The world outside was silent, save for the distant howling of the wind through the cracks in the walls. My breath hitched, each sob tearing through my chest like a jagged knife. I couldn’t stop thinking of Gloria—her face, her voice, her final words to me. "Sunshine, run!"
That nickname—my name—pierced me deeper than any wound. Sunshine. She hadn’t called me that in years. I buried my face in my arms, my shoulders trembling with the weight of it all. She used to call me Sunshine every day, back when we were young and inseparable, before everything changed, before she changed.
"Why did you call me that again, Tori?" I thought as the sobs wracked my body. "Why only in your last breath?"
I closed my eyes and let the memories come, let them take me away from this place, from the cold and the pain.
---
Flashback
Before we turned 13, Gloria and I were more than sisters; we were a team, two halves of the same whole. Where she went, I followed, and where I led, she was right behind me. We did everything together—training, hunting, dreaming of the day we’d run side by side through the moonlit forests.
“Come on, Sunshine, keep up!” Gloria would laugh, her hair wild and her eyes bright as she sprinted ahead of me through the woods. I’d chase after her, panting and grinning, the sun casting dappled shadows on our faces.
She always called me Sunshine. She said it was because my hair caught the sunlight like a beacon, bright and warm, just like me. I was the little sister, always in her shadow, but she never made me feel small. Not back then.
One day, when the trees were heavy with the scent of pine and the air was crisp with the promise of autumn, Gloria came to me with a gleam in her eyes. “Sunshine, I’m going hunting in the forest. Wanna come?”
I was lying on my bed, half-asleep from a lazy afternoon. I yawned and stretched, glancing up at her with half-lidded eyes. “Nah, I think I’ll stay here and nap. You know me—your little lazybones.”
She laughed softly and ruffled my hair. “Alright, little lazybones. I’ll go by myself then. Don’t get too bored without me.”
I watched her leave, her steps light and eager, and I remember feeling a pang of guilt. I should have gone with her. But I shrugged it off. "She’ll be fine," I’d told myself. Gloria could handle herself in the woods. She was always the stronger one, the braver one.