The Opening Path - Book One

A girl’s drawing leads her to a world of memory, magic, and a truth she already knows.

Chapter One - The Drawing That Always Finds Her
Auralin sat at the wooden table in the corner of the kitchen, legs curled beneath her, a woollen sock drooping down one ankle. Her pencil moved across the paper in slow, quiet strokes — not rushed, not hesitant, just steady. Like the lines had already been waiting inside the page and only needed her hand to find them.
She was small for her age, willowy, with a fall of silvery-blonde hair that always seemed a little too light for the world around her. Her eyes were the colour of woodsmoke - soft, shifting, always watching. She had the kind of face that made people lower their voices when they spoke to her, though no one ever said why.
Outside, the sky hung low and grey. It had rained earlier, and the forest behind the cottage was still dripping, the sound of water finding its way down leaves and gutters. Inside, the fire cracked behind her, giving off more sound than heat. The stones around the hearth were worn smooth - like everything else in her grandmother’s cottage - touched by time, not comfort.
She was drawing again. The same scene as yesterday. And the day before.
A tree, curved as if it were bowing. A stream winding past it. And behind the tree, a doorway - not of wood or stone, but of light. Thin lines shaped like golden threads, shining only when she didn’t look straight at them.
She didn’t know where it came from.
Only that it came. Every time.
Across the room, Mavora moved like a shadow that had learned to hold a kettle. Her back was straight, her silver-streaked hair tied in a low twist, a long grey apron covering her dark skirts. Her hands, though still strong, trembled slightly when she thought no one was watching.
“You’re at it again,” Mavora said, her voice rough but not unkind.
Auralin didn’t look up. “Just drawing.”
“It’s always the same, isn’t it?” Her tone sharpened a little. “That tree.”
Auralin shrugged, suddenly unsure if she should answer. “It’s just what comes.”
Mavora made a soft sound in her throat - not agreement, not disagreement. She turned back to the stove. She didn’t ask to see the picture.
They didn’t talk much, the two of them. Not about anything real. Not about Auralin’s mother. Not about the dreams Auralin sometimes had. Not about the house’s strange stillness, or the way the woods sometimes bent the light in odd ways.
Auralin was nine now - had just turned, in fact - and the air around her felt… changed. Not louder or brighter. Just different. Like it was holding its breath.
She drew another line. The tree again. The stream. The door she didn’t understand.
And still, Mavora stood with her back turned, staring out the window over the sink, her eyes lost in the mist.

The kettle began to hum, but Mavora didn’t move right away. She stood still, one hand resting on the windowsill, the other curled loosely at her side. From behind, she looked carved from the house itself - all corners and shadows and silent years.
Auralin glanced up from her drawing, then back down. She didn’t speak. She knew better than to interrupt the moments when Mavora drifted away like that. Her grandmother would come back soon enough - she always did - but there was a stretch of time where her eyes fogged over and her hands went still, and it felt like she was talking to someone who wasn’t there.
Sometimes Auralin wondered if it was her mother.
Zephina.
She only knew the name because she’d found it once, scratched in soft ink on the inside cover of a book in Mavora’s sewing basket. She had whispered it aloud, and the wind had moved just slightly in the curtains.
Mavora never said it. Not once.
“The past is the past,” she had said, flat and final, when Auralin asked why there were no photographs.
The kettle whined louder now, and Mavora shook herself loose from her reverie, snatching the handle with a cloth and pouring the hot water over the dried leaves in her mug.
“There’s bread on the counter,” she said, not turning around. “If you’re hungry.”
“I’m not,” Auralin murmured.
Mavora didn’t push. She never did. But she also never asked why anymore. She had once - when Auralin was younger and cried for no reason, or woke up with a hollow in her chest she didn’t know how to name. But over time, Mavora had grown quieter, more careful, as if too many questions might unravel something she wasn’t ready to face.
Auralin watched her from the corner of her eye.
Her grandmother moved with that same steady grace she always had - but there was a weight to her steps, like every movement passed through a filter of something left unsaid. She wasn’t cruel. She never raised her voice. She made sure Auralin was warm, fed, and safe.
But there was a space between them.
A space filled with the name they didn’t say.
Mavora loved her. Auralin knew that. She saw it in the way Mavora tucked the blankets tight at night, in the slices of apple left waiting on the table. But there was also something else. A kind of hardness, like the stone step at the front of the house - worn down from years of use, but never soft.
And Auralin felt it, even if she didn’t understand it.
Like Mavora was holding something heavy.
Something with wings.
Something with her mother’s smile

The room was quiet again, except for the clock that didn’t tick.
Auralin added another line to the tree in her drawing. She didn’t know why, but today she made it lean more - like it was listening. She shaded the curve of the roots. She always started with the tree. She always ended with the door.
Behind her, Mavora sat down with a sigh that was more breath than sound. She cradled her tea as if it might burn her or vanish if she let go. Her fingers were long and thin, knotted at the joints. They looked like branches. Strong ones. Weathered.
“That’s a lot of paper you’re going through,” she said after a while, not looking at the drawing.
“I can use the back,” Auralin offered softly.
“Mmm.”
There was no anger in it. Just the noise someone makes when they don’t know what to say but don’t want to sound cold.
Auralin turned the page over. The back was clean. Still room to begin again.
“Do you ever draw?” she asked suddenly.
Mavora didn’t answer at first. She sipped her tea, stared into the middle distance - not out the window, not at Auralin, but somewhere between.
“Not anymore,” she said finally. “I used to. Long time ago.”
“What did you draw?”
“Things I wanted to remember.” A pause. “Things I was afraid to forget.”
“Like Mumma?”
The question was so quiet it might not have happened. But it did. And Mavora’s fingers tensed ever so slightly around the mug.
“Your mother,” she said slowly, “wasn’t something I needed to draw. She was… everywhere.”
That was the closest Mavora had ever come to saying Zephina’s name out loud. And it landed like soft thunder in the space between them.
Auralin didn’t press. She just looked back down at her page.
She was going to draw the stream next, but her hand hesitated. Instead, she drew a small figure under the tree - slight, with hair blowing to one side, hand stretched toward the golden door. She didn’t know why she was drawing her now. She had never drawn her before.
“What is it this time?” Mavora asked, her voice careful.
“A girl,” Auralin whispered.
“Who is she?”
“I… I think it’s me.”
Mavora said nothing.
Her fingers didn’t move from the mug. And in the windowpane behind her, the light caught just enough to make it look like her eyes were glistening - but only for a second

