Chapter Text
SCUOLA PRIMARIA LAGO BLU — TERZA CLASSE
Compito: Scrivi della tua famiglia. (Homework: Write about your family.)
Gisela Venus Sinner-Alcaraz, 9 anni
My family is very large and a bit complicated but in a nice way.
My parents are named Jannik and Carlos. Dad Jannik is my "dad" and Dad Carlos is my "papá." Dad is also my mama because he is an omega and he carried me and August, so the right word for him is mama but we mostly say dad. This is normal in our family. My papá is 69 years old, which is very old but he doesn't look old except for his hair which is white now but used to be dark, and his walking stick, and sometimes his face when he is in pain but pretending he isn't. My dad is 50 which is also old but he runs fast and has nice curly hair which I also have. My family lives in a large house in Lombardy with a vineyard, a lake, three horses, many sheep (mine is called Nico), and two yachts. My parents played tennis before and are famous for it.
I have a brother, August, who is fifteen and a freestyle skier. August is away now but will be back soon. I write him letters. He doesn't always answer, but I love him just the same.
I also have older siblings named Elena and Luca, but they are very old (43 and 38!) and don't live with us. Elena has children named Ilsa and Carla, who are twins, and one whose name I can't remember right now mostly because he is actually her ex-husband’s son. This means I'm technically an aunt, but Ilsa and Carla are a few years older than me, which is weird. Luca doesn't have any children, but he has a special friend who comes to visit. He used to play tennis too but now his job is talking on the television. They are Papá's children from before he was married to my dad. They have a different mama named Emma who I have met. She is very pretty and nice and she has wavy hair like Luca.
I am the youngest of everyone. Papá says I am his renaissance. I had to ask what that meant and he said it means a new beginning after a dark time. I like this.
My Oma Siglinde lives in Sesto and she is 80 and makes the best strudel in the world. My Opa Hanspeter died recently. I miss him. Oma is sad about this too but she is very strong. My Abuelos on Papá's side are all in heaven, and my Papá’s older brother Álvaro too. Papá's other brothers are named Sergio and Jaime and live in Spain.
My family is like one of those equations in maths where the answer looks wrong but you check it and it's actually right. I think love makes the numbers work out even when logic says they shouldn't. I love my family, even though it's sometimes difficult to explain at school why my papá looks like a grandfather and not a papá.
Teacher's note: Gisela, this is wonderful. Very personal and creative! Your family sounds very special! Maybe 'my papa looks like a grandfather' can be adjusted for the final version... (+smiley face sticker)
Gigi wakes like a fox. All at once, eyes snapping open, body already twitching toward adventure.
The estate is still half-asleep, dawn crawling honey-gold across the limestone floors, but she is already alert, already vibrating with the particular incandescent energy of being nine and alive and the youngest person in a very old house. She slips from bed silently (a skill honed through practice, through midnight raids on the kitchen, through early-morning explorations when even the staff are still dreaming), bare feet whispering across cool tiles, the hem of her nightgown dragging like a queen's train. The corridor outside her room is a river of light and silence, the tall windows framing a sky that's turning from pearl to apricot to impossible blue.
This is the hour when the house belongs to her alone—her kingdom, her fairytale, her inheritance. She trails her fingers along the wall as she walks, counting doorways: August's room (empty now, he's at ski camp, the absence like a bruise she keeps pressing), the blue guest room, the linen closet that smells like lavender and sunshine, and then the wide, curving staircase that spills down into the main hall. The morning light pours through the eastern windows, turning the marble floor into a pool of gold, and Gigi dances across it, arms out like wings, pretending she's skating on light.
First task: the diary. She retrieves it from its hiding spot behind the third book on the second shelf in the library—a perfect hiding place, she thinks, because nobody ever touches the old boring leather books, not even Dad. The diary is pink and sparkly with a tiny silver lock that probably wouldn't keep out anyone determined, but the lock is just ceremony; the real security is in the unspoken agreement that nobody in this house would dream of violating her privacy. (Not that she has anything truly scandalous to hide yet, but she's nine, and privacy feels like a grown-up thing, a treasure to guard.)
She settles cross-legged on the window seat, the early light making her curls gleam like dark amber, and writes with a pen that leaves glittery ink:
📓 PRIVATE DIARY OF GISELA SINNER-ALCARAZ (GIGI) 📓
DO NOT READ THIS OR I WILL TELL OMA
Dear Diary,
Today is the day!!! The lamb cake!!! Dad promised and Papá said yes even though he thinks it's silly but that's just because he doesn't understand about TRADITIONS. Traditions are important. Miss Bentley at school says traditions are how we remember where we came from. I think I came from magic probably. That's what Dad says anyway. He says I was the biggest surprise of his life, even bigger than when he won Wimbletan. Wimbeldon? The tennis thing with the grass. Papá says I was a blessing, but that's just because he's old and says things like that.
August is still gone. I sent him THREE LETTERS but he hasn't written back yet. I put stickers on them and everything!!! He's probably too busy being amazing at skiing. Papá says he's going to be a champion. Dad says he'll be whatever he wants to be. I think they're both right because Dad is always right about feelings and Papá is always right about sports.
Oh! Nico the lamb is in the barn and I'm going to go see him after breakfast. I named him Nico because he has a black spot on his nose like Coach Nico who comes to help August with his skiing sometimes.
Must go now because CAKE TIME!!!
xoxo, Gigi
She closes the diary, clicks the lock shut, and returns it to its hiding place. The house is waking slowly, voices drifting up from below—the cook in the kitchen, the housekeeper starting her rounds, and, most important, the low murmur of her parents in the sunny morning room where breakfast begins each day.
But first: the lamb.
Not the cake lamb. The real lamb, the one born two weeks ago when the vineyard was still winter-brown and the air still bit with Alpine chill. The barn is just past the kitchen garden, and Gigi is halfway down the back stairs when she changes her mind. Why shouldn't Nico see the cake-making? It's educational. He's a baby and babies need education. Dad says so.
She diverts, bare feet padding across the flagstone patio, through the dew-damp grass, to the small stone outbuilding where the lambs stay during the transition from winter to spring. Inside, it smells of hay and warm animal bodies and the particular sweet musk of creatures that don't yet know the world is complicated. Nico bleats when he sees her—a trembling white thing with matchstick legs and ears like soft radar dishes, constantly swiveling to track the world's small noises. His mother ignores Gigi completely, too busy with the important business of chewing.
"Good morning, sweet prince," Gigi coos, unlatching the gate. "Would you like to come have an adventure? There's going to be cake, and you probably don't know what cake is yet, but I promise it's the best thing ever invented by people, except maybe for yachts. Papá says yachts are mankind's greatest achievement, but that's just because he's Spanish and they love boats there."
The lamb allows himself to be picked up, his small hooves scrabbling briefly against her nightgown before settling. Gigi nuzzles into the wool at his neck, inhaling that impossible perfume of innocence that all baby things share—milk-sweet and slightly grassy and a little like fresh bread.
"Very good," she tells him, as if he's passed some important test. "You're going to be extremely well-behaved, and then maybe Dad will let you stay in the kitchen, and then maybe in my bedroom, and then maybe he'll forget you're supposed to live outside at all, and then I'll have a lamb for a roommate, which is so much better than a boring cat or dog."
She carries Nico across the yard, his heartbeat a frantic drum against her chest. The kitchen door is propped open to let in the spring air, and inside, the magic is already happening. Dad, at the counter with the big ceramic bowl, flour dusted across his forearms (he always rolls his sleeves up when he bakes, revealing the faded freckles that August inherited along with the flaming hair). Papá at the table peeling oranges, the bright citrus scent cutting through everything, his glasses slid halfway down his nose, his cane propped against the chair beside him. And music playing from the speaker on the windowsill, something Spanish and old that Papá sings along to in a voice like warm honey.
They don't notice her yet, and for a moment Gigi just watches. She is a watcher. Oma Siglinde says she has fox-eyes, always seeing too much, collecting bright things for her den.
She watches the way Dad moves around Papá, touching him constantly, absently: a brush of fingertips across his shoulder, a press of lips to his temple when he passes behind the chair, the brief tangle of hands when an orange is passed. She watches the way Papá's eyes follow Dad around the room like Dad is the sun and Papá can't help himself, can't stop looking even though it's been decades and decades (like, at least a thousand years, Gigi thinks).
