We’re definitely hard to miss, especially that we’re the only thing anyone could see for miles in all of directions. Though for all of the fifteen years I’ve lived, I’ve only met exactly four people. And that’s everyone who lives here. Everywhere else is nothing but the greenery that spread indefinitely from the shore to the west and the blank, blue sea to the east. It’s only our foster mother who goes further out to get the things we need from a town she rarely speaks of.

As far as she had told all of us once, our parents had died, then she took us out here and raised us as her own children. And that is the only thing she would tell us. She made this place - our home - the best that it could be that we’d almost never ask what was out there. This alone made us happy, especially with that sweet, kind smile of hers. But that didn’t mean we didn’t ever wonder what was out there at all.

I grew up here in a tall house, swallowed by the very nature of its tall rock. Its side covered in vines that crawled all the way up and in through the windows. Its flowers bloom in tiny carnation buds, decorating the walls and parts of the floor. And it snakes around the rails of the stairs that lead out towards the shore that it would never reach, when it ends midway with its real last steps gone.

That’s where I usually find everyone in the morning, when we watch Mother Lucille disappear into a cloud of mist and into whatever is behind that horizon, and when we watch her come back and gracefully float onto its last few steps. That’s where I find myself walking to this afternoon as well, as I find my sister sitting quietly and watching the sunset.

“She hasn’t come back yet,” she tells me as soon as she hears the old steps creak with my footsteps, “and it’s getting late.”

“She’s fine,” I tell her, “She’s strong, isn’t she?”

When she looks at me, I see her ash-blue eyes. And I see that she wants to believe it too, that she believes it. But she worries anyway. It’s something that I’ve noticed about her these past few weeks, finding her with her chin on her palm, sitting on those steps, and longingly staring at those mountains. Perhaps, I think, it’s because she’s the oldest of the three of us, kind of like how Mother Lucille is like to us every single time.

While she worries about what was out there, I worry about her. And she knows it. That’s the kind of family we are even though we aren’t even related at all - the kind that couldn’t really live when we aren’t seeing each other, when we aren’t together even if it’s just for a moment.

“Hey, isn’t today your birthday?” I say to her, “So maybe, Mother’s bringing a lot of stuff.”

I see her smirk, the outline of her face lit by the sunset. “Since when were you this sweet, Kiane?” She says to me.

I take her hand in mine and snap a length of the vines at my feet. Then I wrap it around her wrist a few times, making sure that the bud is on top. I cover it with both of my palms and concentrated, thinking of the blue waves and the clouds overhead. And when I remove my hands, the flower turns into same color as the sea and the chain that holds it around her wrist into silver.

“There. Happy birthday, Kyle.” I smile to her. Now, the flower on her wrist won’t ever die and disappear.

“Since when were you this sweet,” she teases, playfully punching my arm before pulling me in a hug. It feels warm, as it always is, and I lay my head on her shoulder as we both sit there and watch the skies and the shore, waiting for Mother Lucille to come home.

“Look.” We both hear it from the top of the stairs. We turn and see our younger brother with his arm outstretched pointing at something in the sky.

We stand there, careful not to trip and fall towards the sea, and we watch that familiar thing fly to us. It’s a white mist with a long tail which is how Mother’s travelling Magic usually looks like. But as it comes closer, instead of feeling the relief of welcoming her to this very steps, we feel scared and even more worried. Because we aren’t just seeing the pure white color of the cloak she usually wears, and it isn’t just our mother we’re seeing.

We know and we feel that something different is coming. As we watch it, as it gets closer, we can see those gray tendrils of smoke mixed with Mother’s mist. It dances with hers like it’s trying to get into her, soaring and punching right through.

We stand there - frozen. We aren’t sure what to think or what to do. This is the first time we’ve seen anything like it, and it’s nothing like the green around house, the blue around its feet, or even the white overhead.

The first one to move is my older sister. She grabs my arm and pulls me back towards the house, almost tripping on the vines and the steps. She drags me as we run towards my younger brother. Then she pushes him too. But the staircase is long and it - whatever it is - is faster than all of us.

We freeze when we hear the clang of the steel stairs as the mist that is both our mother and something else drop harshly on the steps where we waited. It moves and disappears slowly, and slowly revealing the face of our sweet mother in pain. And we feel it too, in fear of whatever is around her. It’s dark and deep, staining her skin and the clothes she’s wearing.

I watch its body move like fluid. It ripples on her back as it grows and shrinks on Mother. And I hear her breathe sharply with every movement. She tries to stand, pushing herself with her injured hand, but she gasps and falls anyway, hitting her head on the sharp edge of the stairs.

