Six years passed before it was safe for me to visit my sister's grave.
There was a strange irony in the meeting. The graveyard where Adoncia was
buried was beautiful. I visited in April, on our birthday. It was green
and the birds were singing, the sky was a brilliant blue with pure, white
puffs of cloud flowing in the light breeze.

I knelt down in front of the stone that read, Adoncia Lark Calle,
Beloved Daughter, 3245-3265. "Hi, Adoncia," I said quietly to the
grave. "I know you're not here, but i needed to talk to you and this is as
close as I can get.

"I miss you. I know that you hate me, and that me being here on your
grave would probably make you sick, but I know that somewhere in your
heart you would probably have forgiven me eventually... or at least I had
hoped.

"Every night after your death I saw you there, I saw us together. Every
time it rained I remembered how much you loved the rain. I remembered the
time we went out and danced in the rain during a lightning storm and Mom
yelled at us. I remembered that you used to love the fact that it was
raining on the day we were born and that almost every birthday it would
rain. You said it was a miracle, I would say it was just April in general,
and the chances were that it would rain. It rained when we turned 18.

"I hated you then. I hated you and mom, Adoncia. Every night as I lay
on that cot in the cold, as I shivered and tried to stay positive, keep
hope, I would think of how you had betrayed me. On my birthday, when I
turned 18, I hated you even more. I hated you twice as much. Even though I
was underground, I knew it was raining. There were places in the mines
where the roof leaked. It had been leaking for days, and I knew it was
raining for you. It leaked in my room that night.

"Remember that we used to promise each other that we would be Maid or
Honor for each other? How we used to laugh that people wouldn't know which
one of us was getting married because we looked the same? Well, I got
married on our 18th birthday. And I laughed because I knew you would have
spit on me. I married Devin, that clone that was our servant. We're so in
love, Adoncia... so in love. And you never would have gotten within miles
of that so-called wedding.

"You have a nephew. He's four and a half years old now. He's really
smart, he can almost read. He talked early; he walked early... you would
have been able to brag about him. I think you would have liked him. He has
green eyes and brown curly hair, just like us.

"I don't hate you anymore. I stopped hating you half way through my
second year in the mines. I realized it wasn't you that I hated; it was
the world. You didn't betray, me the world did. You weren't the one that
made the rules about humans and clones; you weren't the one that dug the
mines. You reacted the way most people would have. And I could hate you
for that, but I won't.

"I'll miss you. I missed you when I got married, when I had my first
child, when he talked, when he walked. I kept thinking of how you would
never have those times. I almost killed myself. But I accepted the fact
that what happened, happened. It's out of my power to change it. I have to
go on without you, just like I would have anyway, only now everyone
doesn't have you and not just me. I thought I would never forgive myself,
but after 6 years, I think I can live with myself.

"I just wish I could live with you."

------

As I walked away I looked into the streets and watched the people. I
watched a small child, close to the age of my son, and I thought of how
much the world had changed. he was living in a different world.

In the eight years that had passed since I had been sent to the mines,
escaped, and gone into a refuge, there had been great strides in clone
rights. Finally, we were legally equals. We weren't considered less than
human, we weren't sent to mines, we weren't required to be servants. We
were allowed to live life. Even if in society we were still considered
unequal by most, clones were slowly becoming human.