Then suddenly a frightening thing - along the horizon, to the east, the soignée east, peeks a hideous yellow eye - a glaring iris, searing my skin like flan, like eggs crisping to a darker shade of pale. The moon is silent, dipping out of sight, the sea moving in a constant pattern. Terrified, I sink my teeth into my lip, oozing from the deep red of my mouth a white froth that drops onto my chest and pools between my breasts. The light penetrates my eyes, I turn my head, the sand rasps against my cheekbones, sticking to my eyelashes, the pupils of my eyes twisted out of sight. My hands tremble, my flesh cold, my stomach curled choking those gut-hungry sharks. In moments I lay speechless, my eyes closed. Time drifts. The hourglass tips, the sun rises into the dawn, Aurora.

    Then, I come to: a burst! A thrash! A frightful shriek as torment rages on me like a wolf: the rays of the sun stream an unnatural devouring fire, invisible hands scorching my skin to cinder, gorging upon my flesh. I twist, my back arching up, up high into the air, scales gleaming iridescent in the breaking day, the snapping jaws of flames leaping to my chin. Throbbing with delight, I writhe, shaking my hips, trying to rid myself of death. But the light is upon me and will not fade: the moon has left me and the more I fight and scream the fiercer the flames bloom.

    At last, eaten by agony, I slump to the ground, my eyes, my face as one grotesque disfigurement. Down from my head drips blood mingled with flame, my flesh, attacked by the invisible fangs of venom, melted from bare bone, spread across the sand like wax from a candle - a ghastly sight.

        Her room is blank. Her huge canvasses with their assassinated ballerinas, drunken angels and mutilated clowns are gone. Her palettes and paints are gone. Her clothes, paper fans, her throwing knives and opera glasses. Gone. As if they never were, left behind only a collection of dust, smears of fingerprints. I get up and run my index finger over the grain on her dresser, the dust sticking to it, licking it from my skin.

    On the windowsill lies a note, folded with precision, 'Cassandra' scrawled across it in broad loopy lines. I pick its halves apart. It rests in my hands like a butterfly. I read, "We must have tea before it is all over, before it ends. I had a dream and this is what the woman told me."

    The window is open, unscreened. I step into it like a new dress, crawling out to the slanted roof. Aurelia sits curled over a bottle of bubbles, blowing cautiously into the magic wand, the rainbowed bubbles dancing, flying off the roof, spinning and tumbling away. We do not speak. I sit next to her, and watch the bubbles float.

    There are so many things I would like to tell her, "Don't go!" "Think of me!" "Come back!" but I can't. I know that she has to go, we all have to go. I love my sister deadly. I love my sister with a capital 'L.' I would devour her whole if I could, but she does not belong to me. My own voice drowns hers out.

    She says, "Too many of our sentences run together."

    I shrug. All I would like is for it to be simple, for no feelings of frustration to come out of love. How can love prevent things? Secretly, I think she must not love me wholly if she means to leave; her love of me has nothing to do with the time I must spend alone, the regret I feel at missed opportunities. It is hard for me to think of our youth; I want absolutes, I want the promises made at 13 of best friends forever. Too many things don't seem to last, and I am afraid.

    She reaches out a silver bangled arm and pops a bubble with a sharp finger.

    "I have no choice. My voice is trapped inside a bubble," she says, "and I need to find it, and drink the thing that is inside." Her mouth is sad. "When I find it I'll come back."

    I don't really believe that, the same way I never thought she'd even leave me at all.

    I tell her, "Be careful Aurelia. Watch out for goblin kings and bone crunching zombies."

    She smiles, and I can't remember ever having seen her smile before. I'm sure she has, I just never thought of it before, to keep her smile formaldehyde preserved. I think, after this I will be alone. Aurelia will be gone, and I will grow whiter and whiter, harder and harder, until one day I am as smooth and stiff as stone.

    She lights a match and holds the flame to a red cigarette that drips from her mouth, a radiant kiss. She breathes, hissing it out, the smoke drifting in a winding incense spiral, catching the last bubble she blew in its path, tossing it up to the sky. She passes the cigarette to me, and I hold a tendril of smoke in my mouth before pouring it out between my teeth, like a dragon. I pass it back and Aurelia throws it to the shingled roof, watching it bounce and roll until it drops off, flickering out of sight.

    She lifts her face to mine, and I have never seen anything more beautiful, or frightening. Her lips brush against my lips, the corner of my mouth, the afternoon of eternity.

    Then she is gone, back into the window, and my fingers are empty and all the bubbles and cigarette ash have been blown away.

    I will not cry. I do not cry.

    I crawl back inside Aurelia's room and walk outside, crossing the street to walk across Marina Park to the shore, where I watch the tide catch the feet of small children who laugh and squeal as they dart from the lick of the ocean, as if it were poison. I run to catch up to the sea, scattering a flock of gulls that pluck like miser-gluttons at the remains of a picnic on the beach. El mar, seacliff, surfer's point. My legs stumble as my feet sink into the salt thick sand.

    I run and run and the sea hurdles towards me, pell-mell, and SLAM! crash! we collide like charging rams, my body hitting a waist-high wave which knocks me over and tumbles me like a crocodile doing a death-roll.

    Breathless, laughing, and spitting sand out of my mouth, I crawl out of the tide and stretch my arms out, the warm sand clinging to my skin. The ocean whispers to me, and I squint as pillow clouds drift aimlessly overhead.