Part One
"Was it really you?"
The fire's glow flickers in the girl's eyes. She doesn't blink.
I shake my head. It looked like me. But no child should grief like that.
I couldn't sleep.
The cocoa sat untouched on the bedside table, long gone cold. Outside, the wind tapped the windowpane like knuckles against bone. I curled deeper beneath the quilt, but the warmth did nothing.
My dreams came in fragments- twisted ruins and half-whispered spells. Runes carved into skin. A shadow walking through moonlight. Her face never showed, but her presence poured into me like smoke under a locked door.
"You're not forgotten," the voice said, soft and aching. "Not lost. Not adandoned."
I woke in a gasp, heart thudding so loud it hurt. The air felt thick. Alive.
I pulled my cloak tight around my shoulders and crept downstairs, avoiding every board that groaned. Agatha's room was quiet. But I swore I could hear her breathing- as if she wasn't asleep, just pretending.
I stepped into the hush of night.
The woods had changed.
Fog twisted low to the earth. The moon floated pale and still above the trees. And beneath a gnarled elm near the edge of the clearing I saw her.
A little girl.
Hunched over, her cloak too big, her hair dark and tangled. Her fingers brushed moss like she was drawing something- runes, maybe. Or memories.
I froze.
She turned, slow as frost melting off a window.
Her eyes met mine.
And I gasped.
She looked like me. Younger. Sadder. Dressed like a shadowed echo of who I used to be before I knew what my name carried.
She didn't speak.
But her eyes burned like a question I didn't know how to answer.
Part 2
I stepped forward slowy.
Each footfall felt heavier than the last, like the forest was warning me back. The girl stayed hunched over, her fingers trailing through the moss in loose circles. She was muttuering something- soft and broken, but rhythmic, like a forgotten nursery rhyme left to rot.
I paused just a few steps away.
Her voice was thin. Trembling. A chant built from breath and memory.
"Under roots and between stone, blood remembers what was bone..."
"Ashes cradle secrets kept, curses bloom where witches wept..."
My breath caught in my throat.
The air felt wrong- too cold, too loud, though no sound stirred expect her voice. I took another cautoius step.
"Who are you?" I whispered.
She didn't answer.
She just kept tracing shapes into the ground, her words growing slower, more twisted:
"Names forgotten, spells undone, mother's shadow, daughter's sun..."
I trembled.
She finally looked up.
Her eyes were dark. Deep. Not empty- but filled with things I didn't understand yet. Sadness. Knowing. The kind of grief that shouldn't live on a child's face.
Behind her, in the distance, stood the hooded woman.
Her cloak rippled slightly, though no breeze touched the trees.
She wasn't watching the girl.
She was watching me.
"She looks. She waits. Velvet man. Lies and promises...."
The words crawled into my chest like frost on bone.
I staggered slightly, eyes darting toward the shadows- towards where the cloaked woman still stood.
She hadn't moved.
But I knew she'd heard.
The girls eyes met mine, dark and quiet.
Then she went silent.
Just moss beneath her knees. Just breathe in the air.
But everything had changed.
Part 3
I rubbed my eyes hard.
Once. Twice.
Trying to clear the fog, the fear, the ache behind them that made everything look sharp and too soft at the same time.
But when I looked again-
The little girl was gone.
The moss where she'd crouched was undisturbed. No runes. No footprints. No echo of warmth.
And the woman.- her still, watchful figure in wrapped in shadow- had vanished too.
The trees stood quiet. The clearing was empty.
I stepped back, breath catching in my throat.
Then the wind shifted.
Just slightly.
And I heard ir- soft as a sigh between worlds.
"She remembers. So will you."
It faded like breath in winter.
And the silence that followed wasn't empty.
It was waiting.
Part 4
I staggered back, heart in my throat.
The trees pressed in, quiet and waiting.
The whisper had faded, but my bones still trembled with the sound of it. I turned, ready to retreat toward the cottage- toward anything that felt real.
And then she was there.
The hooded woman.
Not across the clearing.
Not behind a tree.
In front of me.
Close enough that I could hear the hush of her breathing. Small nettles, nightshade and something softer- like damp earth and old parchment.
