Alena Adabase Harmony does not open with pleasantries. The very first lines of this story drop us into a child's private frustration: a dress shared, a meal divided, a bed no longer her own. Before we even learn her name, we feel the smallness of her world being crowded.
For as long as she can remember, it has been just Papa and her. That is the whole universe. Mama travelled, they said. She will be back soon. Children store those kinds of sentences somewhere deep, and Alena is no different.
What makes this opening so quietly powerful is how much it holds back. The correction she makes to herself, pulling back from the word "strangers," tells us everything about the confusion she is carrying. These people are not strangers. But they are not quite hers either.
We are only a few sentences in, and already the question hanging over this story is not where Mama went. It is who Alena is becoming in the waiting.
Originally published by Brittle Paper.