She soaks everything in with the attentive greed of a child who knows, somehow, that this—the light, the music, the flour dust, the touching, the murmured half-sentences that don't need to be finished because they've been saying the same things to each other for so long—is something precious.
"I brought Nico," Gigi announces, stepping into the kitchen. "He's going to help with the cake because sheep know all about baking. It's a fact. We learned it in school."
Dad turns, wooden spoon in hand, copper curls backlit by the window so they look like they're on fire, and his face—the face Gigi knows better than her own, the one that August looks so much like—does that thing it always does when he sees her, like someone has just handed him something unbelievably wonderful that he didn't expect.
"Nico is absolutely not going to help with the cake," he says in that Italian-German-English-accent way he has, every language living in his mouth at once, the words warm despite their content. "Nico is going to stay in his pen where he belongs. With his mother. Who is probably wondering where her child is."
"She doesn't care," Gigi insists, clutching the lamb tighter. "She was eating hay. If she really cared, she would have tried to stop me."
"Perhaps," Papá says from the table, eyes crinkling behind his glasses, "the mother sheep knows that Nico is in the best possible hands with our daughter. Still, tesoro, your dad is right. Lambs don't belong in kitchens."
"But it's a lamb cake," Gigi says with the impeccable logic of someone who has never once been denied anything she truly wanted. "It's thematic."
Dad laughs—that sudden, startled sound that always makes Papá smile, even when Dad can't see him, like the laugh is something sacred, a miracle that keeps happening even after all these years.
"Thematic," Dad repeats, shaking his head. "Mamma Mia. Have you been reading Lena's old college essays again?"
"She left them on the kitchen table when they were here cleaning and stuff," Gigi shrugs, shuffling over to the counter still clutching Nico. "It's not my fault if she doesn't want me to learn new words."
Papá chuckles, a deep, rich sound that fills the warm air like another ingredient. "The lamb can stay," he says with the magnanimity of someone who knows that Dad will argue but doesn't mind, who enjoys the familiar choreography of their disagreements, "if he sits on the floor on a towel."
"Carlos," Dad says, exasperated, fond, resigned.
"Jannik," Papá mimics, eyes bright with amusement.
Gigi has always thought it strange that her parents often call each other by their first names, too, instead of just pet names like other grown-ups (but maybe it's just because Dad blushes too much when Papá does that, which is probably for the best; she doesn't want Dad to run too hot and explode). August explained once that it's because they were coach and player first, before they were—whatever came next.
(Nobody has ever quite explained the whatever came next part to her satisfaction, though she's gathered enough from overheard conversations, from the way Elena sometimes goes quiet when certain subjects come up, from the old magazine articles she's found in boxes in the attic, to know that there is a Story, capital S, a before-Gigi narrative that is complicated and a little bit sad and maybe a little bit magical, too.)
"Fine," Dad concedes, bending to grab a dish towel from the drawer, spreading it on the floor. "But only until breakfast is ready. Then he goes back to the barn."
Gigi sets Nico down with a kiss on his woolly head. "You will be on your absolute best behavior," she instructs gravely. "If you're very good, I'll bring you clover from the side garden. The special kind with the purple flowers."
She climbs onto the counter, bare feet swinging, and surveys the kingdom from her throne: the bowl of batter, the butter softening in a dish, the marzipan Dad has already sculpted into a lamb's face with impossible delicacy (those hands, the ones Papá says were made by God for tennis and for loving beautiful things, the ones August has inherited along with the freckles—long-fingered, precise, gentle).
"How does the lamb cake work?" she asks, dipping one finger into the batter when Dad's back is turned. It tastes like vanilla and sugar and possibility.
"It's a special pan," Dad explains, turning back to the bowl, folding the flour in with the same focused precision she's seen in videos of him playing tennis, like he never does anything halfway, like the cake deserves his full attention. "Two halves that fit together. You fill them with batter and when it bakes, it forms a lamb shape. Then we cover it with frosting and make it look like wool. It's an Easter tradition in some parts. Mama—your Oma—made them when I was small."
"It's cute," Papá offers from the table, the oranges arranged in a bright pattern before him, ruby-red segments glistening. "Not very Spanish, but cute. We never had such things at Easter. Just the usual—the processions, the incense, the priests talking about death for a very long time, then everyone drinking wine to feel better."
"Spaniards are morbid," Dad says, wrinkling his nose. "Tyrolean Easter is much more cheerful."
"Says the man who makes his son race down a mountain on two sticks of fiberglass for fun."
"August loves skiing. And he's good at it. And it builds character."
"Of course it builds character. So would having him jump off cliffs into the sea, but that doesn't mean—"
"Carlos," Dad sighs, but he's smiling, and Gigi recognizes this as one of their forever-arguments, the kind they keep having not because they disagree but because they've been talking about the same things for so long that the conversations have become a form of love.
The batter goes into the pan—carefully, Dad showing Gigi how to fill it just to the line, how to make sure there are no air bubbles that would ruin the shape. His hands guide hers, and the flour dust on his forearms brushes against her skin, and the smell of him—rosemary shampoo, coffee, lemons, the faint sweetness that August says is an omega thing that Gigi doesn't quite understand yet—wraps around her like a blanket.
"Now we pray to the cake gods that it turns out," Dad says solemnly, sliding the pan into the oven.
"Are there really cake gods?" Gigi asks, wide-eyed, though she's pretty sure she's being teased.
"Oh yes," Papá confirms from the table, setting down his paring knife. "Very powerful deities. They only listen to beautiful redheads, though, so your dad has to do the praying."
"Papá!" Gigi giggles. "That's not true. You're making fun."
"I would never," Papá says, hand over his heart, looking so handsome with his silver-white hair and his beard with that little bare patch shaped like a heart (her favorite detail about him, the thing she wants to touch every time she hugs him, this small imperfection in the beautiful tapestry of his face). "Have I ever lied to you, princesa?"
"Yes," Gigi says promptly. "Last week you said we were out of chocolate when I know for a fact there were three bars in your desk drawer."
"That was self-preservation, not lying," Papá says with great dignity.
"It was definitely lying," Dad corrects, coming to the table with the wooden spoon and the now-empty ceramic bowl. "But I forgive him, because he shared the chocolate with me later."
"Betrayal," Gigi sighs dramatically, flopping onto a chair. "My own parents, conspiring against me."
"Mm," Dad hums, setting the bowl in front of her, the spoon beside it—the wordless offering that means she can lick the remaining batter, the tradition as old as she is. "Such terrible parents, making you cake and letting you keep a sheep in the kitchen."
Gigi grins, triumphant, and grabs the spoon. The batter is sweet and rich and perfect, and she closes her eyes to savor it. When she opens them, Dad is looking at Papá with that expression he gets sometimes—soft and a little disbelieving, like he's seeing something miraculous, like he's won something he never thought he'd get to keep.
"What?" Papá asks, catching the look.
"Nothing," Dad says. "Just thinking."
"About what, amore?"
"About how the first time I told you I wanted a family, you looked at me like I'd suggested we fly to the moon on a bicycle."
"I did not," Papá protests, but his face goes tender, a little sheepish. "I was just... surprised. We hadn't talked much about it, and you were still playing, and I was—"
"Old?" Dad teases, leaning down to kiss him quickly.
"Cautious," Papá corrects, catching Dad's wrist, keeping him there for another kiss, this one longer. "But you were right. As always."
Gigi watches them over the rim of the bowl, filing everything—the way Dad's curls fall across his forehead when he bends down, the way Papá's thumb traces circles on the inside of Dad's wrist, the way they seem to forget she's there for a moment, lost in some private memory that makes them both soft around the edges. They do this all the time, slip into their own world, and it should be annoying—August says it is annoying, says they're disgustingly in love, says no parents should be allowed to be so obsessed with each other after so many years—but Gigi finds it comforting, like the reliable tides of a familiar sea.
"When am I getting a sister?" she asks suddenly, breaking the moment, the question popping out before she can think about it.
Dad straightens, color touching his cheeks. "What?"
"A sister," Gigi repeats, scraping the last of the batter from the bowl. "August is too old to play with me properly. He just wants to ski and text his friends and be mysterious. I want someone my age. Or a bit younger, so I can be the boss."
