Riana Pfefferkorn will break your heart

It takes Jacob thirty-nine seconds to grow up. For the last twenty-six, Piper is there too. Bandit starts out next to Jacob but disappears, gray-muzzled and bent, soon after Piper shows up. Zomba’s cameo in the middle is a firework of black. The images wriggle, change hues, fade and brighten.

Snapshots every week: even when he wasn’t speaking to them, fourteen, sullen, hair hiding his face; even when she had a broken leg, the hated, leaden cast. At twenty-four frames per second, those pains disappear. The weeks are too fleeting to notice, the years barely register. Hit replay. Again. Again.