It was the Holy Season. You could tell not by the warmth—there wasn't any—but by the paper and paint and mess. The playroom filled with cartons and brushes and dull-colored chalk. The tables were sticky with glue. The older children laughed louder, their teeth pink from stolen syrup water.
The caretakers let their voices soften, just a little. They didn't yell as fast. They didn't scold as hard. The smell of cinnamon water drifted through the halls like a promise, even if we weren't allowed to taste it yet.
We were told to make decorations. Not for a tree—we didn't have one. No pine. No tinsel. But for the walls. And the windows. And the old playroom door with the hinge that always squeaked.
We cut stars and suns out of old box cardboard. Some corners still had writing on them—labels from powdered milk or lentils, faded stamps and symbols from wherever the supplies had come from. It didn't matter. We flipped the clean sides up and painted them in reds and yellows, oranges and blues, whatever was left from last year's supplies. Some paints had thickened. Some were too thin. Some had glitter in them, but most didn't. We made do. We always made do.
We were told to write wishes or our names. Something joyful, they said. I didn't know what joyful looked like. But I liked the painting. I liked the way the colors pooled on the rough paper. The way the brush made soft scratching sounds when dragged just right. I liked the smell—of dust and dried glue and something faintly sweet, like the memory of fruit.
Evelune sat in my lap while I worked, her legs tucked over mine, head resting on my chest. Her hands stayed folded near her mouth, but her eyes followed every movement. As if the brush were alive. As if it might speak.
I dipped her finger in the blue paint once and pressed it gently to the corner of one of our suns. She didn't pull away. Her fingerprint stayed. A soft oval, imperfect. It reminded me of a petal or a cloud.
Everyone else wrote their names. Some signed big, messy loops that took up half the paper. Others needed help, even with the easy letters. A few just drew symbols—hearts, or spirals, or stick figures with triangle heads. It didn't matter. They were all proud. They laughed. They elbowed each other. They waited for someone to say "good job." I didn't wait. I wanted to write our names, too.
Elarion. Evelune.
They weren't long names. But they felt heavy. Like stones carried carefully. I had never seen Evelune's name written anywhere, not even in the Matron's ledgers. Mine wasn't used often either. The caretakers called me "boy" or "you" or sometimes just stared until I moved.
But I knew the letters mattered. I didn't know all of them yet. I had learned a few—A, E, B, M, I, L—from the book with the bent corner. But the rest... I had to find.
So I waited until the room emptied. The others rushed out to wash their hands, to line up for ginger broth, to argue about nap blankets. I stayed behind, hands damp and cold, the star still sitting on the table in front of me.
I slipped the spelling book from under my blanket and flipped through the pages, careful not to tear them. I traced the letters with my finger.
V. Like two sticks leaning together. Easy.U. Harder. I kept confusing it with N.R. Gave me trouble. The curve never sat right.O. I could do.N. Again. Familiar now.
My fingers stiffened from the chill, but I gripped the chalk stub tighter, held the edge of the paper still with one hand, and slowly wrote:
E-L-A-R-I-O-NE-V-E-L-U-N-E
The lines wobbled. The spacing was uneven. One of the Es leaned too far and the second L looked like a backwards seven. But they were ours.
I signed the back of the decoration—one of the stars we'd painted yellow. Evelune's blue thumbprint sat in the center like a small sun of its own. Around it, I had painted tiny white dots to look like light, or maybe snow. I wasn't sure which. Maybe it was both.
No one watched me do it. No one asked. But I stared at the names for a long time before standing. I hung the star on the wall. Not low, where the toddlers might grab it. Not too high, where the caretakers would take it down later. Just… above eye level. Where the light could catch it. It sat higher than the others. Not because I wanted it above theirs. I just wanted it to stay safe.Clean. Whole. Seen.
That afternoon, the halls smelled of ginger and soap. Matron walked slower than usual, her arms full of folded linens. The toddlers were herded into nap time with extra blankets. The older kids played cards on the floor and argued over rules they never remembered.
I sat under the stairs with Evelune in my lap and the spelling book open once again. We didn't need to speak. I just showed her the letters, one by one. Sometimes I'd point to her name. Sometimes to mine. Sometimes to the word "sun" or "book" or "cat." Her eyes lingered longer each time. As if the letters were secrets waiting to be understood.
Outside, the snow piled higher along the stone wall. Inside, I had written our names for the first time. And that felt like enough for one day.