Chapter Two: The Girl in the Stream
The woods behind the cottage were mostly quiet that day - not silent, but subdued. Birdsong came in half-verses. Leaves stirred with no wind. The sky hung low and colourless, like an old sheet stretched too thin.
Auralin trudged the narrow path with a basket on one arm and Mavora’s voice echoing behind her:
“A handful of wild thyme, and only if it’s dry. Not the soft stuff - proper sprigs.”
She didn’t know why her grandmother still bothered with herbs when they could barely afford bread, but she didn’t argue. It gave her something to do, and something to carry. And lately, carrying things helped.
The woods felt different today. She knew these trees - they were old friends, the kind that didn’t ask much and offered dappled shade in return. But today they seemed… distant. Like they were waiting for something.
Auralin stopped beside the stream that curled like silver thread through the underbrush. It was shallow and clear, running gently over stones and fallen leaves.
She reached for a sprig of wild thyme - and a thorn found her fingertip.
Not deeply. Just enough to make her pause.
Just enough to make her look
Her face, as usual: pale, a little sharp around the chin, hair coming loose from its plait.
But then… it shifted.
Her own eyes stared back - but wider, deeper, filled with gold. Her hair, suddenly longer. A faint shimmer clung to her shoulders like mist. And behind her - in the water’s reflection - was that tree.
That same one. The one from her drawings.
The stream whispered over the stones, and for a breath, Auralin didn’t know whether she was looking at the reflection of a girl… or being reflected by someone else.
She blinked.
The image vanished.
Her knees were wet. A breeze lifted the edges of her sleeves. Birds began to sing again, tentatively, like the world had held its breath and just remembered how to exhale.
She stood quickly, heart pounding, the basket half-forgotten at her feet.

Chapter Three: The Hollow Day
Auralin didn’t draw that morning.
She sat at the table, her hands folded in her lap. A clean sheet of paper waited before her, and the pencil lay beside it like it had something to say. But she wouldn’t touch it.
She wouldn't.
She'd dreamed of the stream the night before. In the dream, she had stepped into it, and the water had risen not to drown her, but to lift her - as if it knew who she was.
She shook her head. Dreams were dreams. And the drawings didn’t mean anything. Mavora was right - sometimes a child’s imagination could carry her too far. It was better to stay in the real.
Still… the pencil itched in her peripheral vision.
She stood up, went to wash the dishes. She swept the floor. She helped Mavora pin up laundry that hadn’t dried the day before. All the while, her thoughts felt taut - like a string pulled too tight. The not-drawing became a sound, a pressure, something silent and sharp behind her ribs.
“Something’s on your mind,” Mavora said at one point, wiping her hands on her apron.
“Just… tired,” Auralin lied.
That night, when she climbed into bed, she found a folded page under her pillow. Not placed there by Mavora - she was sure of it. But one of her own. One she didn’t remember finishing.
The tree. The stream.
And now, the girl in the water - reaching toward the golden door.
She lay awake for a long time, the drawing folded tightly in her fist.

Chapter Four: Mavora’s Memory
Mavora sat by the hearth long after Auralin had gone to bed. The fire had burned low, just coals now, glowing soft red like embers of a memory too stubborn to go out.
She held a folded shawl in her lap - dark blue with threads of gold stitched through the edge. The pattern was faint in places, worn thin by time and touch. She hadn’t brought it out in years.
Zephina had worn it the day she left.
Not that she had said goodbye. Not properly. Just a look, a hand pressed to her belly, a whispered promise Mavora hadn’t wanted to hear.
“She’ll come back to us,” Zephina had said, her voice barely a breath, “but not in the way you think.”
Mavora hadn’t asked what she meant. Couldn’t. Her throat had closed around the fear - the knowing she wouldn’t speak aloud.
Because Zephina wasn’t just leaving.
And the child wasn’t just being born.
She had felt it even then - a weight behind the words, an echo of something older than grief.
“She’ll come back to us,” Zephina had said.
To her mother. To the realm. To the story.
But not to stay
Mavora had wanted to throw that shawl into the fire more times than she could count. But she never did. Maybe because some part of her believed that to burn it would be to burn the last thread of her daughter’s presence in the world. Or maybe she feared the truth: that destroying it might bring her judgment from the very realm she once believed in.
She lifted the shawl now, pressed it to her face, and inhaled. It still held Zephina’s scent - or maybe just her memory. Lavender. Paper. The faintest trace of rose oil.
Auralin had been different since her birthday. Mavora had noticed the way the girl’s eyes wandered, the way her fingers danced along tabletops like they were drawing something only she could see.
And the drawings - always the same. Always that tree. That stream. The door.
She knew the signs. She had seen them before.
She didn’t want to admit it. But the truth was creeping in like dusk under a doorframe. Auralin wasn’t just dreaming.
She was remembering.
“She’ll begin to feel the pull when she turns nine,” Zephina had said in that hushed voice of certainty - as if she were talking about a tide, not a child.
“The book will call her. And when the time is right, it will open.”
Mavora clenched the shawl.
“Not yet,” she whispered into the empty room. “Please… not yet.”
She glanced up - toward the ceiling, toward the attic.
The book was still up there, hidden in its trunk, wrapped in silence and dread. She had thought of destroying it - once, long ago. The thought still came, like a shadow at her shoulder. But she couldn’t.
To destroy the portal is a crime against the realm. A crime of legacy.
And more than that - part of her still needed it. Not for Auralin. Not even for Zephina.
But for herself.
She stood slowly, every bone a protest. She folded the shawl and placed it gently in the drawer beneath the old cabinet. Closed it. Locked it.
Tomorrow, she told herself.
Tomorrow she would remind Auralin to keep her feet on the ground, her head in the here and now.
Tomorrow she would act like everything was normal.
But tonight… she let the fire burn down in silence, listening to the hush of the forest pressing against the walls.

