She looked at Anna's frozen smile. At the perfect petal. At the clouds spelling a word she now recognized as stay .

Anna never understood why the clouds spelled Claire's name every May 17th. But she kept the photograph forever, and every time she looked at it, she felt time move—just a little—backward.

Panic tasted like static. She waved a hand in front of Anna's face. Nothing. She reached for the petal—it was solid, warm, humming with the same strange frequency as the camera. The sky looked like a photograph printed on the inside of a glass dome.

Not metaphorically. Literally.

May 17, 2024, 5:24 PM. She had been sitting on a park bench in Seattle, testing a new camera filter called "Timeless Motion" for her photography project. Anna, her younger sister, was mid-laugh, reaching for a rogue cherry blossom petal caught in Claire's hair. The clouds above had arranged themselves into the perfect cumulus script of a forgotten language.