The thing about funerals, Windy muses, is that no one talks.
It’s a weird thing. Windy thinks that Sianna would’ve liked it more if her funeral was a lively thing, with people talking and people congregating because of something she did, even if it was her death— but then again, Windy had never known Sianna all that well. She was an enigma, shaped like mist in the wind, and her lips are the only thing that Sianna can clearly remember.
They were chapped underneath the gold lipgloss that she wore. Sianna always wore that lipgloss. She would spend hours per day just layering it on, between meals, after showering, and while speaking. The motion had attracted so much attention from Windy that she now knows the vee of Sianna’s upper lip, the pout of her bottom lip, the beautiful blossoming rose that she would rarely see when Sianna’s lipgloss had worn away a little…
Dear Windy,
My memory was always bad, but I think dying so many times made it worse.
“It’s really more pigment than coloring, Windy.”
Windy blinks. “Then your lips must be really, really red.”
“Oh yes,” Sianna replies, placid. Then, rather uselessly, she adds, “yes.”
There’s not much that Windy can say to respond to that, so she stays silent, watching the stars fall beneath the horizon.
Dear Windy,
My memory was always bad, but I think dying so many times made it worse.
I’m at peace with the fact that you will never see this letter. I’ll be gone, and I can’t take things with me— if I could, I would’ve taken you long long ago.
The weirdest thing is that I can still remember the first time, and one person there.
Sianna comes into school one morning with her back slouched, hair mussed, and eyes drooping.
Windy, at this point, has not managed to talk to her. All Windy did was watch Sianna, and Sianna would also watch her back, and it is through this kind of wordless communication that a bond was formed before they even talked.
Throughout the day, all Windy can do is fret. She can’t talk to Sianna, nor can she not do anything. It’s an odd paradox that eats away at her mind.
The weirdest thing is that I can still remember the first time, and one person there.
You don’t remember. You never do. Maybe I shouldn’t talk about my bad memory when I can still remember enough to know you well. I’m lucky in that regard: lucky to know you. Lucky to still remember you. If you knew me, if you remembered me, do you think you would feel lucky too?
Whatever. That’s not important. But the point is, my memory is bad, but the thing that I remember from the first life still kills me, kills me metaphorically of course, but this type of killing is worse than death. I would know.
I had a sister that first time. Her name was Linda. She was born all wrong, Windy. You don’t even know. She didn’t deserve whatever was cast upon her destiny before she even breathed. But all I know is that I loved her, and she loved me too. Perhaps she was the only one who had loved me then.
The scariest part of this is that when I died, she was holding me. She was holding me and she was also dying, she was always on her path to death, but when I drifted off she was on its doorstep. Then I woke up, without a hole in my stomach, and it took me a few days but I realized what had happened.
My love for Linda was infinite, Windy. It was infinite. But I woke up, and I could feel myself forgetting, that first world hazy around the edges, her smile slipping away, and just like that my infinite love was suddenly finite. Because over time, I forgot more and more about her, more and more and more and more and now the only thing that is clear about her is the blood I sometimes see on my fingers.
After watching Sianna suffer for a few more school days, Windy thinks, “Screw it”, grabs a bottle of ice-cold water, and saunters over to Sianna’s empty lunch table.
She sits herself down with a plop. Sianna looks up at her, and then she smiles so wide that her eye bags disappear for a second.
“Windy,” Sianna greets, and her voice is as soft as sandpaper. Her voice is just hoarse, is all.
“Take this,” Windy responds in lieu of returning the greeting, and she passes the water to Sianna. Her palms are wet from the condensation around the bottle, and she wipes her hands on her sweatpants.
“Thank you,” Sianna says. Windy nods.
I still remember you, though. I remember you so so clearly…
Sianna’s lipgloss leaves a stain around the mouth of the bottle.
Windy watches Sianna reapply it, mesmerized.
…how you cast the sunlight upon the hills, how you stabbed corrupt royals, how you swam in the river, how you bled, how you cried, how you laughed in the courtyard of some timeline between no. 24 and no. 78…
“I was wondering,” Sianna breaks her sentence apart to take another sip. “How long it would take for you to talk to me this time.”
Windy does not question what “this time” means.
…how the stream would part around your gown, how you looked in a chiton and flowing robes, how you looked in space suits, how you looked when hospital sheets composed your cape…
“But I’m glad you decided to, in the end.”
Windy feels a vague sense of deja vu overwhelm her.
“Me too.”
…and you are so beautiful, Windy.
“Why do you look like a walking corpse, anyways?”
Sianna blinks.
And then she laughs.
Here is the thing. In all timelines, we see each other, in passing or otherwise. In most of them, we talk. In some of them, we become close. In few of them, I die first.
I’m not sure why this is a pattern. I may not remember clear events, but I remember enough each time to know that it’s a new timeline, and also the number of the timeline. I don’t recognize events. My brain does keep track of patterns that I’ve recognized in the past, however.
Shortly after you die each time, I don’t stick around for long either.
“What’s so funny?” Windy says, and she knows that Sianna’s laughter will forever loop in her mind.
“Ah, well.” Sianna calms down, hugging herself. “You’re… very straightforward, and that was… an ironic statement.”
“Oh.” Windy does not know what that means. But it can’t be important. “Alright.”
