CHAPTER 1: THE EMPTY HOUSE
Eleanor's eyes fluttered open, the pounding inside her head reducing the world to a confusing blur. She blinked slowly, waiting for her vision to clear. When it did she found herself lying on her back, gazing up at a flurry of dust motes, dancing in a sunbeam overhead. The harsh light made her squint as the pain in her temples spiked.
Eleanor rolled carefully onto her side, the rough fabric of the blanket dragging against her skin. Normally she'd find the texture irritating, but the surge of dizziness that accompanied the movement made it hard to even notice, registering only as a dim fact swimming amongst the painful sensations in her skull. Waves of vertigo washed over her, each swell magnifying her confusion and unease. Where was she? A flicker of memory faded away, just beyond reach. She gripped the edge of the bed to steady herself, but the world spun like a whirling top, tilting dangerously for a moment.
Shifting her gaze, she took in the room around her. A dresser leaned against one wall, its paint chipped and peeling like sunburnt skin. A musty smell hung thick in the air—years of neglect woven into every fiber of the room. Shadows pooled in corners where light dared not tread, lending an eerie ambience to the space.
She pushed herself fully upright, muscles protesting each movement until her feet found the floor, cold and unwelcoming beneath her bare toes. An errant chill went down her spine.
With each breath clarity seeped back in, easing some of the pressure behind her eyes. Eleanor glanced at the dresser again and noticed several drawers slightly ajar, as if someone had hastily rummaged through them before abandoning their search. A deep sense of abandonment defined the space. Who had left in such a hurry? And why?
She pushed herself up from the bed and crossed to one of the windows, wiping a hand across its clouded surface. The grime came away in streaks, clinging greasily to her fingers and revealing glimpses of the world outside—she was on the upper floors of the house, looking down on a patchy garden struggling for life amidst a choking blanket of weeds. Beyond that sprawled a vast, endless tree line. There were no signs of movement anywhere.
“What...” Her voice cracked in the silence.
What day was it? Hadn’t she just gone to sleep? Panic fluttered at the edges of her mind as she mentally scoured through yesterday’s events—or was it days ago? Names and faces teased her memory but remained obscured in a hazy fog of confusion.
As she turned away from the window, something caught her eye. For one horrible moment the she had the impression of a person looming in the corner, watching her ominously, and she leapt on the spot with a squeak. The shape was only a large mirror draped with a tattered sheet, placed out of the way in one of the corners of the room. Putting a hand against her chest to calm her racing heart, she gave herself a shake and scolded her overactive imagination.
Eleanor walked closer to the mirror, only to pause, her breath hitching as the fabric of the sheet billowed slightly with her approach. The lingering impression of a stranger still clung to her mind and she couldn't suppress her need to freeze until the movement had stopped. She waited, coiled like a spring, unmoving for a few seconds after it settled until she felt brave enough to keep walking. Why? Why? Why? her mind repeated like a mantra in time with each step. Why am I here? Where am I?
The mirror was almost entirely obscured, one small sliver of reflected light and its large, oval shape the only hints at its true identity. Eleanor reached out, hesitating just before her fingers brushed the faded shroud, before firmly grasping the edge of the sheet and pulling it back. Dust fell in billowing waves as she unveiled what lay beneath—her reflection staring back at her, slightly distorted in the tarnished glass.
Her hair fell in soft, chestnut waves around her face, tangled strands catching glimmers of light. A soulful pair of mahogany eyes stared back from her youthful, light-brown face; her mother's eyes. A smudge across her cheekbone caught her eye. It was a dirty brown smear, an unwelcome reminder of where she'd woken up and she scrubbed it away angrily. Now in an even worse mood, Eleanor's eyes darted up to note her height in the tall, floor length mirror.
Eleanor had always disliked how short she was. When coupled with her cherubic features, no one ever properly guessed her age. She was a whole nine years old (practically ten at this point with her birthday only four months away). Instead of treating her like the big kid she was, grown ups tended to take in her elfin appearance and her tiny stature and use a baby voice when speaking to her— something she loathed with her entire being.