The morning after the fire died to ash, Mavora rose before the sun. She moved through the house like habit - measuring tea, slicing the heel of the last loaf, brushing crumbs from the counter as if they mattered more than they did.
She didn’t wake Auralin. The girl had looked pale the night before. Restless. The kind of look Mavora had trained herself not to ask about.
She was halfway through sorting the old recipe drawer - a pointless exercise, really - when there was a knock at the door.
Three slow raps. Heavy.
She opened it to find the butcher’s wife, eyes pinched and unsympathetic, holding a slip of paper already smeared with rain.
“Another week,” the woman said flatly. “That’s the longest he’ll wait.”
The door shut without ceremony. Mavora stood holding the damp slip - a tally of bread, flour, potatoes, and the one time she’d asked for sugar, for Auralin’s birthday scone.
She gripped the edge of the counter. Her knees throbbed - more sharply today. Cold mornings always made it worse.
Her eyes shifted toward the hallway, toward the narrow stair that led up to the attic. She hadn’t climbed them in years. Not since the last hard winter, when she’d slipped on the cellar step and twisted her hip so badly it had taken a full moon’s cycle before she could walk without the cane.
She stared at the ceiling.
“Not yet,” she whispered. “Not this way.”
She paced slowly to the cupboard, opened it, then closed it again. Nothing of worth.
The candelabra was up there. Wrapped in velvet. Silver base, crystal stem - a wedding gift, or maybe from Zephina’s naming day.
Something beautiful that didn’t belong to the other world.
Something rooted here, not there.
But the book was there too.
Wrapped in blue and gold, inside the trunk beneath the window.
Waiting.
She pressed her hand to her lower back and winced. She could barely make it up the ladder, let alone dig through the old trunks.
It had to be Auralin.
She’ll go up. She’ll find the silver. That’s all. She won’t open the trunk. She has no reason to.
She doesn’t know what’s in there. She can’t.
Mavora stood still a long moment. The weight of the house felt heavier than usual. The kind of heavy that wasn’t dust or silence - but choice.
“Auralin,” she called, her voice quiet. “I need you to fetch something.


Chapter Six: The Threshold
Auralin stood at the bottom of the attic stairs, holding the edge of the table where Mavora had left her instructions. The words had been ordinary - Go up and bring down the candelabra. But the space around them didn’t feel ordinary at all.
She glanced toward the stairwell, then back to the kitchen.
“The attic?” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper.
Mavora didn’t look up from where she stood at the sink, hands moving through rinsewater that shimmered with steam.
“Yes,” she said simply. “The trunk near the window. The one with the blue cloth. Be careful.”
That was all.
Auralin hesitated. The attic had always been a place left untouched. She had asked once, long ago, if she could see it. Mavora’s “no” had come so fast and sharp that she hadn’t dared again.
But now she was being sent.
Auralin moved toward the narrow staircase. Each step creaked beneath her, and the air grew cooler as she climbed, thinner - like it came from a place that hadn’t been breathed in a long time.
At the top, the attic door loomed.
She rested her hand on the latch.
The pull was there again - not loud, not urgent. Just present. Like a thread wound through her chest, tugging softly.
She opened the door.
The hinges sighed, and a draft brushed her face like the breath of something long asleep. The room beyond smelled of cedar, dust, and time - not lifeless, but waiting.
She stepped inside.
The moonlight slipping through the small round window landed in soft patches across the floor. Trunks lined the far wall, their lids closed tight, edges draped in faded fabrics and the hush of memory.
She found the one Mavora had described - the velvet trunk with the candelabra inside. Its lid opened with a small groan. Silver gleamed in the dark, still polished beneath folds of cloth. She reached for it.
But her eyes were drawn elsewhere.
Near the far corner, a smaller chest sat nestled beneath the sloping beam of the roof. Draped across its top was a shawl - deep blue, threaded with gold.
Her breath caught.
It was the same shawl Mavora cradled late at night by the fire. The same one she never let Auralin touch.
The golden threads shimmered slightly - not with light, but with recognition.
The pull inside her strengthened.
Auralin took a small step toward it. Her fingers tingled.
She didn’t lift the shawl.
Not yet.
But she reached out - and gently touched its edge.
The golden thread warmed beneath her fingers.
Then she pulled her hand away, cradled the candelabra carefully in her arms, and backed toward the door.
She would come back.
She had to.
Something under that shawl was waiting for her.
And somehow… it already knew

Chapter Seven: The Pull That Wouldn’t Let Go
The coins clinked into the jar like rain on a windowpane — soft, final, and just enough.
Mavora set the lid back on and tucked the jar into the high shelf behind the curtain. Her shoulders eased, just slightly, as if a knot had loosened in her spine. She didn’t say thank you — she never did — but she placed a warm piece of honeyed bread on Auralin’s plate that evening, and that was thanks enough.
Auralin smiled faintly and ate in silence.
But her thoughts weren’t with the bread.
They were in the attic.
With the soft blue shawl draped over the smaller chest. The shimmer of gold thread when her fingers had brushed it. The way the air had felt — not cold, but aware.
She hadn’t told Mavora. Not about the shawl. Not about the feeling in her fingertips, the quiet hum in her chest. She didn’t have the words for it — not really. Only the certainty that something was waiting under that cloth, and that it had known her before she knew herself.
When the candles were snuffed and the house had gone still, Auralin lay awake, staring at the ceiling. The hush of the wind threaded through the cracks in the windows. And below that… something else. Something that felt like memory and invitation stitched together.
She rose.
Bare feet. Soft steps. Breath held.
The attic stairs welcomed her this time — no creaks, no shiver. Just space. And that presence again. Not loud. But waiting.
She slipped inside.
The shawl was still there, folded carefully atop the smaller chest she hadn’t dared open before. Gold thread glinted softly in the moonlight — not glowing, not magical… just alive. Like breath caught in fabric.
Her hand trembled slightly as she reached for it.
The shawl slid aside.
Beneath it, nestled into the velvet lining of the trunk, lay a book.
Simple. Leather-bound. Untitled. Unmoving.
But not ordinary.
Not to her.
Auralin reached for it with both hands.
The moment she touched it, the hush deepened — not heavier, but closer.
She held it to her chest.
And knew, without any doubt at all, that this was what had been calling.



