Damn!

I curse under my breath looking at the mess all around me. I have emptied practically every drawer in the house and searched every possible nook and cranny but my mother's necklace is nowhere to be found.

It can't just have disappeared, can it?

Or is it some kind of a magical charm which disappears when its use is over?

I remember dressing up mom, the last time — for her funeral. The necklace wasn't there. I had been with her the night she died, but I never removed a necklace... or did I?

I curse myself. That night is just a blur in my memory, a blip I wanted to erase from my life. Surprisingly it actually got erased. I wonder why the other hardships don't get erased. It would have made my life so much easier.

No memories, no pains, no longing and no waking up every day with false hopes.

Hope.

A four-letter word, innocent and deadly.

It can make you.

It can break you.

I don't hope anymore.

I'll try my best to find my sister. But I didn't hope to bring her back, not yet. Besides, I don't have any clue, any lead. Besides, I'm not able to trace a goddamn necklace.

Angrier than before, I stomp off into my sister's room.

Pushing open the door, my breath catches in my throat. Her bed stands there, slept in. The covers are all tangled up.

The room should have been alive with life — with the signs that someone was there, living and breathing.

The entire room seems to be silent, grieving her departure.

'You knew it, didn't you?' I scream, not knowing whom I'm talking to. Maybe the walls, maybe the roof — doesn't matter anymore.

The room held her secrets. This room knew that she would be gone.

I raised her, I freaking raised her and she disappears without my permission!

I saw no sign of any displeasure. We had had no altercation, no ego clashes or sibling rivalry.

She was perfectly normal, happy even. She had gone to school, came back and eaten her dinner in silence.

We don't talk much since mom died, but I didn't let my loneliness affect her.

Or did I?

Because I don't know what I'm doing every day, ever since my last support, the last pillar left, leaving me crippled. Poppy started talking less to me since that day...

No, I must reign my thoughts or my erratic mind will be drawn towards her— the other one. I can't let my mind win over me. I have to keep my sanity.

Control...

Control...

I exhale, not knowing I had been holding my breath.

I try to take in deep breaths until my mind is clear.

Poppy.

I need to find Poppy, and I need to find her fast.

But the things in her room — the worn-out teddy bear, with one eye missing, the doll which she tried to dress up. A lump forms in my throat.

I was always the villain in her fairytale. My job was to kidnap the princess. I never had cars for myself, or aeroplanes, or the cool stuff other kids had. I was big and mature and was expected to behave that way and take care of Poppy.

I never complained though.

The heavy feeling in my chest refuses to subside.

I flop down on the bed and jump up almost immediately.

Something has pricked me on my backside. A little metal piece is peeping out of the covers.

A gentle tug and it is out.

I almost drop it in surprise.

It is the same jade ornament —my mother's favourite, the last remaining sign of my father's existence.

I turn the necklace over my hand. I realise how I had never had the chance to look it up close.

It is a circle with a jade set in the centre and ornate vines — thin, almost like a whisper — encasing the jade and binding it to the silver frame.

It is breathtaking.

I hold up the two necklaces,

Green and red.

Jade and ruby.

They gleam in the small sliver of sunlight that breaks through the window.

The two seem to be narrating a story — a story that I am too eager to listen.

Only if I can decipher it though...