A small flicker of movement caught her attention, her reflection shifting as she leaned closer. She straightened up suddenly, adrenaline surging through her veins like ice water.
Had something moved? Or had it been a trick of the light?
"Hello there!" A tiny voice piped up from directly behind her.
Eleanor whirled around, her heart leaping into her throat. Hovering at eye level was a creature no bigger than an acorn, wreathed in a soft pink glow that pulsed gently like a heartbeat. Its gossamer wings were beating the air so quickly they were nothing but a silvery blur that filled the air between them with a gentle drr-ing sound. Its body was covered in the softest-looking yellow and white striped fuzz she'd ever seen, and beneath it dangled four dainty, black legs like wispy pieces of floss.
Its face held two glassy, black eyes that twinkled over the tiniest stinger of a mouth, which appeared to bounce with each word as it spoke.
Her first thought was of Tinkerbell from Peter Pan, but she dismissed it immediately. This being spoke with a clear, bell-like voice rather than tinkling sounds, and anyway, she'd never noticed a stinger on Tinkerbell. If anything, it looked more like a bug than a fairy. It seemed far more substantial than any fairy she'd ever read about, too.
"What... who are you?" Her voice wavered between fear and wonder.
The creature dipped in a playful bow. "I don't actually know! I just woke up a little while ago myself, but I'm very pleased to meet you. Its so nice to not be alone."
"Do you have a name?"
"Do you?"
"Eleanor," she answered automatically. "Eleanor West, and I'm nine years old."
"Wow!" The little thing seemed appropriately impressed by this, but it was spoiled a second later. "Its very nice to meet you, Eleanor-West-and-I'm-nine-years-old."
Eleanor snorted in disbelief, her earlier anxiety melting away. The pink glow emanating from him seemed to chase away the room's shadows, making everything in the space feel less threatening. Eleanor found herself fascinated instead. Was he some kind of alien? A magical being? His round eyes held an intelligence that sparked her curiosity.
"Are you real?" She reached out slowly, then jerked her hand back, so distracted by his magical appearance that she only barely remembered it was rude to touch someone without asking first.
"Oh yes, quite real! Though I understand your confusion. I'm rather confused myself." He bobbed closer, his glow brightening slightly and shifting to an inviting, fuchsia hue. "Would you like to touch my foot? Just to be sure?"
Eleanor hesitated, then extended one finger with a nod. The limb the creature offered was tiny, like a bit of black string. With mindful care Eleanor stroked his foot just the once, before taking her whole hand back and rubbing her fingers together to chase away the lingering sensation of silk thread against her skin, impossibly delicate yet undeniably real.
"You're warm," she whispered, amazement replacing her last traces of fear.
"Wow! Thank you, Eleanor-West-and-I'm-nine-years—"
"It's just Eleanor," she giggled. "You're silly."
"Is that…good?"
"I think so."
"Hooray!" It swooped and bounced in the air in front of her.
"But what are you? Some kind of fairy? Or maybe a very small alien?" Eleanor squinted, studying the tiny creature as it danced through the air.
"Ooh, what's an alien? Is it something wonderful?" The creature spun in a loop, its glow brightening. "And what's that amazing color your hair is?" He darted closer to her head, wings humming. "It's like tree bark but softer, or maybe like soil? Do you like soil? I don't know if I've ever made up my mind about soil, before."
"It's brown," Eleanor said, trying to keep her focus. "But you didn't answer my question. Where did you come from?"
"Brown! What a lovely word." He zoomed around to face her, his tiny eyes sparkling. "Your eyes are brown too! They're like little pools of... of... what's another brown thing?"
"You're changing the subject." Eleanor crossed her arms.