Chapter Eight: The Book


She sat cross-legged on her bed, the book in her lap, her fingers resting gently on the cover.
For a moment, she didn’t move.
Then she opened it.
Blank.
Every page.
Front to back — blank.
No writing. No illustrations. No history.
Just empty paper and the sound of her own breath.
She stared down at it, unsure whether to be disappointed or relieved. Something inside her had been ready — braced — for magic. For something strange or glowing or loud.
But the book said nothing.
She turned another page. Then another.
Still blank.
Her brows pulled together. Confusion bloomed quietly in her chest — not frustration, but that hollow kind of ache when something important brushes just past your reach.
And yet her heart quickened — not with fear, but with recognition. As though the book was waiting for her to speak first. To remember something older than language.
She closed it gently and rested it against her chest.
Whatever this was… it wasn’t a book in the ordinary sense.
It was something that saw her.
And whatever it would show — she would be ready.
She sat still for a moment — the weight of the book pressing gently against her. Not heavy, but present. Like it knew it had been moved.
She didn’t know why she felt the need to hide it. Mavora hadn’t forbidden it — hadn’t even mentioned it — but still, something inside her said clearly:
Not yet.
She knelt beside her bed and pulled open the old wooden drawer built into the frame. Inside were folded clothes, a pinecone she’d once mistaken for magical, and a small jar of dried rose petals Zephina had once given Mavora — or so she imagined.
She placed the book beneath the shirts and closed the drawer slowly, as though the act itself was sacred.
Then she climbed into bed and pulled the blanket to her chin, her heart still thrumming a quiet rhythm she couldn’t name.
Sleep came slowly.
But when it did, it brought her there.
________________________________________



Chapter Nine: The Dream Door

She was standing in a clearing.
The sky was pale lavender, the air filled with drifting particles of golden dust that shimmered without light. The ground was soft beneath her bare feet — mossy, warm, familiar.
Before her stood the tree.
It bent in the same graceful curve she had drawn again and again, branches like reaching arms, its bark glowing faintly with fine lines like veins of memory.
The stream ran gently beside it, murmuring to itself, its water clear and deep, with flecks of light drifting through it like falling stars.
And just beyond the tree, nestled between its roots — the door.
It wasn’t golden this time.
It was light — pure and soft, rippling like silk in water. A doorway not built, but becoming.
She stepped closer.
Her fingers reached out, just inches away now.
The door shimmered at the edges. Her heartbeat slowed. The stream went quiet. The air around her changed — not colder, not warmer, just new.
She reached again.
The tips of her fingers brushed the edge of the light—
And then—
She woke

Chapter Ten: The Shift
Auralin woke with the sensation of warmth on her fingertips, like she had been holding something that remembered her.
For a moment, she didn’t move. Her eyes fluttered open slowly, and the ceiling of her room greeted her, just as it always had — low-beamed, pale with morning light, slightly cracked in the corner where a spider lived undisturbed.
But something was different.
She sat up carefully.
The dream still clung to her like mist — the tree, the stream, the door so close she could feel its breath on her skin. She could still hear the hush of the clearing, the way time had slowed around her, the sense that she had almost crossed a line she couldn’t uncross.
She looked at her hands. Nothing unusual — no glow, no mark.
And yet… her fingertips tingled.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood slowly. Her head felt light, not dizzy — just expanded, like her thoughts had stretched in the night and hadn’t quite shrunk back into place.
The house was quiet.
She crossed to the drawer where she’d hidden the book. Her fingers hovered above the handle. She didn’t open it.
Not yet.
She wasn’t afraid — not exactly. But the feeling in her chest had changed. The book wasn’t just a secret now.
It was a key.
To what, she didn’t know. But she was sure of it.
Her gaze drifted to the small windowsill above her bed. A leaf lay there — curled, pale green, edged with gold. She hadn’t seen it there before. The window had been shut all night.
She picked it up and turned it over in her palm.
It was ordinary.
And not.

Chapter Eleven: Mavora Listens to the Silence
Mavora stood by the hearth, stoking the fire with slow, deliberate motions. The coals didn’t need coaxing — the embers from the night before still held their glow — but she poked at them anyway.
She hadn’t slept well.
Her joints ached more than usual. Her back had woken her with a dull, deep pull, the kind that meant rain was coming. But that wasn’t what had unsettled her.
It was the stillness.
Not silence — silence she knew well. Silence was what you lived with after a daughter left and never returned. Silence was the music of rooms no longer filled.
This was something else.
A different kind of quiet.
Alive.
She stood with the iron poker resting against her knee and turned slowly toward the hallway.
Auralin hadn’t stirred yet. Her door was shut, her room as still as it always was. But Mavora could feel it — a change in the air, in the walls, in the space between heartbeats.
Something was moving.
Or waking.
She crossed the kitchen, poured water into the kettle, and placed it over the flame.
Her hand trembled just slightly as she reached for the tin of tea.
It had been years since she felt this kind of unease — not dread, but the sharp scent of possibility, the way the world feels just before a storm rolls in. The kind that doesn’t announce itself with thunder… but with knowing.
She braced herself against the table, breathing slowly.
She found it.
The thought came uninvited, cold and clear.
Not spoken. Not imagined. Just known.
She closed her eyes.
“Not yet,” she whispered, the words barely leaving her mouth. “Not yet.”
But she didn’t believe it.
Because Mavora knew how it began.
The restlessness.
The drawings.
The dreams.
And now, the silence that wasn’t silence.
The kettle hadn’t yet begun to hum, but her bones already had

Chapter Twelve: Something Shared, Something Hidden
Auralin entered the kitchen with sleep still in her hair and a strange lightness in her step, like her dreams hadn’t quite let go of her.
Mavora was already there, at the stove, back turned, spoon stirring the tea without urgency.
“You’re up early,” she said without turning.
Auralin paused at the doorway. Her fingers brushed the edge of the table.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
Mavora nodded. Just once.
“Storm’s coming. Weather does that sometimes.”
Auralin didn’t answer. She crossed to the sink and rinsed her hands, more for something to do than anything else. The cool water grounded her. The leaf she’d found earlier still rested on the windowsill, though she had no memory of setting it there.
“I left a slice of bread on the plate,” Mavora said, voice low but steady. “With honey. You should eat.”
“Thank you,” Auralin murmured.
She sat down at the table. Her hands were calm, but her insides weren’t. The image of the tree still hovered behind her eyes. She could feel the memory of the door under her skin like a warmth that hadn’t fully left.
Across the room, Mavora poured the tea.
She didn’t ask about the dreams.
She didn’t ask what Auralin had done in the attic.
But her eyes flicked — once — to the girl’s hands as she wrapped them around the cup.
“Your palms are warm,” she said quietly. “Like you’ve been holding something.”
Auralin stilled.
“It was just a dream,” she said.
Mavora said nothing.
She sat across from her, tea in hand, gaze unreadable. The silence grew between them again — not cold, not cruel. Just full.
After a long while, Mavora spoke again.
“Some dreams are just dreams.”
Auralin looked up, unsure if it was permission or a warning.
“And some,” Mavora added, looking into her cup as though it held something other than tea,
“are doors waiting to open.”
They didn’t speak again after that.
But Auralin noticed the way Mavora’s hand lingered over hers when she took her empty plate.
And Mavora noticed the way the light caught in the girl’s eyes — like something inside her had just begun to shine

