When I opened the door to our cottage, I was relieved to see my little sister has yet to turn into a lifeless corpse. She laid there just as steadily as I left her, under a thin white sheet on her fragile bed, silently fighting for each breath she took.

“I’m back, just like I promised I’d be.” I sat atop the stool beside her bed, and placed her aching hand into my own.

If she had the strength to smile, I know she would have. It’s been weeks since I returned, far too long a time to go without seeing a familiar face.

Just like her body, her darkening eyes seemed to carry more weight with each passing minute. No one this young should ever feel this sick.

“Look at what I bought from the village. It’s something to make you feel better.” I whisper.

From behind my back, I reveal something once forbidden to us, purchased from a town we were warned away from by our mother.

A blue aurora shone from the mystical flower I held in my hand before her.

And when she saw it, a ping of sorrowfulness overtook her expression, because she knew the price to pay for using such a gift—the taking of one life to save another.

A random life unimportant to me. Her sickness and my worries would be cast onto another.

No life was worth more than hers. I knew it. Her heart was too young, too innocent, and too beautiful.

But I saw it in her eyes. She would never take the blue flower I held in my hands. She already decided that no life was worth less than hers, and that’s what made her all the more beautiful.