Her parents exchange one of their looks—the telepathic ones that mean they're having a whole conversation without words. Dad's eyes wide, a little alarmed; Papá's crinkled at the corners, amused.
"Gigi," Dad says slowly, "babies aren't... it's not like ordering a pizza. It's complicated. And I'm not... it's not really something we're thinking about right now."
"Why not?" she pushes. "Elena has Ilsa and Carla. They're twins and they do everything together. I just have August, and he's not even here."
"He'll be back from camp in a week, tesoro," Papá says gently. "And you have your cousins. And your friends from school."
"It's not the same," Gigi insists, bottom lip jutting out.
Dad sits down beside her, brushes a curl from her forehead. "You were our miracle, piccola," he says softly. "Our surprise. The doctors said it probably wouldn't happen, and then it did, and it was the best thing in the world. But it's not... we can't just decide to have another baby. It doesn't work that way. Not for us."
Gigi absorbs this, frowning. She knows, in the vague way of children who have absorbed fragments of adult conversations, that her birth was unusual. That Dad was "older than most mothers" (a phrase that had confused her for years—how could Dad be a mother? But then August explained that omegas who gave birth were always called mothers regardless of gender, and it made sense, sort of). That the pregnancy was "complicated." That Dad had been retired for years by then. That she was unexpected, a blessing that came after they'd stopped hoping.
"But I was a good surprise, right?" she asks, suddenly anxious.
"The best surprise," Dad says fiercely, pulling her into his arms, her face pressed against the soft cotton of his shirt. He smells like home and safety and love. "The absolute best."
"Our perfect girl," Papá agrees, reaching across the table to tuck another stray curl behind her ear, his hand warm and gentle. "Our Gisela Venus."
Gigi preens at the use of her full name, the one reserved for important moments. Gisela for Dad's grandmother, Venus for—well, she's not entirely sure, but she thinks it has something to do with Papá believing Dad is actually a god disguised as a person, which is just another one of the weird things about her parents that she's decided to accept without questioning too deeply.
"Can I frost the cake when it's done?" she asks, practical again, the momentary melancholy forgotten.
"Of course," Dad says, dropping a kiss on the top of her head. "But only if you go put some clothes on first. Proper bakers don't work in their nightgowns."
Gigi races upstairs to change, leaving Nico contentedly chewing the edge of the dish towel. Her room is awash with light now, the sun having climbed higher, turning everything it touches to gold. She pulls on a dress—pink, her favorite, with pockets deep enough for treasures—and sits at her little vanity to brush her hair.
The face that looks back at her from the mirror is a mystery she's still solving, piece by piece. Dad's tight curls but Papá's dark coloring. Papá's strong jawline but Dad's hazel-green eyes. A blend of features that Elena says makes her look like "a little Renaissance painting come to life." She sticks out her tongue at her reflection and then practices her best grown-up smile, the one she'll use when she's older and does important things like Dad and Papá used to do.
She wonders, not for the first time, what exactly those important things were. She knows they played tennis—that's the easy part, the thing everyone knows. The living room is full of trophies, the walls lined with framed magazine covers and photographs of them holding silver cups above their heads, looking sweaty and ecstatic. August explains it sometimes—the tournaments, the rankings, the rivalries—but it all seems so long ago, like stories from another world.
Now Dad drives her to school and helps with her science projects and bakes lamb cakes on spring mornings. Now Papá reads her stories and teaches her to sail on the lake and walks with a cane on bad days but still picks her up like she weighs nothing when she runs to greet him. Now they're just her parents, not the legends everyone else seems to remember.
She bounds back downstairs just as the timer dings, sliding into the kitchen on socked feet. "Is it ready? Is it perfect? Can I see?"
Dad is already at the oven, mitts on, extracting the pan carefully. "Let it cool first," he cautions. "Then we'll see if the cake gods blessed us or not."
"They definitely did," Gigi says confidently. "Because I prayed extra hard. And because you made it, and you never mess anything up."
Dad laughs—that startled, bright sound again. "I wish that were true, piccola. I've messed up plenty of things in my life."
"Not important things," Gigi insists.
Dad's eyes find Papá's across the room, some wordless exchange happening that she can't quite decode. "No," Dad agrees softly. "Not the important things. Not in the end."
The cake, when unmolded, is indeed perfect—golden and lamb-shaped and smelling like heaven. Gigi frosts it under Dad's supervision, tongue caught between her teeth in concentration, while Papá sets the table and Nico watches from his towel with what Gigi insists is deep admiration for her artistic skills.
"Michelangelo of the kitchen," Papá declares when she's finished, the lamb now covered in swirls of white frosting meant to mimic wool. "A masterpiece."
"It's pretty good," Dad admits, ruffling her hair. "Though I think you got more frosting on yourself than on the cake."
Gigi looks down at her dress, now spotted with white dots, and grins unrepentantly. "It's a fashion statement. Very avant-garde."
"Definitely Elena's influence," Papá mutters, but he's smiling as he sits down at the table. "Come, let's have breakfast before this little angel gets any more brilliant ideas."
They eat in the sunlight—the lamb cake ceremonially placed at the center of the table but untouched until after the proper food is finished, oranges passed around, coffee for the grown-ups and hot chocolate for Gigi, toast with honey from their own hives. Dad keeps one hand on Papá's knee beneath the table; Gigi can tell by the way Papá's face goes soft at random intervals, by the way he occasionally covers Dad's hand with his own, by the secret language of touch they've developed over decades.
"When does August's competition start?" she asks, dipping her toast in her chocolate.
"Thursday," Papá says. "The qualifying rounds first, then the main event on Saturday if he makes it through."
"He'll make it through," Dad and Gigi say in unison, then grin at each other.
"Of course he will," Papá agrees. "He's a Sinner-Alcaraz. Stubbornness is genetic."
"Among other things," Dad murmurs, and Papá laughs, that deep, warm sound that Gigi wishes she could bottle like sunshine.
The spring morning outside unfolds in waves of light. The vineyard stretches toward the hills, the lake glittering in the distance, the horses in the paddock beginning to stir. Here, the kitchen is a bubble of warmth and flour dust and love, and Gigi is at the center of it all, empress of her small domain, beloved beyond measure, cataloging every detail with fox-eyes.
Later, they will FaceTime August (who will be sleepy and ruffled and trying very hard to seem grown-up even though his hair is sticking up and there's toothpaste on his chin). Later, Dad will take Nico back to the barn while Gigi protests. Later, they'll cut the lamb cake and it will be delicious and Dad will say it's almost as good as Oma's and Papá will declare it better but only because he loves Dad too much to say otherwise.
But for now, this moment is perfect: the light, the warmth, the smell of vanilla and coffee, the sound of Papá humming under his breath, the feel of Dad's hand gentle on her head as he passes behind her chair. For now, the world is golden and the day is just beginning and Gigi is nine and the cake gods have blessed them and nothing, nothing in the universe could be more magical than this ordinary morning in the house of sun.
After breakfast, after the lamb cake has been properly admired from all angles and Nico has been returned to the barn (with only minor protest), Gigi retreats to her special writing spot in the garden—a small wrought-iron table beneath the oldest olive tree on the estate, where the dappled light plays across paper like living watermarks. She brings her supplies: stationery box (pink, of course, with embossed butterflies and a secret compartment for special stamps), favorite pen (purple ink that smells faintly of grapes), and the pouch of stickers August gave her before he left for ski camp three weeks ago.
"For all the letters you're going to write me," he'd said, ruffling her curls. "I want at least one letter a week with at least three stickers on each envelope. That's the rule." She's sent four letters already, each envelope plastered with not just three but five or six stickers—holographic butterflies, puffy stars, tiny cartoon lambs that reminded her of Nico. But August hasn't written back once, and the absence of his handwriting in the daily mail is becoming a tender bruise she can't stop pressing.
She arranges her materials with the solemn precision of a priestess preparing for ritual. The stationery box opens with a satisfying click, revealing the special paper she saves for August—cream-colored, thick as petals, with a faint blue line at the top where the receiver's name goes. August taught her how to write a proper letter last year when he went to ski camp for the first time, the memory still vivid: her brother sitting beside her at this same table, his copper hair (just like Dad's, just like hers but brighter, more vibrant, proper Sinner hair) falling across his forehead, freckled hands showing her how to fold the paper, where to put the date, how to sign her name.