I froze.
Her hood shadowed most of her face, but I could see part of it now- strong cheekbones, a narrow mouth pressed tight with greif. Her skin was pale, almost luminous in the moonlight. And her eyes-
I couldn't see them.
But I felt them.
They scrapped across every part of me, like they were seaching for the piece that matched her own.
She didn't speak.
Not with words.
But the tension between us thickened like storm clouds learning how to break.
My fingers curled into firsts. "Who are you?" I whsipered.
The air didn't answer.
But her head titled, ever so slightly.
Like she knew the question wasn't really hers to answer.
The hooded woman didn't speak.
But slowly- so slowly it felt like time was holding it's breath- she lifted her hand.
Fingers pale, steady. The edge of her cloak shifting like smoke.
She reached towards me.
Not threatening. Not demanding.
Her hand hovered between us. open and waitng.
I didn't know why, but something in my chest tugged forward. My hand rose on it's own. trembling.
Just before our fingers touched-
"No!"
Agatha's voice cracked through the clearing like lightning.
She surged foward, both arms raised, and the air pulsed with wards- wild, sharp, laced in ash and iron. Symbols flared against the moss. A gust of wind tore beween us.
The woman hissed- not loudly, but with something ancient in the sound. A grief that had been buried and refused to rot.
She didn't flinch.
But her hand faded before mine could reach it.
Her cloak dissolved into shadow. Her outline scattered like dust in moonlight. And then-
She was gone.
Agatha stood before me and the emptyness where she'd been, chest rising fast, eyes blazing.
"She cannot touch you." she said. voice taut as a drawn bowstring. "Not yet."
I stared past her at the place where the woman had vansihed.
My fingers still tingled.
"Who was she?" I whispered.
Agatha didn't answer.
She just stepped back. eyes wary, and glanced at the sky like the stars might speak first.
Part 5
I fell to my knees before I even knew I was falling.
The clearing felt too wide, too silent. Like something inside me had been ripped loose and was swirling in the air, unearthed.
She'd been right there. Her hand had almost touched mine.
Tears blurred my vision.
Everything felt so loud in my head. and so quiet everywhere else. My ribs ached. My throat burned. My magic trembled under my skin, wild and afraid.
Agatha moved beside me.
She didn't speak at first. She just knelt- awkward, old, real- and pulled me into her arms. I didn't resist. Couldn't. I buried my face in her shoulder and let the tears come.
She smelled like bitterroot and smokle and something steady. I clung to that smell like it could keep me from falling apart.
"Let it come," she whispered. one hand stroking my back. "Let it break through."
I shook against her, not answering.
Because I didn't have answers.
Not to this.
Not to who she was.
Not to why she felt like my bones remembered her.
The moss beneath us was cool. The wind stirred softly, and somewhere. I swore the trees were listening/
"I saw myself," I whispered. "Like a girl made of sadness."
Agatha held me tighter.
"She remembers," she said. "And so will you."
Part 6
Sleep took me all at once.
Like the forest had decided I'd had enough.
I don't remember the moment my eyes closed. Just Agatha arms wrapping around me, her scent like crushed leaves amd iromweed, the warmth of her shoulder beneath my cheek. The way the wards flickered softly as we passed though them.
She carried me without a word.
Not like I was fragile.
But like I was something she'd promised to protect- even if I never knew why.
The cottage was quiet. The fire low. The corners full of hush and half-spoken stories.
She climbed the stairs slowly, my limbs limp, my thoughts drifting between waking and whatever dream had tried to claw its way out of me earlier.
The attic room felt smaller tonight. Warmer, maybe. Or heavier.
She laid me down on the bed gently, folding the quilt around me with hands that trembled just a little. The cocoa still waited by the nightstand, untouched.
I think she brushed the hair from my face.
But I might be dreaming.
She stayed beside me longer than usual. Her breath steady. Her presnce quiet but loud in its knowing.
Somewhere between the last beat of moonlight and sleeps's arrival, I thought I heard her whisper something.
"One day, you'll understand. And I'll still be here."
I didn't answer.
I couldn't.
And the forest, listening through the windows said nothing.