I uncoil her frostbitten fingers from my wrist, letting her arm fall to her side. A shrill cry breaks the frozen silence, accompanied by a series of whimpers. Her fingers find their way back to my wrist, her hand encasing itself in mine. I look up, my eyes met with a broken face.

   "I'm so sorry," I whisper, my voice too tense to emerge from the chambers of my throat. "I have no choice." Once again, I pry the child's fingers off of my wrist.

   Her cheeks are colorless, her lips a sickeningly burgundy shade, her stomach stained with red, her beautiful brown eyes watering. "Please," she cries, "Please! Please!!!"

   Her cries become more distant as gloved hands haul me away, further and further, until all I see is the falling flurries of white. My own fingers are numb from hiding in the snow.

   "Five more minutes," the man in the black coat and gloves announces, pointing out towards the gray figures emerging from the snow.

   My house. My life. My sister...

   I turn my head back ever so slightly, my heart aching as I watch the senseless blizzard before my eyes.

   It had killed me, refusing to love her. It had killed me because I had no choice. We aren't allowed to love.

   My sister had loved. She had loved me. That is why she will die in a matter of minutes, because she defied the rules. She opened her heart, she gave everyone around her a taste of what warmth felt like. That is not allowed.

   "You look like you're thinking," The man in the black coat acknowledges. "Stop, immediately. You can't think about her anymore. She has been cut from the community. She isn't a subject of life anymore."

   You're right, I think to myself, silently. She's a victim of it.

   For the rest of the sleigh ride, I stay silent, letting my eyelids flutter and shut repeatedly until they close for the night.

   When I wake up, I am no longer in a sleigh, no longer watching the blizzard. I am under my blanket, encased in warmth.

   "Morning, Autumn," the sweet voice of a child sings. "Did you have a nice dream?"

  I let my eyes wander for a bit, until finally they locate the owner of the voice. Instantly, a flood of melted snow streams down my skin, my arms flinging over the little girl's shoulders.

  I think of what I told her yesterday, after our stupid fight at dinner.

   "If you would die today, I'd let you!"

   I remember her beautiful brown eyes watering, her hand finding mine, squeezing it desperately.

   "Say you didn't mean that, please! Please!" She had cried.

   "I have no choice. You ruined everything!"

   "Well, did you have a nice dream or not?" Her sweet voice fills the room again, pulling me out of my thought.

   "No. And I'm never going to let that dream come true," I say, holding her close and sobbing into her hair. "I didn't mean what I said yesterday."

   I pull back and take a look at her rosy cheeks, her smiling cherry-pink lips. How could I have been mad at this face, this little girl? I was mad at her because she embarrassed me in front of my friends. My friends, the gray figures emerging from the snowy wall of oblivion I had put up against my sister, my real best friend. My selfishness, the man in the black coat, had taken over my life.

   I vow never to let that dream come to life.

   "I want you to take this," I lift the little girl's warm hand into my own, carefully wrapping her fingers over my wrist, "And never let it go."