"Am I? What's your favorite color? Mine might be brown now, but pink is also very nice. Or maybe yellow?" His glow seemed to switch in time with his words, shifting wildly between different warm tones before settling once more on the vibrant, coral pink that seemed to be his natural state. He floated around her as he talked, eventually stopping to examine her shirt. "That's such an interesting pattern on your clothes. Do all humans wear flowers on their shirts?"
"How do you know I'm human if you don't know what you are?"
"I know lots of things!" He performed another loop. "And also very few things. It's quite exciting, really. Like how I know those are called buttons, but I don't know why they're round instead of square. Why are they round?"
Eleanor felt a smile tugging at her lips despite her determination to get answers. The creature's enthusiasm was infectious, his pink glow warming the space between them like a tiny sun. "You're very good at asking questions instead of answering them."
"Thank you! You're very good at having brown hair and round buttons. We're both good at things," he offered graciously. He drifted closer to inspect a loose thread on her sleeve. "Oh! This is fascinating. Does all your clothing have tiny strings coming out of it?"
Eleanor watched the small creature dart from detail to detail, his chatter flowing like water. Despite the simplicity of his words, each question demonstrated his genuine interest- the way he tilted his head when examining her buttons, how his wings slowed when focusing on something he found particularly fascinating. His glow shifted subtly with each discovery, painting the room with the colors of his curiosity.
"You really want to know about everything, don't you?" The tension in her shoulders eased.
"Oh yes! Everything is so wonderfully interesting. Like how your voice changes when you're not frowning anymore. It gets softer, like flower petals."
Eleanor blinked. "You notice a lot."
"Do I? I suppose I do! Just like I notice you keep looking at the door. Are you worried about what's outside?"
"I... yes. I don't know where we are or how I got here." She hadn't realized she'd been glancing at the exit.
"We could find out together!" He bobbed excitedly in the air. "Two eyes are better than one. Well, four eyes to be specific, since we each have two. Unless you have more eyes I haven't noticed?"
"Just the two," she reassured him with a small laugh, "but you're right - we should explore the house." She squared her shoulders, feeling braver with the prospect of company. "Would you like to come with me?"
"Yes please!" He zipped to hover by her shoulder, his warm glow a steady comfort. "I'll help watch for anything interesting. Or scary. Or interestingly scary!"
"We'll be careful," Eleanor said, reaching for the doorknob. "Stay close?"
"I'll be like your shadow! But pinker. And more talkative."
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Eleanor winced at the squeal of ancient hinges.
Each noise she made felt as if it violated the stillness, carrying the same forbidden quality as whispering during a pastor's Sunday message when reverent attention was expected. A hallway stretched before them, a tunnel of shadows broken only by the wan sunlight that managed to filter through its grimy windows. Her companion's pink glow created a gentle bubble of visibility around them, casting strange shadows that danced across the peeling wallpaper.
Eleanor's bare feet shuffled across cold, wooden floorboards, each step stirring miniature dust clouds that sparkled in the little creature's light. The thick layer of gray on every surface spoke of years of abandonment.
"Look at all the swirling patterns!" He whispered, his bell-like voice carrying in the silence. "The air makes such pretty shapes when you walk."
"Shh." Eleanor pressed a finger to her lips, scanning the darkness ahead. The hall seemed to stretch forever, doorways yawning open on either side like hungry mouths.
A glint of brass caught the little thing's attention.
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"Oh! What's that?" he said far too loudly for Eleanor's liking, and then he zipped away from Eleanor's shoulder.
"Wait—"
But he'd already reached his target - an ornate cuckoo clock mounted high on the wall. Its pendulum hung still, frozen in time beneath a thick coating of tarnish and grime. The little creature hovered closer still, examining the intricate woodwork.
"The little door at the top makes it look like a tiny house," he murmured, eventually drifting close enough that his fuzzy, little body brushed against the delicate clockwork mechanisms.
