Same Old Sky | Chapter Nine

I walked into my room, stuck out my foot behind me in some sort of pathetic kick, and shut the door.

All of a sudden I shot my hands out in front of me and caught a photo frame.

In the photo frame was something I wished and am still wishing I hadn't seen.

It was a picture of Yasmine, my twin.

Yasmine disappeared when we were seven. No one knows where she went, if she ran away or someone took her.

I couldn't help but wonder .. Was she morphing? Into an elf?

I even for a second questioned whose side she was on, but reprimanded myself.

I didn't hang the photo frame back up, instead I put it down on my desk and it made a weird noise.

I picked it back up and looked carefully at it, turned it around, pulled off the back, and out into my hand fell.. A yellowing, crumpled paper.

It wasn't that yellow, but I mean, you sit in the dark for four or five years and you'll turn a little yellow.

Scrawled on it in a hurried and spidery hand was..

Elder spared
Younger not
Will the Elder
Save her or not?

My arms shook. Frankly, I was terrified. Itwasaprankitwasaprankitwasaprank, I thought to myself.

I was about to holler to Slyvia to get her conniving brain in here and then I saw one word. Dillano.

I knew that word -- I knew it!! No, I didn't. I *knew* what it was!! Think Think Think.

I couldn't remember it. I couldn't remember it!

Frantically, I pulled down all of my journals from the year I was seven and started flipping through them.

FINALLy I found the entry where I reported that Yasmine had been kidnapped. One word was written as a postscript.

Dillano.