"You have to write clearly," August had instructed, serious as always when teaching her important things. "Not like your usual spider scribble."
"I don't scribble," she'd protested. "I write with passionate enthusiasm. Miss Bentley says so."
August had rolled his eyes, but his mouth twitched the way it did when he was trying not to smile. "Passionate enthusiasm is great, but the postman still needs to read the address."
She'd stuck out her tongue. "You're worse than Dad."
"I'm exactly like Dad, and you know it," August had said, and they'd both dissolved into giggles because it was true—August at fifteen was already a carbon copy of Jannik Sinner, from the copper hair to the long limbs to the serious expression that only melted for family. The same hands, the same freckles scattered like constellation maps across pale skin, the same quiet intensity that made people stare.
The only differences were in the eyes (August's darker and enormous, an inheritance from Papá) and in presentation: August had turned out omega, just like Dad, but earlier. Dad had told her once that he hadn't presented until much later, "after all the important things had already happened" (another mysterious reference to the Before Times that nobody ever fully explains). But August had known by thirteen, had gone through his first heat at fourteen, a terrifying few days when Gigi had been banned from the west wing of the house and could hear Dad's voice, low and soothing, through closed doors.
That was the first time she'd understood that being omega meant something different, something private and complicated that made Dad and August exchange looks sometimes, a secret language she wasn't part of yet. It had made her jealous then, makes her jealous still in the complicated way that siblings navigate the territories of their parents' attention.
But August is never mean about it, never excludes her on purpose. He's patient and kind, if occasionally exasperated by having a little sister who thinks he hung the moon and all its satellites. And he promised to write back, which is why his silence stings like a papercut—small but sharp, surprising in its capacity to hurt.
She smooths the paper, uncaps her pen, and begins:
Dear August (or should I call you DESERTER???),
It's me again! This is letter #5 if you're counting, which you should be because I'm counting and it would be nice if someone else was keeping track of important things around here.
Dad made lamb cake today! The special Easter kind that Oma used to make. It was DELICIOUS and I ate two pieces even though Dad said I'd get a stomachache. I did not get a stomachache because I have an iron stomach like Papá says. I helped with the frosting and only got a little bit on my dress. Dad didn't even make me change which means I'm getting better at baking.
Nico (the real lamb, not the cake) is getting bigger every day. I think he's almost the size of Pipi Jr. now, which isn't saying much since Pipi Jr. is a very small cat, but still. Progress! I'm teaching him tricks. So far he can stand on his hind legs for three seconds if I hold a carrot in front of his face. Dad says I'm not actually training him, just exploiting his hunger, but I think that's unfair. It's a mutually beneficial arrangement.
Papá took me sailing yesterday on the small boat. He let me steer for almost ten whole minutes! I didn't crash into anything even though there was a buoy that came out of NOWHERE, I swear. Papá said I have "natural talent" which I think means I'm better than you were at my age. (Just kidding, I know you're the best at everything. But I'm catching up!!)
I miss you. When are you coming home? Papá says you have a big competition on Saturday but that doesn't answer my question. Will you be home right after? Before Easter? I have SO MANY things to tell you that won't fit in a letter.
Also, are you getting my letters? If you're not, then you won't get this one either so there's no point in asking, but just in case the others got lost and this one makes it through: I'VE BEEN WRITING TO YOU! WRITE BACK, YOU MONSTER!
I put a pressed flower in this envelope. It's from the big bush by the east fence. I don't know what it's called but it's pretty and purple and it smells nice, like something fancy rich ladies would wear, which is what I'm going to be when I grow up. A fancy rich lady with a lamb for a pet. Or maybe a professional sailor. Or maybe both.
Your favorite sister,
Gigi (Gisela Venus Sinner-Alcaraz, officially)
She folds the letter with painstaking care, tucks a pressed violet inside, and seals the envelope, adding five stickers to the back: two unicorns, two stars, and a smiling sun wearing sunglasses. It's a masterpiece of postal art, she decides, pressing the final sticker firmly into place with her thumb.
The walk to the mailbox is its own ritual, a journey she's made every other day since August left. The driveway of the estate curves for what feels like miles (though Dad says it's actually less than a kilometer) through vineyards and olive groves before reaching the main road where the ancient iron mailbox stands sentinel. She likes to imagine her letters traveling from this box across mountains and valleys to August's hands, a small piece of her carried across the landscape like a seed on the wind.
Today, Stefano the gardener is trimming the hedges near the gate, and he waves as she passes. "Another letter for your brother, Miss Gisela?"
"Yes," she says importantly. "A very special one. With a pressed flower and everything."
"Molto bello," he says with the grave seriousness adults sometimes offer children when they sense a matter of great importance. "I'm sure he'll treasure it."
"If he ever reads it," Gigi sighs dramatically, dropping the letter into the outgoing slot. Then, with the swift mercurial shift of childhood, her attention redirects: "Is the mail here yet? From this morning?"
"Sì, piccola. Your father already collected it."
Her heart quickens. "Was there anything for me?"
Stefano's kind weathered face tells her everything before his words do. "I don't think so, Miss Gisela. But perhaps tomorrow."
"Perhaps tomorrow," she echoes, the phrase becoming a small prayer, a mantra repeated each day: perhaps tomorrow August will write back. Perhaps tomorrow the waiting will end.
She trudges back up the long drive, kicking pebbles as she goes, mood darkening like a gathering storm. By the time she reaches the house, the sweet satisfaction of letter-writing has curdled into a sulky resentment. It's not fair. August promised. He has time to ski and make new friends and be amazing, but not five minutes to write to his little sister who misses him so much her chest aches with it? Not fair at all.
She slips back inside, bypassing the kitchen where she can hear Dad and Papá talking in low voices, and heads straight for the forbidden territory: August's room.
It's not really forbidden—not explicitly—but there's an unspoken understanding in the house that everyone's private spaces are their own. Still, August isn't here to protest, and Gigi reasons that someone needs to make sure his room hasn't been taken over by dust bunnies or book fairies or whatever creatures might colonize an empty bedroom. It's practically a service she's providing.
She pushes the door open slowly, half-expecting some alarm to sound. The room is exactly as August left it three weeks ago—bed made with military precision (a habit Papá instilled in him), books neatly arranged on shelves, desk clear except for a photo in a silver frame: August at thirteen with Dad and Papá after his first junior competition, all three of them grinning, sun-drunk and victorious.
The walls tell the story of her brother's evolving passions. Tennis posters from when he was younger and determined to follow in their parents' footsteps. (He'd tried, had been good but not great, had admitted at twelve that he didn't love it enough to be exceptional at it. Dad had hugged him for a long time after that conversation.) Skiing posters now—Olympic champions frozen in mid-flight, legends whose names Gigi has memorized because August talks about them constantly (her favorite is Lindsey, who is a very nice lady and also a friend of Dad's). And photographs—so many photographs, a gallery of their family's history: August as a toddler on Dad's shoulders; August and Elena by the lake, laughing; August and Luca at Wimbledon in the players' box; August on his first pair of skis at three years old, Papá kneeling beside him, adjusting his boots.
The trophies line the bookshelf, smaller than Dad's or Papá's, but growing in number each year. Junior National Champion, 2050. Alpine Junior Series Winner, 2051. The medals hanging from the bedpost, gold and silver discs catching afternoon light, proof of her brother's steady ascent.
She sits on the edge of his bed, running her fingers over the soft navy duvet, and lets herself feel the full weight of missing him—not just today's bruise of unreturned letters, but the deeper ache of his empty place at the breakfast table, the silence where his laugh should be, the hollow space only he can fill.
It's not like August has never been away before. He travels for competitions regularly, spends weeks training in the Alps. But this time feels different. He's fifteen now. Almost grown in her eyes, though she knows adults would laugh at the idea. He's pulling away, building a life beyond the estate's boundaries, finding his own gravity outside the orbit of their parents' shared fame.
She flops back on his bed, staring at the ceiling, remembering the first time she saw him ski—really ski, not just the baby slopes but actual mountains with actual danger. She'd been five, bundled in a snowsuit so puffy she could barely move her arms, holding Dad's hand while Papá adjusted the bindings on August's skis. The snow had been blinding white, the sky an impossible blue, and August—eleven then, already fearless—had looked down the slope with such focused determination that Gigi had suddenly understood what people meant when they said he was just like their father.
