On the table between us, she laid a pencil, a small knife for sharpening, and a longer knife for something more sinister. Your mother contributed a roll of bandages. The last item on the table was a blank notebook.

“Have you been working on your sharpening?” Mother asked me.

I nodded eagerly. Because I ran through so many pencils in my sketches, I sharpened often and thought myself very good at it. When she nodded at the pencil, I took the sharpening knife and began to show off my skill.

“Sharpen the heart as much as you can,” she said.

I carved carefully, my thumb guiding the knife, shaving thin strips of wood onto the table. It was the most patiently I had ever sharpened a pencil. I handed it to Mother.

She held it up to the light.

“The thing you need to know about pencils,” she said as she rotated it in her hands, “is that their hearts remember.”

She held out her hand. I gave her the knife. She somehow sharpened the pencil even further.

“Each time you make a stroke, what is left of its heart remembers that stroke. Like when you scrape your knee, your body remembers through a scar. Your own heart remembers too—the next time you are close to falling, you will think of the other times you have fallen.”

The way she held the pencil, the way she looked at it—it could only be described as love.

“And our family can Reforge those memories.”

At last, she rolled up her sleeve. The scars, visible at last. The phoenix in its entirety revealed, pale wings curving along the sides of her arm, tail weaving to her elbow, head held high at her wrist. My own arm ached at the sight, as if in recognition, in longing.

She tapped the sharpened pencil heart on her wrist a few times, right at the phoenix’s head, the point where all the scars on her arm met, at one of her blood vessels.

Then she stabbed the heart into her wrist.

I bolted upright, knocking back my chair. Your mother grabbed my arm. Mother winced from the pain but still held the pencil to her wrist. The heart melted, pooling into ink before being absorbed into her vein. The pale scars that formed the phoenix filled out and darkened, climbed up her elbow. The heart melted entirely into her wrist, and the phoenix glistened, dark and pulsing.

She shuddered. I sat slowly back in my chair. She handed me what was left of the pencil, just the hollow wood, its heart sucked out. Then she picked up the longer knife. She pressed the blade to the phoenix’s neck and sliced.

I flinched. She brought her sliced-open wrist on top of the notebook, pressing her wound into the pale-yellow paper. Yet instead of coloring the paper red, the paper turned the black of a pencil heart as she bled.