That evening, Sasha dragged herself through a quick shower and found Mom already at the dining table. The smell of her famous spaghetti should've made her mouth water, usually didcbut her stomach was still doing somersaults from this afternoon. From that witch lady. From whatever the hell had actually happened out there.
They ate without talking but she could feel mom's eyes on her every few seconds. Those little sideways glances that meant she knew something was off.
"Is there anything you need to tell me?" Mom finally asked.
Sasha's fork paused halfway to her mouth. The question hung in the air like smoke and for a split second she almost told her everything about the strange woman with her knowing smile, about the way the air had shimmered and moved like it was alive, about the tiny creature with wings that shouldn't exist but somehow did...
Instead, she shrugged and mumbled something about being tired . "Just adjusting to the new place, you know?"
Mom's expression softened but those worry lines around her eyes didn't disappear. They never did anymore since dad's death.
After dinner, Sasha wandered out to the pool area where the dragon fountains were still spitting water in their endless cycles. The whole backyard felt different at night, bigger somehow full of shadows that seemed to pulse with their own rhythm. She sat on the edge of one of the loungers letting the sound of the water wash over her thoughts.
The dragons looked almost alive in the moonlight as water cascaded from their mouths in silver streams creating ripples that caught and scattered the light into a thousand tiny stars. It was beautiful, weird and unsettling all at once. Kind of like everything else about this place.
"I'm going to bed," she called to mom through the sliding glass door. Mom nodded without looking up from her phone, already lost in work emails or scheduling apps or whatever kept her mind busy these days. Always working, that woman. Even when their whole world was falling apart, mom threw herself into spreadsheets and conference calls like they could somehow hold everything together.
Sasha's room was a disaster zone of boxes labeled "Sasha's Stuff" in Mom's careful handwriting. She'd managed to set up her bed and dig out some clothes, but everything else was still trapped in cardboard and packing tape. The walls looked naked without her posters—all those bands and TV shows that used to define who she was, now rolled up in tubes somewhere in the moving truck aftermath.
She wanted to watch Riverdale. It was Thursday, which meant a new episode and normally she'd already be curled up with a bag of popcorn ready to lose herself in someone else's drama for an hour. But the TV was still wrapped in bubble plastic somewhere probably buried under her winter clothes and the collection of books she'd been meaning to read for three years.
"Guess I'm missing it tonight," she muttered to the empty room. Her voice sounded smaller than usual, swallowed up by all that unfamiliar space.
The hardwood floors creaked under her feet as she moved around, testing out the acoustics of her new life. Everything echoed differently here. At their old house, she knew exactly which floorboards would squeak, which stairs would give her away when she tried to sneak down for midnight snacks. This place was full of sounds she didn't recognize yet—the hum of the pool filter, the distant whoosh of cars on the main road, the way the wind caught in the eaves and made the whole house whisper.
Sasha flopped down on her bed, still wearing her jeans and the oversized hoodie that smelled like their old house, a mixture of Mom's lavender detergent and something indefinably familiar that made her chest tighten. The exhaustion hit her all at once like someone had pulled a plug and drained all the energy right out of her bones. Moving day. The witch, mom's worried face hovering over dinner. The way everything familiar had been stripped away and replaced with boxes and question marks.
It all crashed over her in waves, each one pulling her further under until her eyelids felt like they weighed a thousand pounds. The mattress was the same one from her old room, but even that felt different here—like it was trying to be comfortable in a place it didn't quite understand yet.
Her eyes were already closing when she heard it.
"Sasha..."
Faint. Distant. Like someone calling her name from the bottom of a well or through layers of cotton and sleep.
Sasha jerked awake, her heart immediately hammering against her ribs hard enough to hurt. The room was darker now, shadows stretching across the unfamiliar floor from the streetlight outside her new window. For a second she thought maybe she'd dreamed it—that her brain was just playing more tricks on her, the way it had been doing ever since Dad's funeral when reality started feeling negotiable.
But then the voice came again, clearer this time.
"Sasha... wake up..."
She sat up slowly, every muscle in her body suddenly alert. The digital clock on her nightstand glowed 11:47 PM, its red numbers the only familiar thing in the darkness. Her breath came in short puffs visible in the cool night air that somehow felt charged with electricity.
That's when she saw it. There, perched on the windowsill like it had been waiting for her to wake up was the tiny creature from that afternoon. Wings tucked neatly against its bark-brown body, little human face turned toward her with eyes that glowed soft gold in the darkness. Not harsh gold like a flashlight but warm gold like candlelight, like honey held up to the sun.
It was real! The witch had been real! Everything that happened today... the shimmering air, the impossible conversation, the way the world had suddenly expanded to include things that shouldn't exist... all of it had actually happened!
Sasha's mouth went dry. She wanted to rub her eyes and blink it away, to do all the things people did in movies when they thought they were hallucinating. But she couldn't move and could barely breathe. The creature was so perfectly detailed as she could see the delicate veins in its wings, the way its tiny chest rose and fell with breath, the expression on its face that somehow managed to be both ancient and kind.
"I knew you were real!" she whispered, her voice cracking on the words.
And for the first time since her dad died, Sasha felt like maybe, just maybe she wasn't going crazy after all. Maybe the world was stranger and bigger and more wonderful than anyone had ever told her or maybe magic was real and maybe, somehow, it had found her.