"Ready?" Papá had called.
August had nodded once, sharp and certain.
"Remember what I told you—weight forward, eyes on your line, not your tips. Trust your edges."
Another nod. Then August had pushed off, and Gigi had held her breath as her brother carved his way down the mountain—graceful, controlled, a small flame-haired comet against the snow.
"He's flying," she'd whispered, awestruck.
Dad had squeezed her hand, and when she looked up, his eyes were bright with an emotion she couldn't name but felt in her own chest: pride, yes, but something else too—a kind of reverent wonder, as if he were witnessing something sacred.
"Just like his Papá," Dad had said softly. "And just like his opa."
Opa Hanspeter. A tall, serious man who smelled like pipe tobacco and spoke little but smiled with his eyes. He'd been a skier too, Dad told her once. Not professional, but good. Good enough to teach Dad, who'd been good enough to become junior champion before tennis stole him away.
A legacy passing down through blood and bone, snow and courage. Except it had skipped her, somehow. She likes tennis. Likes skiing well enough, too, but she doesn't have what August has—that hunger, that almost religious devotion to the perfect line, the perfect turn. She's too scattered, too enchanted by everything at once: sailing and horses and lambs and the violin she's been learning since last year and the stars she studies through Papá's old telescope. August knows exactly what he wants. Gigi wants the whole world all at once, a greedy collector of experiences.
She sighs, sitting up, smoothing the wrinkles she's left on August's duvet. Through the open door, she hears footsteps in the hallway—the distinctive rhythm of Papá's walk, the soft tap-tap-tapping of the cane he uses on days when his body is being, as he puts it, "uncooperative."
She freezes, caught in forbidden territory, but the footsteps pass by, continuing toward the room at the end of the hall—Dad and Papá's room, the one with the big windows facing the lake and the door that is sometimes locked in the mornings for reasons she doesn't quite understand except that it makes Dad blush when she mentions it at breakfast.
Curious, she tiptoes to August's door, peering into the hallway. Papá has left his own door ajar, and she can hear the soft sounds of drawers opening, the rustle of paper. Stealth mode activated, she creeps down the hall, pressing herself against the wall like a spy in one of the movies August likes.
Through the crack in the door, she sees Papá sitting on the edge of the bed, a photo album open on his lap, his cane leaning against the nightstand. His face is soft with memory, fingers tracing something on the page, and he doesn't notice her at all.
"Spying isn't polite, piccola," Dad's voice says quietly behind her, and she jumps, hand flying to her heart.
"Dad! You scared me half to death!"
"Only half? I'm losing my touch." His smile is gentle, no real reprimand in it. He's carrying a laundry basket, a couple of August's sweaters folded on top. "Were you in your brother's room again?"
She looks down, scuffing her foot against the hardwood floor. "Maybe."
"Missing him?"
"No," she lies, then immediately: "Yes. So much. And he's not writing back to my letters! I've sent five, Dad. FIVE. With stickers and pressed flowers and everything."
Dad balances the laundry basket on his hip—a gesture so familiar it's practically a part of him, this tall, freckled man who used to be a champion and is now just her father, folding clothes and making cakes and kissing bruised knees. "He's very busy, Gigi. The competition is in two days, and he's training all the time."
"Too busy for one letter?" Her lower lip trembles traitorously.
Dad's eyes go soft, and he sets the basket down, kneeling to her level despite the small wince that means his knee is bothering him again. "What do you say we go see what Papá's looking at? I think you might like it."
She follows him into the bedroom, clambering onto the big bed with its crisp white duvet that smells like lavender and Dad's shampoo. Papá looks up, smiling when he sees them, making room for Gigi to nestle between them like a small bird between two protective trees.
"What are you looking at?" she asks, peering at the album.
"Old pictures," Papá says, his voice warm with nostalgia. "From before you were born. Look—here's your dad on skis."
The photograph shows a much younger version of Dad—twenty, maybe, or twenty-two, or thirty, his hair brighter copper than it is now, face unlined, body coiled with the lean strength of youth. He's midway down a slalom course, edges cutting into fresh snow, body angled in perfect form, a study in controlled violence.
"You were a skier?" Gigi asks, though she knows this already—has heard the stories, has seen the junior trophies tucked away in the back of Dad's closet.
"Not anymore here. But yes, before tennis," Dad confirms, looking at the photo with a complicated expression—nostalgia, pride, something like grief. "A lifetime ago."
"You were very good," Papá says, and there's a weight to his words that makes Gigi look up, catching the loaded glance that passes between her parents.
"Good enough," Dad says with a small shrug. "Not great."
"Janni," Papá chides softly, using the nickname that only he is allowed to use. "You were Italian junior champion at seven. Don't be modest with our daughter."
Dad makes a noncommittal sound, turning the page. More ski photos—Dad on different slopes, in different racing bibs, always with that same focused intensity that August has inherited along with the hair and the hands and the quiet determination.
"Is this why August is so good?" Gigi asks. "Because he got your skiing genes?"
"Maybe," Dad says. "Or maybe he's good because he works harder than anyone else. Because he loves it." His fingers trace the edge of a photo. "Sometimes it's not about what you inherit, but about what you choose."
"August chose skiing over tennis," Gigi says, thinking out loud. "Even though you and Papá were both tennis champions."
"He did," Papá agrees. "And we were very proud of him for making that choice. For following his own path."
"Is that why you're looking at these now? Because you're thinking about August?"
The adults exchange another of their looks—the telepathic ones that make Gigi feel like she's missing half the conversation.
"Partly," Papá admits. "And partly because... well, these are good memories. Sometimes it's nice to revisit them."
"I have a box of letters," Gigi blurts out. "All the ones I've written to August that he hasn't answered. Do you want to see?"
Dad's eyebrows rise slightly, but his voice remains gentle. "You've kept copies of your letters?"
"Not copies," she corrects. "I write two of each letter. One to send and one to keep, so I'll remember what I told him. In case he ever asks questions about what he missed while he was gone."
Papá makes a sound—something between a laugh and something softer, more tender. "That's very organized, princesa."
"I'm a very organized person," Gigi says with great dignity. "When I want to be."
"Well then," Dad says, closing the photo album. "I'd love to see your letters."
She races back to her room, retrieves the small box from beneath her bed—a lacquered wooden thing that used to hold Papá's cufflinks—and returns to find her parents exactly as she left them, side by side on the bed, Papá's hand resting on Dad's knee in that casual, constant way they have of touching each other.
The letters are carefully folded, dated in the upper right corner, each one a chronicle of the days August has missed: Nico's birth, the first blooms in the garden, Elena's visit with the twins, the afternoon Papá taught Gigi to tie sailing knots, the violin recital where she'd played the piece August helped her practice before he left. Small things, everyday magic, the minutiae of family life captured in her looping handwriting and occasionally illustrated with wobbly drawings in the margins.
"These are wonderful, Gigi," Dad says, genuine admiration in his voice as he reads her meticulous accounts. "August will love them when he gets home."
"But why isn't he writing back?" she asks, the question that's been burning in her chest for weeks. "Doesn't he miss us too?"
"Of course he does," Papá says firmly. "But you know your brother—when he's focused on something, everything else..."
"Disappears," Gigi finishes. "I know."
"It's not that he's forgotten you," Dad adds, smoothing a curl away from her forehead. "It's that he's trying so hard to make us proud."
"He doesn't have to try," Gigi says fiercely. "He already is. He's the best brother in the universe."
"Even when he doesn't write back?" Papá asks with a small smile.
"Even then," she admits grudgingly. "But I'm still going to be mad at him for at least five minutes when he gets home."
"That seems fair," Dad agrees solemnly.
"Maybe even ten minutes."
"Harsh but justified."
"And then I'm going to hug him for a million years and tell him everything he missed and make him read all my letters out loud."
"He'll love that," Papá says, eyes crinkling with amusement.
"And maybe," Gigi continues, a new idea forming, "I should make him a welcome-home present. Something to show I'm not really mad. Not deep down."
"What did you have in mind?" Dad asks.
She considers this seriously, tapping her chin with one finger. "A sign for his door. With glitter. And maybe some drawings of him skiing. And also maybe Nico's hoofprint, if we can convince him to step in paint, which I think we can if we use the right bribery tactics."