Here is something so vivid in my mind, though:
Timeline no. 783. In this one, I was a ghost. I had already died. You were a human. You were still alive.
I stuck by you, all the way until the very end. It’s not often that I get to see what happens after I die… even if I didn’t know what was before my death in that timeline. I was intrigued. I watched you grow old, hiding in your walls and sleeping on the empty side of what I suppose was our bed.
They sit in silence for a few more minutes. Strangely enough, it’s not too awkward. Windy takes out her lunch and she makes her way through it. Sianna suffices with the water.
You never loved anyone else, Windy.
“Windy,” Sianna says when they throw out their trash together. The empty plastic bottle clatters against the recycling bin.
“Yeah?”
“You free… like, this weekend?”
Windy thinks ahead. Her schedule is lax this week, thankfully.
“Yeah, all weekend. Do you wanna do something together?”
Sianna nods. “Yeah. You know the park just a little ways down the block?”
Windy passes it on her way to school. “Yes, I pass it on my way to school.”
“Alright.” Sianna smiles, soft but bright. “Meet me there on Saturday at nine in the morning, alright?”
Windy blinks once, twice. Thrice.
“…okay.”
I stayed until you died. You never loved anyone else. You stayed in the same house— our house. All the way ’til the end. You never changed the oversized mattress. You always slept on your own side. You kept my mug from when you were just twenty, right after I died, all the way until you own death at ninety-two. Sometimes you would set the mug out across from you at the table, and you would pour green tea into it. You would leave the chair pulled out of the table, like someone was sitting there.
I would always take a seat.
I’m not sure if you knew I was still watching you.
The morning air is crisp. It bites at Windy’s cheeks.
Sianna sits on a park bench, nursing a steaming cup of tea. When she spots Windy, she scoots to the side, and gestures for her to sit as well.
“Windy,” Sianna says. She takes a stip of her tea. “Nice to see you came.”
“I had nothing else to do,” Windy says in return. She settles onto the bench. “What tea are you drinking?”
Sianna’s face does something funny. “Green tea.”
“Green tea,” Windy mumbles. She can, mysteriously, recall its scent perfectly. “Good choice.”
Sianna lifts the cup to her lips. The opening comes back stained in glittering lipgloss.
I wasn’t sure whether to be warmed by the notion or worried for your health.
I wonder… if you knew about my delimma with time, and loving you— would you feel the same conflict?
Would you be happy that I loved you, or disgusted by it? Would you worry for my health? Would you hold me after each death and would you caress my hair when I startle from nightmares of visions I had never seen? Would you…
Windy watches Sianna reapply the lipgloss.
“Won’t your lips… I don’t know, uh, stain from that? You wear quite a bit of it.”
“It’s really more pigment than coloring, Windy.”
Windy blinks. She had been fooled for quite a while. She looks up to observe Sianna’s lips, and find that they are a wonderful shade of deep pink, almost unnaturally bright. “Then your lips must be really, really red.”
“Oh, yes,” Sianna says. “Yes.”
…Would you love me?
Sianna, unexpectedly, dies just a week later.
Would you love me? Most of the time, you don’t. I told you once, about the infinite timelines. I tried to. You thought I was insane, stupid, and then avoided me for the rest of the thirty years of that universe.
I think I’m going insane, Windy…
Windy never really knew Sianna all that well.
She arrived in her life suddenly, and she left it even more so.
But she can’t help but feel like Sianna is somehow, somehow, somehow so familiar. Where had she seen her before? Or maybe, it’s more like when. When, when, when…
I’m getting so sick of this. You die first. I cry. I die. It hurts. I wake up. You die, I cry, I die, you die, you die, you die—
if you remembered me, would you love me?
Would you love me? Would you? Would you love me would you love me would you
The cause of death: overdose.
Windy learns as much the day after the funeral. She knows, because their school hosts an assembly about suicide, depression, finding help, and they hold a memorial for Sianna Wallers in the gym.
They put up a photo of her on the school website, the caption reading RIP.
In the glare of the light, the glitter on Sianna’s lips looks like a galaxy of lost stars.
I’m going to die first, this time. I’m going insane. It’s been… more than five thousand timelines, I think.
The only reason I would like to wake up again is so that I can see you again.
I wonder what you’ll be this time…
Windy never really knew Sianna.
(Some lost and distant fragment of her soul mourns, nevertheless.)
…I can’t wait to see you, really. It’s the only constant of this sporadic loop.
“It’s for you,” Mrs. Wallers says, and she hands the envelope to Windy.
Windy takes the paper, flips it around, and finds it taped shut. On the back, in very neat script, writes Windy (no. 5,678).
“Is this…”
“It’s from Sianna,” Mrs. Wallers says. “I’m not sure what it says. Or why she wrote it. But it was under her bed, and we thought, why not. Maybe it’s important. Maybe it’ll tell us why…”
Mrs. Wallers does not finish the sentence.
“Are you sure that I’m meant to read this?” Windy asks.
Mrs. Wallers purses her lips. “It’d be worse if she wants you to read it, and you never do.”
I don’t think you’ll see this, ever. You won’t remember it anyways, even if you do.
I’ll see you soon.
Dear Windy, is how the letter starts.
Windy reads.
With love & hope,
Sianna.
Melody Zhang 
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