Dad used to be Mom's lecturer in her final year. That was when she first saw him and fell for him immediately.
They married three years later, and I was born two years after that. But Mom always wanted a daughter, and since I looked cute as a kid, she used to dress me like a girl until I was three."
Isha interrupted with a laugh. "You would have looked very cute."
Arthur gave her a serious stare. She immediately smothered her laugh and raised her hands in apology. "Okay, okay, I will be quiet. Continue."
He exhaled slowly, regained his calm, and went on. "Mom finally stopped dressing me like a girl after my sister Sophia was born. She was the love of my life. Not only my love, but everyone's. She was our smile, our happiness.
I do not remember much from when I was very young, but I remember this one thing clearly. Once, when I stayed home from school because I had a fever, Mom stayed with me the entire day. She made her usual juice and salad that she prepared whenever anyone got sick. I hated both.
When she went to the kitchen, Sophia ate the salad and drank the juice for me so that Mom would not be disappointed. And strangely, although she ate everything, I started feeling better. Seeing me act fine, Mom stepped out to buy groceries, and I remained in bed.
Soon, Sophia got bored playing alone and forced me to get up. I went along with her, but suddenly I fainted, right in front of her.
When I opened my eyes again, I was in Mom's arms. Her eyes were full of tears, and she was running barefoot on the burning summer road.
By the time we returned home after the doctor treated me for an hour, which felt like eternity, Sophia was still sitting exactly where she had been when I fainted. She was crying softly, hiccupping, her whole face red like a tomato. When she saw me enter, she ran and hugged me as tightly as she could. Her eyes were swollen, her dress wet from crying. And even with Mom and me hugging her, she kept sobbing.
It took another half hour for her to calm down and fall asleep. After that, Mom and I completely forgot that I was the one who had been sick, and we started taking care of Sophia instead.
While I watched her small, innocent, red face resting against the pillow, Mom touched my hair and asked, 'Isn't she cute?' I nodded. She smiled and said, 'I was a single child. I always wished for a sibling. But you are lucky. You have a sister who cries for you for hours. So as a big brother, promise me you will protect her all your life.'
At that time, I did not know those words would become a memory I could never forget. That was how loving and beautiful my world used to be. But everything changed when I turned ten.
Dad always dreamed of going to Vebula but never had the chance. Then Her Majesty announced the launch of the greatest train in the world, Gigantic. For people like my father, it was a dream come true. Gigantic connected Briston and Vebula, divided by the great river Aquarius. It was the only possible way for a common man like Dad to cross the river.
The tickets were sold one month before inauguration. Dad waited in line the entire day without telling anyone. That night, he surprised us with the tickets. But instead of being happy, Mom scolded him for staying out all day, and they argued for a whole week.
Leaving that aside, neither Sophia nor I knew how incredible the Gigantic was. We only knew that none of our friends' parents had managed to get tickets. That alone made us proud enough to show off at school.
Finally, the inauguration day arrived. The railway station was chaos. Thousands of passengers and their families crowded the platforms. We struggled to get into the train.
Once inside, Mom and Dad settled into their seats, but we were too energetic to sit still. We ran from car to car and finally settled in a compartment two cars away from theirs.
While playing there, we noticed several people staring out the window. Curious, we joined them.
The train was crossing the greatest rail bridge in the world, Hola. The view outside was so surreal that not only our entire car, but passengers in every car were staring through their windows.
It was Twimoon that night. The river below was perfectly still, like glass. The bright white light from Luna and the faint red glow from Sona filled the sky, stretching across the unmoving water. The reflections made it look like there were four moons in the world, two in the sky and two in the river.
The sight was so breathtaking that the entire train fell silent.
Time felt frozen. No one even breathed. And before anyone realized it, the train had crossed the bridge and entered the woods.
The spell broke, but Sophia and I still stood frozen in the middle of the passage. A man gestured for us to sit beside him, the only empty seat in the car.
Mom shouted our names from behind, but we ignored her and stayed. Sophia even stood on the seat and made funny faces at Mom, trying to make her laugh. Other passengers in the two cars behind us watched her too, and many smiled. Seeing that, I copied her, and they laughed harder.
Soon, Dad said something to Mom, and she began walking toward us. She was just about to step out of her car when the entire train jolted at once. A heartbeat later, everything started shaking violently. Mom glanced out the window, and her face turned pale. She shouted, "Sit tight," and the moment I heard her voice crack, I grabbed Sophia's hand.
The train tilted.
Not slowly, not gradually. In an instant, the entire world flipped sideways. The floor vanished beneath us and crashed sideways, while the wall became the new ground.
Everything happened too fast to understand. People slid with the train's tilt, rolling and screaming. Others were flung through the windows as glass shattered. Luggage tumbled from overhead shelves. Trees tore through the metal walls as the train scraped through the forest. Screams, metal, wind, panic, all blending into one nightmare.
One enormous suitcase fell exactly between us and the window. By pure chance, it took the brunt of our fall and blocked the opening we would have been thrown out from. That nameless bag probably saved both our lives.
We survived with only scratches. And when we pushed ourselves upright on the sideways floor, we saw death for the first time.
The kids who were laughing with us moments earlier now lay twisted and broken, like puppets thrown into a grinder. The man who offered us a seat was still strapped into it, but his body hung limp, blood spilling from his mouth and a tree branch jutting through his stomach. The cheerful passengers across two cars, the ones who had smiled at Sophia's silly faces, were now scattered everywhere, skulls crushed, limbs torn, bodies unrecognizable. Some were gone entirely.
It was a miracle that we were even able to move. Our bodies responded automatically, stepping over the carnage as though we were walking in a dream. We climbed over fallen luggage, over shards of metal, over blood streaming like rivers along the broken windows. Through torn gaps in the carriage, we stepped directly onto the forest floor where the train had been ripped open. Somehow, we crossed into the next car.
We stopped at the entrance and searched for Mom.
She was there.
At the far end of the tilted carriage, a woman drenched in blood was struggling to push herself up. One of her arms was gone, torn completely off. Her legs were pinned under a collapsed seat, twisted unnaturally. She kept trying to lift herself with her remaining hand, but her body betrayed her and she collapsed again and again. Her screams echoed through the broken car, sharp and raw.
Then she stopped.
Her eyes darted around. She was searching for something. Or someone.
As soon as she saw us, her expression transformed. Even with tears clinging to her lashes, even with blood running down her face, she smiled. A bright, beautiful smile that belonged to another world entirely.
We knew. Instantly. It was Mom.
Watching her crushed under twisted metal, watching the blood drip from her head, watching the stump where her hand used to be, something inside me froze. For the first time in my life, I understood death. Not as a word or a story, but as a shadow placing its hand on someone you love. I shivered, but Sophia was already sobbing, trembling so violently I could feel it through her hand.
Maybe she wanted to hug Mom. Maybe she thought she could help. She ran toward her.
Mom kept smiling, but the air changed. The air itself felt wrong. Heavy, tense, sharp like something invisible watching us.
The ominous feeling grew so thick I could barely breathe.
Mom turned her head sharply, as if she saw something behind us.