Kyle takes one step down and aims her palm at the Thing, wrapping her left fingers around her right wrist. Her eyes are fierce as she braces herself, but even before she can fire her Magic, the Thing lunges and flies towards the house, bringing Mother with it.

We hear the crash as they break the glass and land on the furniture. I can see a small fire start from the shards left on the pane, as Kyle rushes in to help.

“Wait!”

We run after her but we don’t reach the house. We don’t even get close enough when a gust of wind stops us where we are standing. It comes with a quiet explosion - we hear it first before the wind - as I see the black mist of the Thing pour out of the broken windows, and all we are able to do then is watch.

“Jump,” Kyle says to us, “Take Yasun with you and jump.”

Yasun, despite trembling to his toes, squeaks, “But what about Mother?”

“She’s gone,” she says quietly.

I don’t understand what I’m seeing. I’m sure my siblings don’t know it too that I find it hard to believe that all of this is even happening right now, before our very eyes. But suddenly hearing those words suddenly makes it all real, and heavier, that it isn’t just a really bad nightmare playing cruelly in my mind. The mother who raised us as her family, the woman who smiled to us, the person who gave us a home is now gone. And that home is now clouded in smoke, like how much we really understand what is happening and why.

“Go!”

We run towards the opposite direction, towards the hanging end of stairs, while Kyle stands there with her hands raised to her sides. She’s facing the house as the wind whirls around her and the fire that has started inside dances with her. And it grows bigger as her Magic urges it. Then, the last thing I see of Kyle before we jump is her forcefully clapping her hands, once. And with it, the sound of everything we know and have exploding into nothing.

“Kyle!”

We plummet to the sea and barely missing some of the debris that come flying out of the explosion. They are pieces of our childhood - pieces of our lives - and they are crushed into burning pieces I can’t even recognize. It’s so different that out here, at this great height and watching our burnt house, I realize how little we really know of the world. We grew up way out here and never asked enough. And now a piece of it came flying right to our doorstep, forcing us out of our home.

I close my eyes and breathe carefully. For now, I want to survive long enough to at least say goodbye. I don’t want the last thing I remember of my Mother to be that Face, the beautiful, sweet face turned into something pained and unreal. So I force it out of the way and I imagine the waters catch us gently, the way we’ve always felt like every time we are together and before things got shattered in that mess, the kind feeling of my Mother’s arms embracing us. And I hear it. I hear it swirl below us slowly, then carefully rise to catch us in its fluid arms.

I only open my eyes when I feel my feet hit the water. Yasun is beside me, paddling to keep himself afloat, but his eyes are staring up to where our house used to be. He’s searching every movement he can see up on that rock for someone he knows, the person who was standing in the thick of the fire when I last saw her.

I see the longing look on his face and I feel it. I know I have to say something now or this might weigh heavier on us. “Yasun….”

“Over there!”

I look at the place he’s pointing, and I can’t help but be happy that at least, with this one, I’m wrong. She isn’t dead. She’s still up there, breathing and living. But she’s staggering on her feet. She tries to hold herself up with the railings but it breaks. The whole staircase - reaching to a place it would never reach - collapses with a loud metallic groan and plunges.

“KYLE!” we both shout as we use our Magic on one arm, the wind swirling with Yasun’s fingers as it pushes the debris away from all three of us, and I work with the water to catch her as gently as I had done. Then she splashes lightly into the sea, in front us.

She wakes up with the cold of the water, coughing violently while trying to keep herself afloat.

“Kyle. Kyle! Are you okay? Are you okay?” I say to her while we both hold onto her, afraid to let go, afraid of everything. I can still feel my heart drumming inside of my chest and my head feels light. But I keep myself busy maintaining my Magic in the water around us.

“Yeah. I’m okay,” she says, “Let me see you.” She holds onto us too and she’s shivering. Her eyes glaze over us as she checks our faces, looking maybe for wounds that we luckily don’t have. Other than a few scratches, I’m glad that we’re all alright.

She laughs nervously and awkwardly pulls us all into an embrace, as much as being in the water would allow her. And we all breathe in the fact that this, at least, us is still in tact unlike the rest of our wonderful past. My Magic wavers, but it’s not because of the sadness I’m surely feeling right now, it’s not the dread of seeing our lives get shattered, but because of the fact that I can still hold them in my arms like this. And despite the cold of the water, I feel their warmth in my fingers, and I use it to carefully push us back to the shore where we spent some of our childhood at.

Every once in a while, Mother would bring us to those shores. We would play in the waves and have our lunch on its beaches. At the fields, she would teach us how to properly use our Magic. We learned a lot things from controlling the elements and dancing with it. And she would tell us that this place, this is our home. “You just have to whisper to it.”

And now, it is the thing that saves us.