Gemotions

The crayon smelled like stale wax and remembered summers. Amelia picked up the drawing, a crude depiction of a girl with mismatched eyes and a crown of leaves. Her niece, Lily, had drawn it. "This is Willow," Lily had announced, her face bright with a child's unwavering conviction. Amelia's stomach churned.

She traced the outline of the leaves. A ghost of a memory brushed her skin - the tickle of real leaves, the scent of damp earth, the breathless whisper of a name. Willow. The name she'd given her own childhood companion.

"Willow," she echoed, the word a fragile echo in the quiet kitchen. She hadn't thought about Willow in… well, in decades. A wave of something akin to ache swept through her, a hollowness that seemed to settle in her bones. Why now? Why this drawing?