There was a grinding sound of rusty gears. Eleanor tensed as the clock suddenly sprung to life - the little door burst open and a wooden bird shot out with a harsh "ROOK-ROOK-ROOKIDEEEE!"
"EEK!" The little creature tumbled backward through the air, his pink glow flashing to a gleaming, sickly yellow. His wings beat frantically as he righted himself, darting to hide behind Eleanor's head. "It attacked me! The tiny house had a bird inside!"
Eleanor pressed her lips together, fighting the urge to laugh at his dramatic reaction. She crossed her arms and tried very hard to remember they were supposed to be quiet, but couldn't stop herself from adopting a lofty, told-you-so tone.
"I told you to wait. You shouldn't rush off like that, we should stick together."
"Is it safe?" he whispered, his glow still tinged an acrid yellow. "Do all tiny houses have surprise birds?"
A small giggle escaped her as she reached up to pat the air near him reassuringly. "Let's keep looking."
Most of the doors were propped open, revealing empty rooms much like the bedroom they'd left behind. Eventually they reached a closed door, which Eleanor opened with almost no hesitation. She felt a bit braver next to her tiny companion, and she'd never been a timid sort of child to begin with. The thought that she might be in danger hadn't left her mind, exactly, but the excitement of exploring the house was slowly making her lose grip of that fear.
They crept into what appeared to be a sitting room, the furniture draped in yellowed sheets. Eleanor's companion drifted ahead, his pink glow illuminating elegant Victorian high-backed chairs and cozy reading tables hidden beneath dingy shrouds.
"Oh! Hello there!" His voice trilled suddenly.
Eleanor spun around to find him hovering in front of a brass spittoon, wings beating excitedly as he stared at his own reflection.
"Look Eleanor! There's another one of me in this shiny thing!" He waved enthusiastically at his mirror image. "Hello! I'm... well, I don't have a name yet, but I'm very pleased to meet you!"
Eleanor pressed her hand to her mouth, suppressing a giggle as he bobbed closer to the spittoon's surface.
"Why aren't they answering?" He tilted his head, his reflection mimicking the motion. "Oh! Maybe they're shy. I should tell them about your lovely brown hair - that might help them feel more comfortable."
"That's just your reflection," Eleanor explained, her tension once again melting as she watched him dart around the spittoon. "It's like in the mirror upstairs - it shows what you look like."
"Are you sure? They seem very interested in everything I'm doing." He spun in a circle, watching his reflection follow. "And they glow such pretty colors too!"
Before Eleanor could reply, something else caught his attention. "What's that amazing, curved thing?" He zipped away from the spittoon toward an old gramophone perched on a side table.
"Wait, be careful-" Eleanor started, but he'd already disappeared into the brass horn.
"Echo!" His voice reverberated metallically. "Oh! The walls are moving- help!"
There was a moment of frantic wing-buzzing as the gramophone spun through some unseen force, magnifying his miniature squeaks and cries. He shot from the horn's mouth amid a cloud of particles, somersaulting wildly across the room before Eleanor had a chance to react to his panicked shouts. His glow flickered rapidly between yellow and pink as he righted himself.
"That was... interesting." He sneezed, sending a tiny puff of dust into the air. "The reflection was much more friendly than whatever that was."
Eleanor couldn't hold back her laughter this time, the sound filling up the quiet room. His glow settled back to its usual pink as he joined in with a giggle of his own, which sounded like the tinkling of a tiny chime.
They moved deeper into the house, the little creature's light catching on the gilded frames of portraits hanging in neat rows along the walls. Eleanor paused beneath one depicting a stern-faced woman in a high-necked Victorian dress, her hair pulled back severely from her frowning face.
"Look at her dress." He drifted closer to the portrait. "All those tiny buttons going up her neck. Were people's necks cold back then?"
"That's just how they dressed." Eleanor studied the next portrait - a young man in what looked like 1920s attire, complete with a carefully waxed mustache. "These must show the people who lived here over the years."
