Before the Untranslation

She walked home quickly, as though urgency were a form of preservation.

The apartment was exactly as she'd left it. The coffee cup, still half-full, had gone cold. The card was on the kitchen table. The pigeon, impossibly, was back on the windowsill, or perhaps it had never left — she had no way to know how much time the room had held without her.

She sat down. She did not take off her coat.

Her phone was where she'd left it, face-down beside the cup. She turned it over and looked at her recent calls. The name at the top was her sister's. It was always her sister's.

Nadia.

She said the name aloud, quietly, as though testing to see if it still fit in her mouth the way it used to. It did. For now, it did.

She called before she could think of reasons not to.

It rang three times. Then: "Maya? It's barely seven."

"I know. I'm sorry."

A pause. She heard the specific sound of Nadia adjusting in bed, the creak and shift of someone rearranging themselves toward wakefulness. She had heard that sound her whole life. She knew it the way she knew her own handwriting.

"Are you okay?" Nadia asked. The question was immediate, underneath the inconvenience of the hour.

"I'm fine. I just — I wanted to hear your voice."

Another pause, softer this time. "You're sure you're okay."

"I'm sure." She looked at the red cord looped around her wrist. "Tell me something ordinary. Tell me what you're doing today."

Nadia made a small sound, somewhere between skepticism and tenderness, and began to talk.

Maya closed her eyes and listened. She catalogued the particular rhythm of her sister's sentences, the way she built to a point sideways, the specific laugh she used when she was still half-asleep.

She was memorizing. She knew she was memorizing. She didn't know yet if Nadia was the one the path would take.

But she listened as if she were.