"Sounds like a project," Dad says, exchanging an amused glance with Papá. "Do we have enough glitter?"
"Dad," Gigi says with deep disappointment. "We always have enough glitter. I'm not an amateur."
Papá laughs, that deep, wonderful sound that means all is right in their world, and pulls her into a hug. "No, tesoro. You're many things, but never that."
She settles against him, breathing in his familiar scent—cedar and burnt cinnamon and expensive soap, that particular warm note that is uniquely Papá—while Dad gathers her letters, carefully returning them to the box.
"He'll write back," Dad promises, setting the box on the nightstand. "Or he'll call. He's just in that tunnel vision place right now, where the competition is the only thing he can see. I was the same way at his age."
"Really?"
"Worse," Papá interjects with a grin. "Your dad once forgot my birthday because he was preparing for a tournament."
Dad's cheeks flush. "That was—it was one time, and I made up for it."
"You did," Papá agrees, his eyes going soft and private in the way that makes Gigi both fascinated and slightly embarrassed. "Quite thoroughly."
"Are you talking about kissing?" Gigi asks suspiciously. "Because August says you guys are always talking about kissing even when it doesn't sound like it."
The adults burst into laughter—Dad's bright and surprised, Papá's deep and rich—and Gigi feels the weight of missing August ease just a little. He'll be home soon. He'll read her letters. He'll tell her about the mountains and the snow and the way it feels to fly down a slope with nothing but courage and gravity and skill.
And in the meantime, she has glitter to find and a welcome-home sign to make, and at least seventeen more things to add to letter number six, which she'll write tonight by lamplight, chronicling another day in the life her brother is missing, saving all the small magics for his return.
SCUOLA PRIMARIA LAGO BLU — TERZA CLASSE
Compito di Religione e Mitologia: Scegliete una qualsiasi creatura o divinità mitologica e scrivetene un profilo. Almeno 150 parole.
(Homework: Choose any mythological creature or deity and write a profile. At least 150 words.)
VENUS, GODDESS OF LOVE
by Gisela Venus Sinner-Alcaraz, 9 anni
Venus is the goddess of love, beauty, desire, fertility, prosperity, and spring. The Romans considered her the mother of the Roman people through her son Aeneas. This means that all Romans were technically her grandchildren, which seems like a big deal to me. I was named after her and I think that part is also beautiful.
Venus wasn't just about romantic love. She was also about reconciliation, about the return of lost things, about helping things grow in the earth, about the beauty of the natural world. She was offered roses, myrtle, and tuberose. Tuberose grows in our garden. This seems significant to me.
Venus was born from the sea, from the ocean foam, as described by the poet Ovid. This means she was made of water and air, and the beauty of both. I think this is a very beautiful origin for a goddess. Most people are born very ordinary in comparison.
According to mythology, Venus was loved by many gods but was married to Vulcan, the god of fire and labor. It is said that she loved Mars, the god of war, more. I find this sad but also understandable because people don't always love who they should love, which is something I learned from adults I know.
To honor Venus, I built a small altar in the garden with tuberose, pebbles from the lake, and a drawing of my parents.
Teacher's note: Gisela, this is excellent research! Your Italian is beautiful. Your final observation about mythology is very mature. 10/10! (What an altar! Can you bring a photo?) ⭐⭐⭐
Spring announces itself in waves. First: the slant of morning light changing its angle, then the wildflowers dotting the vineyards like confetti, then the tuberoses blooming along the garden wall, their waxy white blossoms unfurling in the strengthening sun, releasing a perfume so sweet and heavy it makes Gigi dizzy with pleasure. She harvests them carefully, using Dad's silver garden scissors (borrowed without permission but with good intentions), filling her basket as the dew soaks through her canvas shoes. The tuberoses are special—Venus flowers, Papá calls them, sacred to the goddess of love and beauty for whom Gigi was partially named. "Venus brought your dad and me together," he'd told her once, a strange comment that made Dad roll his eyes but smile that secret smile he gets sometimes. "So it seemed right to give her some credit for bringing you to us too."
The lawn stretches before her like a green sea, still pearl-damp with morning, the distant figures of the groundskeepers already at work among the vines. The estate wakes early, even in spring—a holdover, Dad says, from his tournament days when dawn was for practice and discipline was the only path to greatness. Now the habit remains, a ghost of another life: Dad still rises with the sun, still moves through his morning rituals with the precise focus that made him a champion, though his body is different now, softer in places, marked by time and childbearing and the gentle surrender to a quieter life.
Gigi cuts another blossom, adds it to her basket. The flowers will wilt by tomorrow, but that's part of their magic. Their beauty is temporary, meant to be appreciated in its brief perfection. Like August's ski runs, she thinks. Like Dad's matches in the old videos Papá sometimes watches late at night when he thinks everyone is asleep, his face lit by the blue glow of the screen, watching Dad, young and ferocious and transcendent, slide across courts of clay and grass and cement like a god among mortals.
The altar site is her own sacred place, a small clearing between the rosemary hedge and the lambs' enclosure, hidden from the main gardens by a trellis heavy with young climbing roses. She found it last summer, claimed it immediately, spent hours arranging rocks and interesting bits of wood until it felt like a fairy temple. Now she kneels in the soft grass, unpacking her newest supplies: the tuberoses, a small jar of honey from the estate's hives, a pretty shell found on their last trip to the sea, a photograph of August from her pocket (his school portrait, his smile forced but his eyes kind), a blue ribbon from her hair, and—most precious—a smooth oval stone from Opa Hanspeter's collection, given to her just weeks before he died.
The memory of him is still fresh, still painful—the tall, quiet man who taught her to recognize birds by their calls, who spoke little but listened completely, whose big hands were surprisingly gentle when showing her how to hold a fishing rod. He'd been sick for months, but the end came quickly in the deep winter, snow falling outside the windows of his house in the mountains. Gigi had been there, had held his hand, had watched the light leave his eyes while Dad cried silently beside the bed and Oma Siglinde whispered prayers in German, her voice steady even as her world collapsed.
Gigi had understood, in that moment, something fundamental about time that she hadn't grasped before: that it moves in only one direction. That people leave and don't come back. That even the strongest, tallest, most permanent-seeming pillars eventually fall.
It had terrified her then. It terrifies her still. But the altar is a way of making sense of it—of acknowledging the fear while creating beauty as a bulwark against it. So she arranges her treasures carefully: the tuberoses in a circle, the honey jar in the center, the photograph of August propped against a rock, the ribbon tied to a small branch that forms an arch over the whole assembly. Last, she places Opa's stone—a piece of polished green aventurine that catches the light like a fallen star—at the very center of the circle.
"For Venus," she says softly to no one. "For love and beauty and keeping everyone safe."
The ritual is entirely her own invention, cobbled together from mythology books and her own imagination and fragments of the Catholic ceremonies she's witnessed on visits to Papá's family in Spain. She doesn't know if she's doing it "right," but that doesn't matter. What matters is the intention, the focus, the belief that someone is listening.
"Venus," she begins, crossing her legs and settling into what August calls her "oracle position," back straight, hands resting palms-up on her knees. "It's me again, Gisela Venus Sinner-Alcaraz. Your namesake. Well, partly. I hope that means you're listening extra carefully."
A breeze stirs the tuberoses, releasing another wave of their intoxicating scent. Gigi closes her eyes, letting the fragrance wrap around her like a blessing.
"I have some requests today. Important ones. First, please make sure August is safe at ski camp. Make sure he doesn't fall or break anything important. His competition is on Saturday and he's been training so hard. He deserves to win, I think, but if he doesn't win, please make sure he's not too sad about it."
She pauses, considering her next words carefully.
"Second, please look after Oma Siglinde. She's been very quiet since Opa died. She smiles but it doesn't reach her eyes. Dad says she just needs time, but I think maybe she needs more than that. I think maybe she needs to know Opa is okay wherever he is now."
The thought of Opa makes her chest tight. She opens her eyes, looks at the stone gleaming in the center of her altar.
"I know you're not in charge of heaven or anything like that. I think that's God's department. But maybe you could put in a good word? Tell God that Opa Hanspeter was the best grandpa anyone ever had, and that he should get a really nice cloud to sit on, with a good view of the mountains."