________________________________________

Chapter Thirteen: The Language of Threads
The next morning, Auralin stepped quietly into the kitchen.
The fire was already lit. It always was — Mavora woke before the sun. But the kettle hadn’t been set, and the bread hadn’t been sliced.
Mavora sat in her old chair by the hearth, wrapped in silence. Her hands rested in her lap, holding the deep blue shawl, its edges trailing like threads of memory across her knees.
She wasn’t moving.
She wasn’t even really looking.
Just staring into the fire like it held something only she could see.
Auralin stood in the doorway, half-hidden by the frame, and watched her grandmother — really watched her.
For the first time, she didn’t just see Mavora as the one who made rules, or gave short answers, or stirred tea without smiling. She saw a woman with silvered hair and tired shoulders. A woman who had once held her daughter in her arms… and then lost her.
And still stayed.
She imagined what it must have been like — to bury Zephina without ever fully saying goodbye. To hold a newborn, knowing it meant carrying both legacy and sorrow. To raise a child when your bones ached and your heart ached more. To carry on with no one to comfort you, and no one to ask how you were holding up.
And she felt something swell in her chest — not pity, but deep, unshakable admiration. A love that came with understanding. A respect she hadn’t had words for until now.
Mavora shifted slightly.
And that’s when Auralin saw it.
The glint of gold.
A tiny curl of light along the corner of the shawl, woven so finely into the edge it could have passed for part of the embroidery — if it weren’t for the way it glowed.
Her breath caught in her throat.
She took one slow step forward, eyes fixed on it. The symbol shimmered gently, almost pulsing — not like magic in a storybook, but like something alive and ancient, awakened by touch or memory or something unnamed.
“Grandmother…” she whispered.
Mavora looked up sharply, eyes clearing like someone waking from a deep, long ache.
“What is it?” she asked, her voice hoarse.
Auralin pointed, barely able to form the words.
“That mark. I saw it last night. In the book.”
Mavora’s eyes fell to the shawl in her lap.
The glow was already fading, but she saw it — and her whole body stilled.
“You opened it,” she said quietly.
“I didn’t mean to steal it,” Auralin said quickly, stepping closer. “I just… it was like something inside me needed to see it.”
Mavora looked at her for a long, long moment.
“You weren’t stealing,” she said. “You were returning.”
Auralin blinked.
“What do you mean?”
Mavora’s eyes dropped back to the shawl. She brushed her fingers over the thread as if trying to remember who had sewn it.
“There are stories,” she said slowly, “that don’t live on shelves. They live in blood. In silence. In names we stop speaking because we’re afraid of what they’ll wake.”
She looked back at Auralin.
“But they wake anyway.”

Auralin moved closer to the fire. The air between her and Mavora felt thick — not tense, but full, like the space between thunder and rain.
She sat on the floor beside her grandmother’s chair, knees folded beneath her, hands in her lap. The light from the hearth warmed her cheeks, but the warmth inside her chest was something else entirely — something that had been quietly building ever since she opened the book.
“I think I’m supposed to know,” she said, voice low. “Not everything. But… something.”
Mavora tilted her head.
“What do you mean?”
Auralin glanced at the fading symbol on the shawl.
“I don’t know where the language in the book came from. But when I saw it, I didn’t feel confused. I felt… remembered.”
That stopped Mavora.
She set the shawl down gently on her lap, her fingers no longer trembling.
“The book doesn’t teach like other books,” she said. “It doesn’t speak in lessons. It speaks in memory. And only to the one meant to carry it.”
“The words don’t make sense,” Auralin said, “but I understand them. I just don’t have names for what I understand.”
Mavora closed her eyes for a moment, breathing deep. When she opened them, they were softer — not sad, not afraid. Just tired, and finally ready.
“That’s because it’s not a language of letters. It’s a language of lineage.”
She paused. The fire popped.
“It’s your mother’s tongue.”
Auralin’s breath hitched.
“Zephina could read it?”
“She could feel it,” Mavora said. “Just like you. She was born with the knowing. And when she left… she left it behind. For you.”
Auralin looked into the flames.
“That’s why I dream the same thing,” she said. “The tree. The stream. The door. They’re not dreams. They’re memories I haven’t lived yet.”
Mavora nodded slowly.
“You’re starting to remember who you’ve always been. That’s how the book works. It doesn’t give you new things. It returns what you were born with.”
“So, what am I?” Auralin asked, not fearfully, but steadily.


Mavora looked at her granddaughter, truly looked at her — not as a child she raised, but as something rising beyond her.
“You are what your mother waited for,” she said quietly. “And what I was entrusted to protect.”
“A Queen.”
The words seemed to settle in the room like dust catching light — quiet, final, and older than either of them.

Auralin blinked, her voice barely more than a whisper.
“Queen of what?”
Mavora looked into the fire.
The flames curled in on themselves, throwing shadows across the walls. For a moment, it seemed like she might not answer.
Then—
“Not of this world,” she said slowly. “At least, not the part of it most people see.”
Auralin tilted her head.
“Then… what part?”
Mavora hesitated, fingers tightening around the edge of the shawl.
“There are places woven through ours,” she said at last. “Places older than stone, deeper than rivers. Hidden places. Sleeping places. Some call them stories. Some call them lies.”
She looked at Auralin again — fully now, without the filter of fear or denial.
“But they are real. And they remember us.”
Auralin didn’t move. The edges of her world were shifting. Tilting.
“Is that what’s in the book?” she asked.
Mavora nodded once.
“The book isn’t just a story. It’s a doorway. And the world it leads to… that’s what you were born to enter. To guide. To guard.”
“But I don’t know anything about it.”
“You will,” Mavora said gently. “It already knows you. It’s just waiting for you to remember it back.

