The convertible rolled to a slow stop and the roof peeled back with a soft mechanical hum, opening the night sky above her.
Tesni stood up inside the car before she had made the decision to, her eyes fixing themselves on the building ahead and refusing to look away.
It rose above everything around it, swanky and spectacular, every floor saturated in a different colour of light that bled into the next like something dreamed rather than built. The kind of structure that made the rest of the skyline feel modest by comparison.
She knew this building.
Flashback
"I want to go to the light skyscraper."
She had said it the way she said most things she wanted badly, directly and without apology, perched on the edge of Aine's bed and watching her sister move around the room with that focused efficiency that meant she was busy and knew it.
"That's the biggest building on earth," Tesni had continued, leaning forward with both hands on her knees. "Every floor has different coloured lights. At midnight every single day the lights go off one floor at a time, from the top all the way down to the first. People come from everywhere just to blow out candles in front of it. Aine. Imagine."
"I'm busy, Tesni."
She had deflated slightly. "Let me go alone then."
"Daddy won't allow it and you know it."
"Everyone hates me." The words had come out with the dramatic certainty of someone who did not entirely believe them but needed to say them anyway. "Even you."
"Stop speaking nonsense." Aine had turned to look at her then, properly, the busy-ness setting itself aside for a moment. "I really love you. And I promise." A pause. The kind Aine used when she meant something completely. "I will take you there on your eighteenth birthday. To see the whole countdown. In person."
Tesni had stared at her.
"Really?"
"Yes."
She had launched herself across the bed before the word had finished landing, wrapping both arms around her sister and pressing kisses across her face with the unbridled enthusiasm of someone for whom joy had never once required containing.
"I love you I love you I love you—"
"I love you too, Tesni." Aine had laughed despite herself, trying and failing to hold still.
Present
Something white appeared in front of her face.
She blinked. A tissue, held out from the front seat without ceremony or comment.
"You are crying a lot." Hayland's eyes found hers in the mirror, carrying something that was not quite sympathy but was adjacent to it. "Is that what you do on a normal day?" A brief pause. "Have it."
Tesni took the tissue.
And then she stopped trying to hold it together entirely, the tears coming all at once, uncontrollable and undignified and completely beyond her ability to manage, soaking the white tissue in seconds while the building blazed in front of her in all its impossible colour.
Hayland
He stood outside the car and watched her cry and told himself he was simply waiting for it to stop.
She misses her sister that much.
It was not a question. He could see it in every part of her, the way grief moved through a person when it was the specific kind that came from losing someone still living. He had seen a lot of things in the time he had worked alongside Ravi. He had not expected this particular thing to be one of them.
I can't believe Ravi actually suggested this.
He reached into the small cooler in the boot without announcing what he was doing and lifted out the cake carefully. Blue and green, modest and deliberate, chosen because someone had done their research. He opened the door beside her and held it forward.
She looked at it.
He struck the lighter and touched the flame to each candle without a word.
"Make a wish," he said. "And blow them out."
Tesni looked at the candles for a moment. Something moved across her face that was too private to name.
"Okay," she said quietly.
Tesni
She closed her eyes.
I wish Aine would appear in front of me.
She opened them.
The countdown had started on the building, the numbers rolling in enormous lights across the uppermost floor, the crowd gathered below beginning to count aloud with the building itself.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
One.
She blew. Slowly, deliberately, the candles bending and going out one by one, the cake facing the skyscraper the way she had always imagined it would be.
Then the lights began to go out.
Floor by floor. Top to bottom. Each level darkening in sequence, the colour washing away one breath at a time, the building undressing itself of its brilliance slowly and completely until there was only one floor left illuminated and then that too began to dim.
And a door opened.
Tesni went completely still.
A figure stood in the light of the final floor, wrapped in a thick jacket, still and unmistakable against the last remaining glow of the building.
She could not breathe.
She did not remember getting out of the car. She did not remember crossing the distance. She only knew that she was running and then she was there, her arms closing around her sister before her mind had caught up with what her body already knew to be true, and the sound that came out of her was not something she had any control over at all.
She cried harder than she had cried in longer than she could remember, her face pressed into Aine's shoulder, her hands gripping the thick jacket like something she was terrified of losing again.
"It's fine, Tesni." Aine's arms came around her without hesitation, steady and certain and warm. "I'm here."
"Everything has been lousy since you left." The words came out broken and honest between the sobs. "Everything, Aine."
"That's why I'm here."
Some Minutes Later
Tesni had cried herself into something close to sleep, curled on the back seat of the car with the emptied cake box beside her and her breathing finally settling into something even and slow.