Another pause. The next request is the hardest, the one that keeps her awake some nights, staring at the ceiling, trying not to let the fear swallow her whole.
"And please," she continues, voice dropping to a whisper, "please make sure Papá lives forever. Or at least for a really, really long time. He's older than Dad—a lot older, I know that—and sometimes his body hurts and he has to use the cane, and sometimes I hear him on the stairs at night going really slowly. And I know he had that scare when I was little, the time when the ambulance came and Dad wouldn't stop crying..." She swallows hard, remembering fragments of that terrifying day: the wail of sirens, the rush of unfamiliar adults, Dad's face white and stricken. "Just—keep his heart beating. Keep him here with us. I'll do anything. I'll be good. I'll eat all my vegetables. I'll practice violin every day without complaining. I'll—"
"What are you doing out here, Spätzchen?"
Gigi jumps, nearly knocking over her careful arrangement. Oma Siglinde stands at the edge of the clearing, silver hair caught up in its usual neat twist, wearing the blue cardigan that seems to be a permanent part of her regardless of weather. She looks frailer than Gigi remembers from last summer, her face more lined, but her eyes are the same—pale blue, clear as alpine lakes, wise and kind and slightly amused.
"Oma!" Gigi scrambles up, smoothing her dress self-consciously. "I was just—um—"
"Making an offering?" Oma suggests gently, coming closer to inspect the altar. "It's very beautiful."
Gigi flushes, half-embarrassed, half-pleased. "You're not mad?"
"Why would I be mad about beauty?" Oma asks, lowering herself carefully to sit on a nearby stone bench. "Come, sit with me. Tell me about your goddess."
Gigi settles beside her grandmother, leaning into the familiar softness of her cardigan, breathing in the comforting scent of lavender and baking spices that always clings to her.
"Venus is the goddess of love," she explains. "And beauty. And gardens, I think. Papá told me all about her. She was born from sea foam—isn't that amazing? Just appeared one day, perfect and grown-up. And she made people fall in love. Not always in good ways, I think. Some of the stories are kind of complicated."
"Love often is," Oma agrees, her accent thicker than Dad's, the consonants softened by decades in the mountains. "Is that why your Papá named you after her?"
"Sort of," Gigi says. "He says Venus brought him and Dad together, which is weird because I'm pretty sure they met at tennis, not at a goddess temple or anything. But he says she deserves some credit."
Oma's face does something complicated—a smile that's not quite a smile, a shadow of knowledge passing behind her eyes. "Your Papá is a big romantic."
"Dad says he's ridiculous," Gigi offers. "But he says it like he likes it."
"Your dad has always appreciated the ridiculous in his life," Oma says with that same not-quite smile. "Even when it caused him trouble."
There's a weight to her words that Gigi can't quite decipher—another piece of the Before Times puzzle that adults talk around but never fully explain. She files it away with all the other clues, to be examined later.
"Oma," she says instead, shifting topics, "do you believe in heaven?"
The question seems to surprise Siglinde, her pale eyes widening slightly. "That's a big question for a Wednesday morning, little one."
"I was just thinking about Opa," Gigi admits. "And wondering where he is now."
Oma is quiet for a long moment, looking out over the garden where spring is asserting itself in waves of green and pink and yellow. "I believe," she says finally, "that the people we love never truly leave us. They live on in our memories, in the lessons they taught us, in the ways they changed us by loving us."
"But is he somewhere?" Gigi persists. "Somewhere he can see us? Hear us?"
"I like to think so," Oma says softly. "When I talk to him—and I do talk to him, every day—I believe he hears me."
"You talk to him?" This is revelatory—the idea that adults also speak to people who aren't there, that it isn't just a child's habit.
"Of course. I tell him about my day. About what you and August are doing. About the garden, the weather. All the things I would have told him if he were still sitting beside me."
Gigi considers this, leaning more heavily against her grandmother's side. "Does he answer?"
"Not with words," Oma says. "But sometimes... sometimes I feel him. In the wind. In a familiar smell. In the way the light falls through the trees just so." Her voice catches slightly. "In the way you tilt your head when you're thinking hard about something—exactly like he used to."
The idea that she carries some piece of Opa with her—in her gestures, in her blood—is both comforting and strange. Gigi looks down at her hands, pale and freckled like Dad's but with long fingers like Opa's, like Papá's, wondering what other inheritances move through her that she can't see.
"I miss him," she confesses, the words small and raw in the spring air.
"I miss him too," Oma says simply. "Every day. But I find him in so many places still." She reaches out, brushes a curl from Gigi's forehead. "In you. In your dad. In the mountains he loved."
They sit in silence for a moment, the garden humming around them—bees investigating the rosemary, birds calling from the olive trees, the distant bleat of lambs in their enclosure. It's peaceful but not quiet, alive with the subtle music of spring's renewal.
"May I add something to your altar?" Oma asks suddenly.
"Of course," Gigi says, surprised and delighted.
Oma reaches into her cardigan pocket and withdraws a small, worn wooden carving—a bird, simple but beautiful, its wings spread as if caught in the moment of taking flight.
"Your Opa made this," she explains, placing it gently beside the aventurine stone. "Many years ago, when your dad was just a baby. He said it was a prayer in wood—a wish for his child to fly free, to find his own path." She arranges the carving so it faces the rising sun. "I think Venus would appreciate the sentiment."
Gigi stares at the wooden bird, a lump rising in her throat. Another fragment of Opa, another piece to hold. "It's perfect," she whispers.
Oma presses a kiss to her temple, then rises with the careful deliberation of someone whose joints no longer obey as readily as they once did. "I should go help with breakfast," she says. "Will you come in soon?"
"In a little while," Gigi promises. "I have a few more prayers to say."
After Oma has gone, disappearing back toward the house with her slow, dignified pace, Gigi turns back to her altar. The addition of Opa's carving has transformed it somehow—made it more powerful, more real. A bridge between her childish rituals and something deeper, something that connects her to the long chain of family stretching backward through time.
"Venus," she resumes, settling back into her oracle position. "Thank you for sending Oma. I think maybe you're listening after all."
The breeze stirs again, ruffling her curls, and Gigi chooses to take it as confirmation.
"I have one more request," she continues. "It's kind of selfish, but I'm going to ask anyway. Could you please, please make August write back to me? Or at least call? I know he's busy being amazing and skiing like a champion, but I miss him so much it hurts. Right here—" she taps her chest, just below her collarbone, where the ache of absence lives, "—like a bruise that won't go away."
She considers adding something about the family feeling incomplete without him, about how the breakfast table has a gap where he should be, about how even Papá seems quieter when August is gone. But those feel like adult concerns, too heavy for a nine-year-old's shoulders, so she keeps them tucked inside.
"That's all for today," she concludes, bowing her head slightly as seems appropriate for addressing a goddess. "Oh—and thank you for the lamb cake yesterday. It was delicious."
As rituals go, it's improvised and imperfect, but it feels right. She remains kneeling for another minute, breathing in the sweet perfume of the tuberoses, letting the morning sun warm her shoulders, imagining her prayers rising like incense toward some celestial ear.
Then she becomes aware of another presence—someone watching her from the edge of the clearing. She turns, expecting Oma again, but instead it's Dad, his copper curls haloed by sunlight, leaning against the trellis with a soft expression that makes her heart squeeze.
"How long have you been there?" she asks, flushing slightly.
"Just a moment," Dad says, stepping into the clearing. "I didn't want to interrupt your... conversation."
His tone is gentle, free of mockery, but Gigi still feels exposed, caught in a private moment. "You think it's silly," she says, defensive.
"No," Dad says, coming to kneel beside her, his movements still graceful despite the small wince that means his knee is giving him trouble again. "I think it's beautiful."
He studies her altar with genuine interest—the flowers, the honey, the photograph, the ribbon, the stone, and now the wooden bird—nodding slowly as if appreciating the composition.
"Your Oma told me she found you out here," he says. "That you were talking to Venus about Opa."
Gigi nods, unable to articulate the tangle of feelings that prompted her morning ritual—the missing, the worry, the fear that time moves too fast and takes too much, the desperate wish to hold everything still and safe forever.
"I used to do something similar," Dad admits, surprising her.
"You did?"