Auralin was quiet for a long moment.
Her eyes drifted from the fire to the folds of the shawl in Mavora’s lap — the faint gold embroidery, the symbol that had glowed like a breath in the dark.
“My mother…” she said slowly, the words catching at the edges of her throat.
“Is she… there?”
Mavora didn’t answer right away.
She looked down at the fabric in her hands, smoothing it once. Her expression shifted — not to sorrow, not quite — but to a kind of reverence. As though Auralin had just said something sacred.
“Zephina was the last one to touch the book before you,” she said. “She knew what it meant. She knew what it would cost.”
Auralin’s voice trembled.
“You mean… she left because of it?”
Mavora nodded, slowly.
“The Queen is always born to a line that remembers. But she cannot rise unless the path is prepared. Zephina’s gift… was to make that path.”
“So, she’s gone,” Auralin whispered.
Mavora looked up, her gaze firm and full of something not easily named.
“Gone from here,” she said. “But not from the story.”
Auralin stared into the fire, heart fluttering with questions she didn’t know how to ask.
“Will I see her?”
Mavora reached out, brushing a strand of hair from her granddaughter’s face. Her hand lingered, trembling just slightly.
“When the time is right,” she said, “the book will show you what it remembers.”
“And if I remember her?”
Mavora smiled — small, aching, proud.
“Then she will remember you too.”



Chapter Fourteen: The Living Book
The fire had settled into a low, glowing rhythm.
The shawl sat folded in Mavora’s lap once more, and the light of it no longer shimmered — but the weight of what had just been said lingered in the air between them, like perfume from a flower long gone.
Auralin sat quietly, fingers still touching the fringe.
“You said the book is a doorway,” she murmured. “What does that mean?”
Mavora leaned back in her chair, her gaze fixed on the hearth.
“It means it isn’t only a story,” she said. “It’s a place.”
Auralin looked up sharply.
“A real place?”
“As real as this cottage,” Mavora replied. “Real in the way rivers are real, and stars. You don’t always see where they begin or end, but you feel them.”
Auralin frowned.
“But I’ve held the book. It’s just paper. Words.”
“Yes,” Mavora said softly. “Until it decides you’re ready.”
Auralin’s heart gave a small flutter.
“You mean I can go inside it?”
Mavora nodded, the motion slow and steady.
“Not like turning a page. Not like stepping through a door. It doesn’t work that simply. The book is woven with memory and blood. It opens only for the one it was written for.”
“Me,” Auralin whispered.
“You,” Mavora echoed. “It knows your name before you speak it. It knows your grief, your dreams, the rhythm of your heart. When you’re ready — not just curious, but called — it will let you in.”
Auralin’s voice caught.
“And when I do go… what will I find?”
Mavora looked at her long and deep.
“Pieces of yourself you didn’t know were missing. Truths no one else can teach you. And others like you — though none quite the same.”
Auralin was quiet, thinking.
“And my mother?”
Mavora smiled faintly.
“Not as you remember her. Not as she was. But as the story remembers her. And she remembers you.”
Auralin’s breath came out slowly.
“Will I know how to come back?”
“You’ll know,” Mavora said. “Because the Queen walks between worlds. And once the path opens to her… it opens both ways.

The fire crackled softly, the silence between them gentle now — not heavy, but waiting.
Mavora shifted in her chair. Her fingers moved beneath the folds of the shawl, feeling for something hidden in the hem.
After a moment, she pulled out a small bundle, wrapped in a square of faded linen and tied with a fraying thread of gold.
She held it in her lap for a moment, her thumb tracing the edge as though saying goodbye.
Then she offered it to Auralin.
“This was your mother’s,” she said. “She gave it to me the night before she… left.”
Auralin took it gently, her heart thudding with a reverence she didn’t fully understand.
She untied the thread and peeled back the linen.
Inside was a small silver pendant, shaped like a leaf, its edges etched with the same curling lines she’d seen in the book — fairy language, though she didn’t yet have the words to call it that.
The surface shimmered faintly in the firelight, as though it remembered light differently than anything else in the room.
“She wore it when she carried you,” Mavora said, her voice low. “And she left it behind so you wouldn’t feel alone when the time came.”
Auralin’s fingers curled around it, the metal cool against her skin.
“It’s warm,” she whispered.
Mavora smiled, her eyes shining.
“That’s because it knows you.”
Auralin looked up.
“Should I wear it… when I go?”
“You already are,” Mavora said, placing a hand gently over Auralin’s heart.
“It’s not the metal that matters. It’s what’s inside you that answers.”
They sat together for a while longer, the pendant resting in Auralin’s palm, the fire casting soft shadows that danced like memory.
When Auralin rose to return to her room, she didn’t walk like a child anymore.
She walked like someone who knew the door was already waiting.
Mavora watched her go, the shawl still in her lap, the firelight soft against her weathered face.
And in that moment, she understood something she had always known and always dreaded.
She had just seen the last of her granddaughter.
And the first of the Queen

Chapter Fifteen: The Page That Opens
The moon was high when Auralin closed her bedroom door behind her.
The house was silent — not empty, but listening. As if the very walls knew something sacred was about to happen.
She crossed to the drawer and pulled it open.
The book waited.
She lifted it carefully, her fingers now steady where they once trembled. She sat on the edge of her bed, silver pendant around her neck, the leather-bound cover resting gently in her hands.
It still bore no title.
Still felt like an ordinary object.
But she was no longer the same girl who had first opened it in the attic.
She opened it again — this time not to find answers, but to meet them.
The pages shimmered faintly, like light through water. And this time, the symbols weren’t foreign. They moved across the page like script remembered in a dream, drawing her forward, deeper and deeper, until the lines blurred…
…and the page beneath her hands grew warm.
Not hot.
Not burning.
But alive.
The ink shimmered once. Then lifted.
And so did she.
The room vanished like a breath in cold air.
The bed. The walls. The sound of the fire in the next room.
Gone.
Auralin was standing in a field of soft grass, silvered by starlight. Above her, a sky without a sun. Beside her, a tree with leaves that shimmered with memory. And just ahead…
The stream.
The tree.
The door.
Only this time, it wasn’t a dream.
This time… it was real