His light caught the cobwebs stretching between frames, making them glitter like strands of silver floss. He darted from portrait to portrait, his light revealing decades of faces staring down at them.
In the next room they made another curious discovery. Eleanor's eyes fell to the surface of a side table where a rolling calendar lay open, its pages yellow and brittle. She brushed it off, revealing a grid; but where she looked for words and numbers that might tell her the month or the year or simply even the days of the week, she saw only indecipherable symbols - complete nonsense written in no language she had ever seen before, and which yielded no clues to the date or time.
Her companion proved easily distractable during their expedition. Though he never wandered very far (having seemed to learn his lesson from the clock and the gramophone), he couldn't be relied upon to stay applied to their task. Instead he peppered her with questions, or else inventing games to play while they explored.
His cheerful observations made Eleanor smile, but something about the calendar nagged at her. She glanced around the room again, taking in the sheet-covered furniture and cobwebs, the grimy windows and ever present dust. How long had this place been empty? The shadows in the corners seemed to deepen.
Her companion must have noticed her tension. He drifted closer, his warm glow steady and reassuring.
"Are you alright, Eleanor?"
"Yes, I just..." She straightened her shoulders. "We should be careful."
But with him once more bobbing beside her head like a tiny pink lantern, the looming portraits and cobwebbed corners felt less menacing. Instead, the mansion's silence wrapped around them like an old quilt, musty but somehow comfortable.
"Should we see what's through there?" He gestured delicately to the next doorway down the hall.
Eleanor nodded, more at ease with her strange companion than she'd been since waking up here. "Onward?"
"Onward!"
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Sunlight filtered through a domed glass ceiling, casting strange shadows across brass and copper instruments she'd recognize anywhere. An orrery dominated the center of the room, its delicate metalwork depicting a solar system of planets she didn't recognize, frozen in their eternal dance around a tarnished sun. What scientist would go to all the trouble of constructing a tool like this, only to put the wrong solar system on it?
"What are all these amazing things?" Her companion's pink glow illuminated the telescope mount by the window, its brass fittings gleaming beneath the years of neglect.
"This is an astronomical observatory." Eleanor ran her fingers along the edge of a sextant, muscle memory from countless nights spent helping calibrate similar tools. "See this? It's for measuring the angles between celestial bodies."
"You know so much about these things! How?" His light bobbed closer, casting warm highlights across the instrument's curved surface.
"My dad..." Eleanor smiled, memories washing over her as she adjusted the sextant's mirrors with practiced ease. "He's an astronomer. We spent lots of clear nights together, tracking stars and planets. He taught me all their names, showed me how to calculate their positions."
"What's he like?" The little creature drifted to illuminate a shelf of star charts, his glow revealing intricate constellations mapped in fading ink.
"Smart," she answered simply. Then, "Smarter than anyone else's dad." Eleanor moved to the orrery, setting its gears in motion with gentle precision. Together they watched as the model solar system began to spin in the center of the room, planets she had no names for orbiting a sun she didn't recognize. "He can spend hours adjusting equipment to get the perfect observation. But his eyes light up when he sees something amazing through the telescope — like when we watched the Perseid meteor shower last summer."
"He sounds wonderful!" The tiny being swooped around the spinning model planets, his pink light glinting off each metallic sphere.
"He is." Eleanor's fingers traced unfamiliar constellations on a nearby star chart. "He always says the universe has endless mysteries to uncover, if we just know where to look."
The room felt warmer somehow, filled with memories of starlit nights and her dad's professional enthusiasm. Her companion's glow seemed to dance between the instruments, bringing each one to life as they continued their exploration.
Eleanor's hand brushed against something solid in the shadows and she stopped, squinting into the darkness to try and see it better. She gestured to her companion.
"Could you come closer? I need your light."