"Mmm. Not altars exactly. But prayers, yes. Rituals, yes." He settles more comfortably beside her, cross-legged in the grass, the morning sun catching the silver strands that have begun to appear among the copper. "Before big tournaments, big matches, I had... superstitions, I guess you'd call them. Ways of asking the universe for help."
"Did it work?"
Dad smiles—that crooked, self-deprecating smile that transforms his whole face. "Sometimes. I won twenty-three Grand Slams, so something was working."
Gigi tries to imagine her father as he was then—young, fierce, standing alone on massive courts with thousands of eyes on him—and can't quite manage it. The Dad she knows is gentle, domestic, someone who bakes lamb cakes and kisses her scrapes and laughs at Papá's terrible jokes. The champion in the videos seems like a different person entirely—a stranger who happens to have her father's face.
"What were they for?" she asks.
Dad's eyes go distant, remembering. "Strength. Courage. Clear vision." A small, private smile touches his lips. "And later... other things. More complicated things."
"Like what?"
"Like love," he says simply. "Like family. Like the life we have now."
Something about his tone makes Gigi think there's more to this story—that the gap between praying for tennis victories and praying for love contains multitudes, contains perhaps the whole mysterious Before Times that nobody fully explains—but before she can ask, Dad continues:
"What I'm trying to say is, I understand. The need to put your hopes into something concrete. To create a space for your wishes." He touches the wooden bird gently. "And sometimes, miraculously, those wishes come true."
"But not always," Gigi says, thinking of her unanswered letters.
"No," Dad agrees. "Not always. Not exactly as we hope." He tucks a curl behind her ear, his touch gentle. "But I've learned that the universe has a way of giving us what we need, even when it's not what we asked for."
Gigi considers this, not entirely convinced. "I just want August to write back," she says, the admission small and vulnerable.
"I know, piccola. And he will, in his way." Dad's expression softens further. "Your brother loves you more than anything in the world. He's just... in that tunnel-vision place right now. Where the competition fills his whole field of vision."
"Like you used to be."
"Exactly like I used to be." Dad nods, a rueful acknowledgment. "It's hard to explain if you haven't felt it yourself—that singular focus, where everything else falls away. But it doesn't mean he's forgotten you. It just means he's fully present in what he's doing."
"I understand," Gigi says, though she's not sure she does, not really. Her own mind is more like a butterfly, flitting from interest to interest, never settling for long. The intensity August brings to skiing, that Dad once brought to tennis—it's both fascinating and slightly alien to her.
"Besides," Dad adds, his tone lightening, "Venus might be listening after all. Look."
He pulls his phone from his pocket, taps the screen a few times, then turns it to show her. It's a text message from August, sent twenty minutes ago:
Tell Gigi I'm sorry for being the worst brother. Competition prep is INSANE but I'll call tonight after dinner. Promise. Miss her like crazy.
Joy surges through Gigi like a physical force, bubbling up from her toes to the top of her head. "He's going to call! Tonight!"
"See?" Dad says, smiling at her excitement. "Sometimes prayers work."
"Or maybe Papá texted him and told him to call me," Gigi says shrewdly, not quite ready to credit divine intervention.
Dad laughs—that bright, surprised sound that never fails to make her smile. "Maybe," he concedes. "Though I prefer to think Venus has a direct line to grumpy teenage boys."
"Papá would say it's because her name is in mine," Gigi decides. "That it gives me special goddess privileges."
"Your Papá," Dad says with fond exasperation, "believes in all sorts of ridiculous things." His eyes go soft, distant for a moment. "Though sometimes the ridiculous turns out to be true."
They sit together beside the altar as the morning deepens around them, the sun climbing higher, warming the earth, coaxing more fragrance from the tuberoses. It's a perfect moment—one of those crystalline intervals of peace that Gigi is learning to recognize and treasure, to store away like precious gems against future darkness.
"Dad," she says after a while, "was Papá always old?"
The question seems to catch him off guard. "What do you mean?"
"I mean—" she gestures vaguely, trying to articulate something she's only recently begun to notice. "He's older than you. A LOT older. Was he always? Even when you met?"
Dad's expression shifts—something complicated passing behind his eyes, a mix of memory and caution. "Yes," he says carefully. "He was already forty-four when we met. I was twenty-four."
Gigi does the math quickly. "That's twenty years! That's more than twice as old as me."
"It is," Dad agrees, watching her work through the implications.
"So he was already old when you fell in love."
"He wasn't—" Dad starts, then stops, reconsidering. "Well, I suppose to a nine-year-old, forty-four must seem ancient. But no, he wasn't old to me. He was just... Carlos." The way he says the name—soft, reverent, almost shy—makes Gigi think of the way saints look in paintings: transported, illuminated from within. "The most alive person I'd ever met."
"And now?" Gigi asks, thinking of Papá's cane, of the silver in his hair, of the lines that frame his smile.
"Now he's still the most alive person I've ever met," Dad says simply. "Just with more silver hair and a bit more wisdom." He grins suddenly, mischievously. "And a lot more complaining."
"Oma says Papá is dramatic," Gigi offers.
"Oma," Dad says with grave seriousness, "is absolutely correct."
They laugh together, the sound rising into the spring air like another kind of prayer, and Gigi feels the knot of worry in her chest—about August, about Opa, about Papá growing older, about the relentless forward motion of time—loosen just a little.
"Come on," Dad says, rising with the fluid grace that made him a champion, offering her his hand. "Let's go in for breakfast. Your altar will keep watch in our absence."
Gigi takes his hand, allowing herself to be pulled up, but pauses for one last look at her creation—the circle of tuberoses, the honey jar catching sunlight, the photograph, the ribbon, the stone, the wooden bird. A collection of ordinary objects made sacred by intention. A physical manifestation of all her hopes and fears and loves.
"Goodbye, Venus," she whispers. "Thank you for listening."
She walks back toward the house hand in hand with her father, his palm warm and freckled against hers, the morning sun turning his hair to living fire. Behind them, the altar remains—a small, bright island of devotion in a sea of spring green, flowers lifting their faces to the strengthening light, the wooden bird poised forever in the moment of taking flight.
And somewhere—in the breeze, in the scent of tuberoses, in the slant of morning light across dew-damp grass—perhaps a goddess is listening after all, smiling at the earnest prayers of a child who believes, with all her heart, in the power of love and beauty and impossible wishes whispered in the first light of day.
As they near the house, Dad suddenly says, "You know, I was thinking—after breakfast, would you like to call August instead of waiting for him to call tonight? I bet we could catch him between training sessions if we time it right."
Gigi's heart leaps. "Really? You think he wouldn't mind?"
"I think," Dad says with gentle certainty, "that hearing your voice would make his whole day better."
She squeezes his hand, happiness bubbling up so intensely it makes her hop a little as they walk. "Yes! Yes please! Can we call right after breakfast? Or maybe during breakfast? We could put him on speakerphone and pretend he's at the table with us!"
Dad laughs, allowing himself to be pulled along by her enthusiasm. "We'll call after breakfast. Let the poor boy at least get through his morning training."
"Fine," Gigi concedes, magnanimous in her excitement. "But I have so much to tell him! About the lamb cake and Nico and my altar and—" She stops suddenly, struck by a thought. "Wait. Should I tell him about the altar? What if he thinks it's babyish?"
"August will think it's exactly as amazing as it is,” Dad says with quiet confidence, "Trust me."
And she does, of course. She always does. Because Dad is never wrong about feelings, just as Papá is never wrong about sports, and between the two of them, they hold the entire map of what matters in the world.
They enter the house through the garden door, leaving the spring morning and the tuberose altar behind, stepping into the warm embrace of home—the smell of coffee and toast, the sound of Papá's voice from the kitchen, the gentle clatter of a family's morning rhythm. Gigi looks back once, through the glass panes of the door, and imagines she sees a shimmer in the air above her altar—a trick of light, perhaps, or maybe something more magical: a goddess bending to examine the offerings of a child who believes, with perfect faith, in the power of love to transcend time and distance and even death.
Either way, she feels blessed—held in the cupped palms of a benevolent universe, surrounded by love so thick it's almost visible, a golden light suffusing everything it touches. She turns back to the warm interior of the house, to the voices of her family, to the day unfolding before her like a gift waiting to be unwrapped.
Venus or no Venus, some prayers are already answered just by being alive on such a morning, in such a place, with such people to love and be loved by in return.