Chapter Sixteen: The Realm Between
The door behind her had disappeared.
Not closed. Not faded.
Just… gone.
Auralin stood in the soft hush of a forest that didn’t move like the ones she knew. The air was filled with a kind of stillness that wasn’t silent, but listening. Each leaf shimmered with dew that didn’t fall. The sky above was not blue, but a pale silver that curved like the inside of a shell.
There was no wind.
And yet, the trees leaned.
The grass beneath her feet felt warm, like it had been waiting for footsteps. Her own breath came slower now, deeper — as if the world around her had chosen a rhythm, and she had fallen into it without meaning to.
She began to walk.
There was no path. No sign. But she didn’t need one.
She knew where her feet were meant to go.
She passed trees with bark like etched stone, their roots curling into spirals. Flowers with translucent petals opened as she moved past, revealing inner rings of light that pulsed like heartbeats. A fox made of shadows and stars watched her from the edge of the wood, unafraid.
None of it scared her.
In fact, it felt… right. Like coming home to a place she’d only visited in dreams.
She paused by a stream that ran uphill, its water golden at the edges and clear in the middle. It sang, softly — not music, exactly, but a kind of language made of water and time.
She knelt beside it, looked at her reflection — and paused.
Her face looked the same.
But the space around it didn’t.
There was light behind her that had no source. Shapes just beyond the rippling surface. Not people. Not yet. But stories. Possibilities.
She leaned closer.
And for just a moment, she saw herself twice — once as she was… and once as something more.
A figure cloaked in soft green, hair wild with wind, her eyes glowing faintly with gold. A crown of vine and flame flickered just behind her brow.
And then — gone.
Just her reflection again.
She didn’t speak aloud.
But something inside her whispered:
This is where you begin.

Chapter Seventeen: The Quiet Announcement
Auralin wandered without hurry.
The realm didn’t urge her forward, nor hold her back. It simply moved with her — like a dream that breathed in time with her steps.
She paused at a tree whose bark shimmered like glass, pressing her palm against it without knowing why. The surface warmed beneath her skin, and a single golden leaf loosened from a high branch, drifting slowly to the earth.
She didn’t notice that the moment her hand met the trunk, the tree leaned — ever so slightly — toward the east.
Far beyond the edge of her sight, in a forest where no sun had ever risen, the roots of ancient trees began to stir, curling inward like fingers folding in prayer.
In the high canopy above, a songbird tilted its head to the side. Its feathers were pale green with flecks of silver. It blinked once, then lifted its throat to the wind and sang — not with melody, but intention.
The sound rippled outward like a circle across water.
In distant fields, foxes lifted their heads.
In caves lined with crystal, the sleeping stones glowed once, then dimmed.
In the hollow place where memory sleeps, the whisper went out:
She has come.
Back near the stream, Auralin stooped to touch a flower that shimmered like spun sugar. As her fingers brushed its petals, the flower bowed — gently — and closed for the night.
A wind stirred through the trees, carrying the scent of ash and rose.
She breathed it in, unaware that with every step, she was announcing her presence. Not with words. Not with footsteps. But with existence.
The realm knew her.
Even if she didn’t yet know herself.

Chapter Eighteen: The Pull Between
The grass beneath her feet had begun to change — no longer wild and untamed, but soft, almost velvet-like, as if it had grown knowing she would pass this way.
Auralin walked slowly now.
Not because she was tired.
But because something inside her had shifted.
For a while, the magic had filled her. The trees. The stream. The shimmer in the wind. It had felt like coming home to a place she’d never lived, but always dreamed of.
She came upon the stone not by seeking it, but by wandering where her thoughts wouldn’t follow.
It sat in a clearing, half-covered in moss, its surface smoothed by time or touch — she couldn’t tell which. The light above it shifted even though the sky didn’t, and as she stepped closer, the moss stirred slightly, like breath drawn in.
There were markings carved deep into the stone.
Not letters. Not language.
But rhythm.
Auralin reached out and laid her palm gently on the surface.
It was warm.
And then — so softly she almost didn’t believe it — the moss moved aside, revealing a line of pale gold.
Her fingertips tingled. The same as when she touched the book. The same as when the pendant warmed.
Behind her, a breeze moved through the leaves like someone exhaling.
And from somewhere just past the edge of her vision — not seen, not fully heard — came a sound.
Not words. Not whisper.
But almost.
She turned, heart still, breath held.
No one there.
But the feeling remained — like someone watching her with love. With memory. With hope.
And just before the wind moved on, the softest hum curled through the branches.
Auralin.
Only that.
Her name.
But spoken as if it belonged to the earth.
But even as the warmth lingered in her palm, something colder stirred in her chest.
Now she felt the space behind her. The absence.
Her steps slowed to a stop.
She turned, looking back the way she came, though there was no path — no door — nothing but trees and quiet.
Mavora…
The name landed in her chest like a small stone dropped into still water.
Her grandmother’s voice. Her hands around a mug. The way she folded the shawl each night as though tucking a secret to sleep.
Auralin hugged her arms to her chest.
She hadn’t meant to leave like this — not really. And she didn’t know how long she’d been gone, or if time moved here the same way it did back home.
Does she know I’m safe?
Is she watching the fire, waiting for footsteps that won’t come tonight?
She sat beneath a curved tree, its roots forming a shallow cradle. The silver sky above held no sun, but it glowed with a gentle light — like twilight refusing to fade.
A soft wind moved through the leaves, and for a moment it almost sounded like her name.
“Auralin…”
But it wasn’t her grandmother’s voice.
It was the realm.
And that was the part that unsettled her most.
Because even as her heart longed for Mavora, another part of her — deep and quiet and unshakeable — felt something else.
Belonging.
This place knew her.
And even if she wasn’t ready, it was.
That frightened her more than anything.
Because she didn’t know which part of her would win — the girl who missed home, or the Queen the realm was waiting for.
And right now… she wasn’t ready to say goodbye to either.

Chapter Nineteen: The Way Home
The longing wouldn’t leave her.
Auralin walked for a while more, hoping the pull would fade — that the wind would sing again, that the flowers would bloom in her path and remind her she belonged.
But the ache in her chest only grew deeper.
I’m not ready.
The thought came like a truth dropped from somewhere older than her mind. She had always known she’d leave one day — but she hadn't known it would feel like this.
She turned in the place where there was no path, no compass.
“I want to go back,” she whispered into the silver air.
The trees rustled, but didn’t reply.
She walked faster now, retracing her steps — or what she thought were her steps. Everything shimmered just slightly, like the edges of a dream when you try to remember them after waking.
The stream appeared again — not the same curve, not the same bank. But familiar.
She dropped to her knees beside it and touched the surface.
“Please,” she said, her voice shaking now. “Let me go home.”
The water didn’t answer, but something shifted in the air.
A breeze stirred the grass behind her, and in the reflection, the faintest outline of a door appeared — not golden this time, not glowing — but barely there, like fog on glass.
Auralin stood slowly.
“Mavora…” she breathed. “I need to see her again.”
She stepped toward the reflection.
The image trembled, flickering like candlelight in wind.
She reached out her hand—
And fell forward.

