Short Fiction
Seventeen Lanterns
The morning Elise decided to leave the city, she found a paper lantern on her fire escape. It was the color of apricots, its wire frame bent but intact, and inside, written on a strip of rice paper, were six words in a handwriting she didn't recognize: You were always the brave one.
She held it for a long time. The neighborhood below her stirred the way it always did — the bakery door banging open, the woman in 4B calling her cat, the delivery truck reversing with its endless, patient beeping…
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