It's nothing we've ever seen before, not on the Celeste at any rate. This is... it's just plain gruesome, obviously, and I guess it's really sad for the Mistrals. But that's honestly about it. I don't quite understand why Zephyr's shivering like this room is the coldest place they've ever been, or why Leo's giving the two of us those looks. Maybe it's 'cause I'm not reacting much, maybe it's just curiosity.

I mean, I've seen this before. Mum. Rose. 

Rosa.

Isabella Mistral is dead, and that's awful, and Zephyr's pale as a bloody sheet (which, really, is a bad way of putting it -- a sheet covered in blood obviously has colour) when they're not even scared of blood. I suppose I understand why Leo would be adamant about, well, not looking at his sister's body, but Zephyr? They've got no reason, right?

And we have to look, don't we? Otherwise, an innocent kid is going to prison for something someone else did. So... why are we just standing here?

How on earth can Fliss be so calm about this? Look, she's touching those sheets that are covered in blood, and just, like, not bothered. By any of it.

I know she understands the gravity of the situation, since she's actually doing something, but I can't make my feet move. I have to do something, have to help prove my own innocence, but that fact -- the fact that I have to do that -- is leaving me paralysed in what can only be described as horror.

I'm being framed. And I don't know why! Why would anyone aboard this ship want me in prison? I'm not even fourteen yet, and as far as I know, I've never done anything bad enough to warrant something like this.

Leo's tons of help as well, isn't he? 'Anyone aboard this ship could have framed you, technically'. What a comfort that is!

I can't even work to distract myself from the fact that there are only five days until we next land. Five days to solve a murder with hundreds of technical suspects. Hundreds.

I'm doomed. I am actually going to prison, and my family aren't ever going to hear about it. I know they won't, because they never seem to read any of the letters I do manage to send. There's a stack of unopened letters they use as fuel for a fire from time to time, and they're all mine. 

Not that they'd be too surprised, I suppose. They always said I'd end up rotting away in a cell.

I can’t look.

Izzy’s dead. Really, truly dead. And I was here, and if I woke up surely I could have saved her.

And I didn’t wake up.

The idea makes me feel ill, but not much is worse than the sight of what all three of us know marks a mutilation of a… certain kind.

God, my eye hurts. Badly.

Maybe I should be thankful that Mother’s response to the idea that I may have killed Izzy (which, for the record, I did not) was just to hit me. Sure, it hurt, but she can do worse.

So much worse.

By now, it’s just… normal.

But this is about Izzy, not me. So… I’d better try and help them, I guess.

Not that I’m going to be much use while her body is still here.