Part 5 Stone Fox: Blood Is Thicker Than Water

She visited Sofia one Sunday.

Her little sister was living with a distant cousin now, just outside the city—clean rooms, structured days, early bedtimes, and morning routines. The house smelled of floor polish and lavender. A place that had never known shouting behind closed doors or the bitter tension of waiting for something to snap.

Sofia had grown taller, her limbs stretched into a quiet grace, and her features were sharper now—a mirror of their mother, but without the tiredness in the eyes. When she opened the door and saw Isobel standing there, hair tucked under a scarf and eyes too large in her pale face, her breath caught.

“You came,” she whispered, as if saying it too loudly might send her sister fleeing.

They sat under a tree in the cousin’s garden, drinking lukewarm lemonade from chipped tumblers and pretending things weren’t strange. Bees hovered lazily near the wildflowers. Isobel peeled the label off her bottle with long, slow fingers. Sofia noticed her nails were short, bitten down—not like before.

Sofia didn’t ask questions. She’d learned early on not to expect answers. Their childhood had taught her that truths came in fragments, often wrapped in silence or buried beneath lies told to protect, or distract, or survive.

Still, she watched her sister carefully—measuring the space between them.

“You still smoking?” she asked after a long while, not looking up.

“I quit,” Isobel replied.

Sofia smirked, a little too sharp. “Then why do you still smell like fire?”

Isobel didn’t answer, but a laugh escaped her—quiet and raspy, real enough that it startled both of them. It was the first sound that had felt truly her in years.

Sofia leaned her head against Isobel’s shoulder, the weight of it feather-light and familiar. But beneath the closeness, there was something unresolved—a quiet resentment she hadn’t yet found the words for.

She remembered being nine years old, standing at the bottom of the staircase with her suitcase already packed, watching as her big sister stayed behind with their mother. No one had explained to Sofia that money was right and she had to go live with cousins so they could all survive. All she knew was that Isobel was chosen to be the woman of the house. This irked Sofia, not because she yearned to be recognised but more so because she felt as though her presence wasn’t enough to be considered important.

At first, Sofia had imagined Isobel stayed because she was braver, stronger, older. But as the years passed and Isobel’s letters grew colder, shorter, or sometimes didn’t come at all, something hardened in Sofia’s chest.

She still looked up to her sister—but not in the way little girls looked up to fairy-tale heroines. She admired Isobel’s sharpness, her independence, her poise. But she also feared it.

Because behind her big sister’s stillness now was someone who had learned to survive by disappearing. Someone who had bartered tenderness for control. Someone who wore detachment like armour.

Sofia didn’t know what exactly had happened—only that whatever it was, it had hollowed Isobel out. Left her walking through the world with eyes that never quite focused on the present.

As they sat in the garden, Sofia wondered if Isobel even knew who she was anymore. Not the title. Not the family name. Just the girl beneath it all.

She didn’t ask. She just sat quietly and watched the wind stir the grass, imagining for a moment what it would be like if they could go back to before. Before the silence. Before the burn.