Under the usual tree, the two girls were talking. Sometimes they would lie down on the grass to rest, looking at the sky and dreaming of impossible things. That was perhaps their favorite activity: imagining that they are far away from there, with other people and in other circumstances. The girls laugh and are happy just to imagine themselves far away from that tree that gives them shelter every day.

Source

The oldest girl was about 12 years old, the other one a little less. With their used, dirty, worn-out clothes, the girls looked the same. Maybe not in their bodies, but in the same joy they always carried, in their big, bright eyes, in the way they looked at things and laughed in the air. You could see them laughing a lot. It was always under the tree where the girls laughed more and chatted in a murmur that only they heard. Away from the tree, their gazes looked at the ground, their bare feet, the footprints they were leaving behind, with a simple laugh that only they knew.

Source

The older one had big eyes and her girlish body was transforming. With every movement her hands made, her chest trembled and moved like the waves in the sea. The youngest always played with her long braids and flew with her bare and dirty feet as if she were a beautiful and light butterfly. The two girls were dressed in a thousand colors under the tree, so there was no urgency to return to the big house, where the others were, where they have the real life, where reality was.

Source

One afternoon, while the girls were in the kitchen doing their daily chores, the adults of the big house were drinking tea and eating cookies while they were planning the fate of the older girl. One said that the older girl should be separated from the younger girl and that each should live in a different place; another nodded and the other was silent. The joy would take them somewhere else, to other landscapes, to other people. On the table, next to the empty tea cups and plates of sweets, numbers and addresses kept the fate of the girls, who picked up the dirty cups and crumbly plates, later, unaware of their own fate.

Source

When the girls returned to the tree, they smiled as never before. One said she wants to go to Paris, the other thought of London; one imagined herself travelling on a plane, while the other imagined herself travelling by boat. They look at each other away from the kitchen and the dirty deals. There must be a different life for them away from that tree. While they dream, they pick flowers that they put in their hair and fruits that they put in their mouth. They also take lint flowers in their hands that blow and spread them in the air while they run laughing as if the lint tickles them. From a distance they look cheerful, but vulnerable and helpless. They have no idea of the fate that awaits them.

Source

When they returned to the big house that same night, the adults called the older girl and the little girl was left in the room alone. When she woke up the next morning, the bed next to her was nice and empty. She looked everywhere for her sister, even under the tree, but did not find her. She also asked the adults, but no one answered. Just as a turtle must run, so the hands of the clock began to move. Time every day was a heavy stone that slowly moved. The little girl never heard from her sister again.

Source

Every afternoon, when the little girl stopped her work, she ran to the tree and there, under it, she lay down with her eyes fixed on the sky. There, looking at the flowers and the hanging fruits, she did not remember the luxurious lives they imagined she would have in other countries or other places with her sister, but she remembered the times they were happy under the tree.