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The hospital smelled like starch and sterilizers, like too much time spent in stillness. But Noelle knew every creak of the hallway tiles, every smudge on the windows looking out at the August sun. The familiarity didn’t help her nerves—if anything, it made them worse.
She stood at the foot of her dad’s bed, hands fidgeting with the strap of her shoulder bag, trying to keep her smile steady.
“Hey, snowflake,” Rudy said with that lopsided grin. His antlers shifted slightly against the stiff pillows. “Thought I’d have to send in a search party.”
Noelle chuckled softly. “I brought you those cinnamon crackers you like. They were on sale.”
“Atta girl.”
She sat down gently beside him, placing the crinkling bag on his side table. He reached for it with a little grunt, hands trembling, but still strong enough to pop the tab. She watched him, her chest aching.
Rudy took a bite, chewed thoughtfully, then pointed a finger at her. “You know, your sister used to hate these.”
Noelle blinked. “She did?”
“Oh yeah. Thought they tasted like dust and glue. Always dramatic about it. Used to steal yours just to trade them away at school for something else.”
Noelle laughed quietly, but the air shifted.
Dess.
Her smile faltered just slightly, like a blown-out candle. Rudy didn’t miss it.
“Been thinkin’ about her a lot lately,” he said, his voice soft now. “More than usual. Weird how some days you swear you hear her down the hall, right? That loud laugh of hers... like she’d just seen the funniest thing in the world.”
Noelle nodded automatically.
But something cracked behind her eyes.
Her dad’s voice was warm—too warm. Like he could still feel December’s presence in the room. Like he *knew* her.
And Noelle...
She sat straighter, confused. Her mind reached, grasped. *What did her voice sound like?* Not just the words, not what she said—but how she *sounded* when she said them.
Her breath hitched.
“I—I can’t remember it,” she said, barely above a whisper.
Rudy paused. “Hm?”
“Her voice. I—I can’t hear it anymore in my head. I don’t remember the way she used to... used to call me, or... how she sang when I had nightmares. I—”
Her throat tightened. Her eyes burned.
“And her hair—did it part to the right? Or... was it the left? I don’t—I don’t remember.”
Rudy didn’t say anything at first. He placed his cracker bag aside and reached out with slow, deliberate motion, curling his fingers around her hand.
“You’re not losing her,” he said. “You just remember her different. Your mind holds onto the parts you needed most. That’s not forgetting. That’s surviving.”
But Noelle didn’t feel like she was surviving.
She felt like she was floating somewhere between guilt and grief, in a place where even memories were starting to unravel.
---
The walk home was hollow.
Her hooves struck the sidewalk with dull, robotic rhythm. Her scarf felt too tight around her neck, and the street signs blurred at the edges. The hospital doors had closed behind her, but her chest was still stuck there, next to the rhythmic beeping of her father’s heart monitor.
By the time she reached her house, her fingers were trembling. She fumbled with the keys, breath catching, chest rising and falling too fast.
She shoved the front door open.
“Mom?” she called. It echoed back emptily.
Of course not. No one was home. Not really. Not ever.
The walls felt like they were closing in, and Noelle didn’t take off her shoes. She didn’t even set down her bag.
She bolted up the stairs and to the left—past her room, past the closed hallway closet—and stopped at *her* door.
*Dess’s.*
It hadn’t been opened in months. Years, maybe. But her fingers knew the feel of the knob.
She turned it.
The air was stale. The kind of stillness only untouched places have. The bed sat neat—too neat. Tucked by someone who wasn’t coming back.
Noelle stepped in, and then the world cracked.
She let out a strangled breath and threw herself at the bed, clawing at the sheets, yanking the old quilt aside. Her hands tore through the pillows, the headboard shelf, the folded winter blanket Dess never used. She sobbed as she searched, muttering her name over and over like a prayer or a curse.
Finally, buried beneath an old pair of jeans and a crumpled sketchpad—she found it.
The faded blue sweater.
It was soft, fraying at the sleeves. Noelle hugged it to her chest before she could stop herself, inhaling the scent of old dust, time, and something that almost smelled like peppermint and pine.
Her knees gave out. She curled up on the bed, sweater clutched in her fists.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Then louder: “I’m sorry, Dess. I’m trying—I’m *trying* so hard not to forget you.”
Her phone buzzed in her pocket.
With shaking hands, she pulled it out. Opened her camera roll. She never had it back then—not during the forest walks, not when Dess would sing her to sleep or braid her hair. But Asriel had shared some old pictures a year ago. Ones Dess had taken herself with his phone. Noelle had saved every single one.
She scrolled.
Pictures from Christmas—the two of them in matching sweaters. Dess with frosting on her cheek, grinning as she held up a destroyed gingerbread house. A selfie from her room—both of them tangled up in pillows and books, singing into a plastic hairbrush microphone.
Noelle smiled through the tears.
The ache didn’t leave—but it shifted. It became something warmer. Something she could hold onto.
In the photo, Dess had her head tilted, mouth open mid-laugh, eyes half-lidded from some joke she’d told. Noelle almost heard it. Not perfectly. Not completely.
But almost.
And that was enough for tonight.
She lay back against the bed, the scent of her sister's sweater wrapping around her like a hug that time couldn't quite steal. The phone rested on her chest, screen still lit with memories. Noelle closed her eyes.
For just a second, she could feel December again.
Not gone. Not completely.
Just waiting.