His pink glow revealed an ornate stand unlike anything else in the room. Carved from what appeared to be a single piece of dark wood, it rose from a triangular base supported by three brass feet shaped like curling vines. The craftsmanship was extraordinary — each leaf seemed ready to unfurl, each tendril poised to continue its endless spiral.
"Look at how the metal catches the light," he marveled, drifting closer. "It's almost like it's moving!"
The stand's surface bore intricate symbols that seemed to shift under his illumination. Eleanor traced them with her finger, feeling an odd familiarity in their curves and angles. "These markings... I've seen them somewhere before."
"Have you? Where?"
"I'm not sure. But something about them..." She frowned at a series of interconnected circles that reminded her of astronomical charts, yet weren't quite right. "It's like reading a familiar word in a dream — you know you should understand it, but it keeps slipping away."
"Maybe it's for holding something important?" Her companion landed delicately on the stand's rim. "See how the top curves inward, like hands cupping something?"
"Yes, but what?" Eleanor studied the shallow depression at the stand's crown. Its surface bore more of those haunting symbols, arranged in concentric patterns that made her head swim if she looked at it for too long. Near the base, she noticed several sheets of yellowed paper covered in similar markings.
"Those look important." He hovered over them, his glow highlighting the careful penmanship. "Though I can't read them either. Do they give you that same feeling?"
"Like I should know what they say. " Eleanor nodded slowly. "But none of this is in English and they don't use Roman Numerals or any of the other numbers that I know."
The stand seemed to draw her attention back no matter where she looked, its purpose hovering just beyond understanding. Even her tiny companion grew quieter in its presence, his usual commentary absent.
Eleanor's fingers trembled as she lifted another sheet of papers from beside the stand. The handwriting — those precise, measured strokes with their characteristic slant — matched her father's exactly. Not similar, not reminiscent of, but identical down to the way the pen lifted off the paper in rushed strokes, like the author couldn't write fast enough to keep up with the flow of their thoughts and calculations.
"Eleanor? What's wrong?" Her companion's glow shifted to a concerned purple-blue as he noticed her distress.
"This is impossible." She spread the papers across a nearby table, her heart beating faster. "These notes, the way they're organized — Dad always uses this exact system. The columns, the charts, the notations in the margins..."
The familiar methodology hit her like physical blows. Red ink for urgent calculations. Green for successful trials. Blue ink for items requiring further study.
"But that could be coincidence, right?" His voice ventured uncertainly.
Eleanor's gaze fell on a sketch tucked between the pages. An ornate hourglass, its curves rendered in her father's distinctive architectural style. The same drawing she'd seen countless times pinned above his desk at home, right down to the arrows pointing at different features near its middle.
"No." She backed away from the table, her heart pounding. "This is his work. His actual work. But that can't... This place isn't..."
Her companion's light flickered between concerned blue and anxious yellow as Eleanor's stumbled back from the stand, from the impossible papers, from questions she couldn't begin to ask.
"We should go." She turned toward the door, her voice tight. "Now."
The little creature darted after her as she retreated from the observatory and its unsettling lack of answers.
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Eleanor's footsteps echoed through the hallway, having long forgotten her initial plan to keep quiet. They'd explored enough of the house by now that she was convinced they were alone — and that the building had long been abandoned. Her mind raced with questions she couldn't answer, but the warm pink glow bobbing beside her offered an anchor.
She needed something else to focus on — something simple and present. She turned to her floating companion with a sudden thought.
"You know, we should really find something to call you." Her voice was quiet at first, then steadied as she latched onto this new purpose. "What about Flutter?"
"Oh! That's sounds perfect!"
"Or maybe Sunny?" Eleanor's lips curved upward as his glow brightened.
"Absolutely!" He zoomed in a figure-eight. "That one's wonderful too!"
"Buzz?" Her smile grew more genuine with each suggestion.
"Ding ding ding!" He imitated the sound of a bell, wings humming with excitement.
"Pixie?"
"Yes please!"
"Dingle-berry butt-munch?"
"I'd be delighted!"