Chapter Twenty: Return Through the Page
Her body landed not with a thud, but a settling.
Like ink returning to paper.
She opened her eyes to darkness — soft, quiet darkness.
The smell of ash and old parchment filled her nose.
She was in her room.
The book rested on her lap.
Closed.
The pendant around her neck was warm again.
The fire in the hearth had burned low.
Somehow, time hadn’t moved — or had moved differently.
The door creaked open.
Mavora stood there in her nightdress, eyes sharp and searching.
They looked at one another — no words yet.
Then Auralin whispered, her voice barely a breath:
“I found the door.”
And Mavora, her voice catching just slightly, replied:
“And you found your way back.”

Chapter Twenty-One: The Bridge Between
Mavora poured hot water over dried lavender and chamomile, the steam curling up between them like breath. The cottage was still, the fire crackling low. Outside, the wind stirred softly through the trees, as if listening through the walls.
Auralin sat at the table, the book resting beside her, closed but no longer silent.
They had said little since she returned — but the silence wasn’t empty. It was full of questions, of knowing, of something that could no longer be hidden.
Mavora sat across from her, wrapping her hands around the mug.
She looked at Auralin — really looked — and for the first time, spoke without softening.
“You are Queen of the Realm,” she said. “Not because you were chosen. But because you are.”
Auralin nodded slowly.
“But what does that mean? What am I meant to do?”
Mavora leaned back slightly, her eyes never leaving her.
“You are not a ruler in the way humans think. There is no throne. No crown. No armies.”
She tapped a finger gently against the table.
“The Realm is not a kingdom. It is a living memory. A place where nature’s spirit, time’s whisper, and old magic breathe together. And you… you are the bridge between that and this.”
Auralin’s brow furrowed.
“Between the realm… and here?”
“Between the wild truth of the earth and the spirit that lives beyond it,” Mavora said. “Between Mother Nature and the world that forgets her.”
She gestured to the trees outside, the roots beneath them.
“The forest you walked through — it knows you now. Not because you passed through it. But because you heard it. And it heard you.”
“But I didn’t do anything,” Auralin said.
Mavora smiled, faint and full of meaning.
“You were there. That’s enough. The Queen doesn’t command. She listens. She connects. She remembers.”
She paused.
“When our world forgets how to speak with wind, with water, with root and ash — the Queen does not.”
“So, I’m a translator?” Auralin asked, softly.
“No,” Mavora said, “you are the heart in both places.”
“And the book…?”
“The book is the bridge. But you are the one who decides when to cross. The realm will call you. But it will also wait. Until you are ready.”
Auralin held her mug tighter.
“So, I’m not meant to stay there. Not yet.”
“Not yet,” Mavora agreed. “You have much still to learn here. The Queen does not belong to one world. She belongs to both.

Chapter Twenty-Two: The Teaching of Small Things
The next morning, Mavora didn’t speak of the realm.
She handed Auralin a basket.
“We’ll need wild fennel and oak bark,” she said, as though it were any other day.
Auralin didn’t ask why.
They walked in silence into the woods behind the cottage, where the path was dappled with light and the ground remembered every footstep. Mavora moved slowly, her knees stiff with time, but her eyes sharp as ever.
“See here,” she said, pointing to a mushroom hidden beneath a curl of moss.
“This one tells you the soil is still breathing.”
Auralin knelt, touched the edge gently. It was cool, spongy, alive.
“And this?” Mavora plucked a small leaf. “The veins run opposite. It grows in places where grief has passed but not stayed.”
“Plants feel grief?” Auralin asked.
“They remember it,” Mavora said.
That night, they boiled the bark and stirred it into honey. Mavora didn’t explain. Auralin didn’t need her to.
The next day, they listened to the wind.
Not for signs. For rhythm.
“It changes before the rain,” Mavora said. “But also, when someone lies. When someone is born.”
Auralin tilted her head.
And for the first time, she heard it not as noise — but as language.
On the third day, they didn’t speak at all.
Mavora lit a candle.
Auralin lit another.
They sat by the hearth and copied the symbols from the book into soft clay.
Not to understand them.
But to remember them with their hands.

It happened quietly, like most endings do.
One morning, Mavora rose before the sun, as she always did, and lit the fire with steady hands. She set the kettle on. Ground the herbs. But when she turned, Auralin was already there — wrapped in her shawl, a candle lit, her eyes calm and waiting.
She had learned not just to listen.
But to hear.
Mavora didn’t speak. She simply watched the girl stir the tea, her movements practiced now, graceful and sure. She watched her press a leaf between pages for drying, her fingers moving with reverence. She watched her glance to the window — not for weather, but for signs.
She felt it in her bones: the shift.
The teachings were no longer hers to give.
“You’ll go soon,” she said softly.
Auralin looked at her, a flicker of surprise in her eyes — but no denial.
Mavora smiled, small and sad and proud all at once.
“The realm will teach you the rest.”
Chapter Twenty-Three: The Beginning of the Middle
The grass was cool beneath her bare feet.
Auralin walked without looking back.
The trees parted ahead of her, not dramatically, but as though they had always known she would walk this way. The stream ran beside her, calmer than it had ever been — its waters clear, deep, and humming with something that wasn’t quite music.
She had come here with fear once.
Now, she came with knowing.
Behind her, the last dream of her old life had faded. Mavora had stood at the doorway, hand on the lintel, eyes full of something heavy and quiet.
“This path is yours now,” she had said. “I carried it as far as I could.”
Auralin hadn’t cried.
But her heart had.
She had taken the pendant, kissed her grandmother’s hand, and crossed the threshold without looking back.
Now, the realm welcomed her not as a guest, but as someone returning.
She paused beside the tree.
The one she had drawn a hundred times.
The one she had stepped through in dreams.
Its bark shimmered faintly in the dusk-light, and just beneath the lowest branch… a shape began to glow.
Not bright. Not sudden. Just steady.
A mark.
A symbol.
The same one from the book. From the shawl. From the root of her name.
She reached out and touched it.
And the tree opened.
Not as a door. Not with hinges or light.
It parted — gently, like breath. Like welcome.
Beyond it, the air was warmer. A path stretched forward, wrapped in twilight.
Somewhere ahead, something waited.
She stepped through.
And the forest closed behind her.
________________________________________
Final Line:
The page had opened. Now, it was time to write the first word