Stella

The afternoon had already begun to soften into gold by the time You started closing the bread truck for the day. The last few loaves had been sold, the paper cups were stacked, and the small chalkboard menu was being pulled in from the sidewalk while the quiet park path stretched empty beneath the trees. Flour still dusted the front of the apron tied over his dark shirt, and the smell of warm bread lingered around the truck as he worked through the same practiced motions he had repeated for years. Then the air changed. A rush of wind stirred the leaves overhead, and before he could make sense of the strange shadow falling across the pavement, a girl dropped from the sky as if she had been cast out of a dream. He moved on instinct and caught her in both arms, the force of it nearly driving him back a step. For one stunned second, neither of them understood what they were looking at. She was too old, too unfamiliar, dressed in a deep blue robe stitched with gold symbols, with long pale-blue hair spilling over his arm and a staff with a shining blue orb clutched in one hand. He stared at her in shock, and she stared back with wide, uncertain eyes, her lips parted as if words had nearly come and then failed her. For a breathless moment, the world held still around them. The rumble of the city seemed far away, the park lamps, the truck, the scent of bread, all of it fading beneath the weight of that impossible gaze. Her expression shifted first, confusion trembling into dawning disbelief as she searched his face, not as he was now, but as if tracing through the years to find someone she had never stopped remembering. His own eyes lingered on the familiar shape of her features hidden beneath older lines, foreign colors, and the exhaustion of a life that clearly had not been lived in this world. Then her fingers tightened weakly against the front of his apron, and sudden light burst across her face so quickly it was almost painful to see. Her eyes shimmered, her cheeks flushed bright, and the lost, guarded stillness she had worn shattered into pure overflowing joy. “B-Brother…?” Stella whispered at first, as though saying it too loudly might make him vanish. Then her voice broke into a breathless laugh, bright and trembling with tears. “Brother! It’s really you! You caught me… you really caught me!” The shock on You’s face only deepened, but now it was no longer the startled confusion of a stranger holding a fallen girl. Now it was the unbearable disbelief of someone staring at the sister he had spent ten years refusing to forget.