"You can't possibly love every name!" Eleanor threw her hands up in exasperation.
"But I do!" He mimicked her gesture with his tiny limbs, pink glow pulsing brighter. "They're all perfect, because you chose them all!"
A laugh bubbled up from her chest, surprising her. His simple joy was infectious, washing away the lingering unease of the observatory; his honest pleasure in her company made her feel as if not everything was mystery that needed to be solved.
"Well, we'll have to pick something eventually," she said, watching him dance through a shaft of sunlight. Mid-laugh, Eleanor froze. Her mind caught on a memory — late nights reading under blankets with a flashlight, pages filled with mischievous fairies and enchanted forests.
"Wait, I know the perfect name. What about Puck?"
Her companion tilted his head, wings slowing their usual rapid beat.
"There's this character in one of my favorite plays — he's this magical fairy who flits through the forest, helping people fall in love. Well, sometimes making a mess of things too." Eleanor smiled, remembering her favorite scenes. "He's playful and kind, always eager to be part of the story. And there's something magical about him, something that makes everything around him feel more... wonderful."
The tiny creature drifted closer, his glow settling into a steady, warm pink that seemed to pulse with the rhythm of a heartbeat. His usual bell-like voice took on a deeper timbre, almost like distant wind chimes.
"Puck," he repeated softly, as if tasting the word. "A magical fairy who brings wonder..."
Eleanor held out her palm and he landed there with unusual grace, his light casting a rosy glow across her light-brown skin. For a moment, neither spoke — the dust motes dancing around them in the afternoon light, the old house creaking softly, pregnant with anticipation.
"Yes," he said finally, his voice carrying that same resonant tone. "I think... I think that is who I am. I am Puck."
The warmth of his glow seemed to spread through Eleanor's hand, up her arm, settling somewhere near her heart. This wasn't like his earlier agreement with every suggestion; something about this name had clicked into place, like a key finding its lock.
"Then it's nice to properly meet you, Puck."
The moment hung between them, heavy with a significance that needed no words. Eventually Eleanor began walking again, content to continue their exploration of the house, and Puck rose into the air once more, dutifully following alongside her.
Eleanor's steps slowed as they passed another portrait, something about it catching her eye. Unlike the stern Victorian faces or the carefully posed society figures, this painting showed a family gathered in what looked like a garden. Her feet stopped moving before her mind registered why.
The young boy in the center couldn't have been more than twelve, but those sharp grey eyes were unmistakable. His dark hair was neatly combed, his posture straight but relaxed as he leaned slightly against his father's arm. A genuine smile lit up his face as he gestured toward something off-canvas, caught in the middle of explaining what must have been a fascinating discovery.
Her hand reached out, trembling, to brush decades of dirt from the frame.
His mother's hand rested on his shoulder, pride evident in her expression. Two younger girls flanked him on one side, and strangely colorful felines seemed to flank him on the other. The girls' matching dresses suggested this was a planned family portrait, but the joy captured on all of their faces was spontaneous and real. His father's eyes crinkled at the corners, focused on whatever his son was so enthusiastically describing rather than the painter.
Puck's glow dimmed to a soft lavender as Eleanor's fingers traced the air in front of the canvas, not quite touching. The scholarly brightness in those eyes, the animated tilt of his head, the way his whole body seemed to lean into the excitement of sharing knowledge — she recognized every gesture. She'd seen them countless times across the dinner table, behind telescope lenses, over star charts spread across their living room floor.
But in the portrait there was no shadow behind those eyes. No fevered intensity. No distance.
Her knees buckled slightly and Puck drifted closer, his diminished light stopping just beside her ear. The portrait showed not just a family, but a future full of possibility — before obsession had carved away everything but cold ambition and relentless purpose.
Eleanor's hand fell to her side as she stared up at the boy her father had been, aching for all that had been lost between that sun-dappled garden and now.
"Puck," she whispered, "where am I?"