I faded out of my accidental nap and into a waking fog.

The light had changed in the room, but it was too bright for me to open my eyes. I had been so tired, I still lay in the exact position I had fallen asleep in.

I could hear voices.

"Why do you think he is blue?"

"I don't know, why do you think Ma loves you more than me?"

"Why do you say things like that?

People were in my room

I pushed myself up and slid up the bed until my back hit the headboard in one sudden movement. Anna, wearing a black flannel and tight pants, sat cross legged atop the dresser. Arthur laid on his back beside my bed, creating a looping walkway of alternating hands for the little blue kitten precariously walking over them.

"Sorry Dani," Arthur said, sitting up and dropping Sam into the crook of one arm. then he nodded at his sister. "It was her idea to let ourselves in."

"Did we scare you?" Anna asked, ignoring her brother and raising an eyebrow.

"No," I lied. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes with my fists. "How long have you been here?"

"Long enough to hear you snore." Anna said with a smirk.

"I do not snore." I said, aghast.

Arthur laughed, turning his attention back to Sam. "You sounded like a hibernating bear."

"Did you knock?" I asked, wondering how tired I had been. I had overdrawn my aura, yes, but had I really done enough to pass out the way I had?

"Arthur nearly beat your door down." Anna said.

A defensive tone entered Arthur’s voice. “I was excited. I always wanted a cat.”

“And a dog, a ferret, a squirrel, a lizard, a snake. . .” Anna said, rolling her eyes.

I lost focus on what she was saying. The two siblings, who were little more than strangers to me, had been in my room while I was sleeping for nearly an hour and I had been completely oblivious. What if it hadn't been them? Any amount of unspeakable things could have been done to me. I could have been killed and never woke up to know it. I looked at Arthur, Sam looking comically small against the man's large frame, wearing the wide smile that was seemingly the only expression his face was capable of making. Then I looked at Anna, who was looking at me from atop the dresser. Well, she was staring at me really, but I found myself not minding. In fact, I found myself feeling . . . happy? Happy that they had come in and left me sleeping, happy that other than black mailing me to get to play with what they thought was a strangely colored kitten, they seemed to want nothing from me, happy, to not be alone.

I’m a fucking mess.

"So, why is it blue?" Arthur asked again, raising his arm up fully. Sam sat in his palm, perfectly still.

I raised my own arms, yawning into a stretch. "It, is a he, and his name is Sam. As far as his color goes, I don't know. Rare breed?"

"Where did you get him?" Anna asked, sliding off the dresser

"I uh," I stuttered, Even if I knew, I couldn't tell them where Sam really came from. That meant I had to lie. He was a gift? No, that opens me up for more questions. I found myself utterly unwilling to lie to them. They had been kind to me. So, I told them the truth. "He found me."

Arthur stood up and gently placed the kitten on the corner of the bed. Standing at his full height, he could have put his palm flat on the ceiling. "I’ll come back when I can stay longer.”

I got the feeling he was saying it to Sam more than he was saying it to me.

"Hold on little brother," Anna said in a teasing tone. "You aren't going to invite her?"

I had assumed Arthur was the older sibling, it seemed strange to me that he wasn't. Maybe it was his height.

"Stop it." Arthur said, suddenly in a hurry to leave.

I slide to the side of the bed facing the door, letting my feet hang. "Invite me to what?"

"We are going ghost hunting." Anna said in a dramatic voice.

"Shut up, she's gonna think it's stupid." Arthur said to his sister, obviously embarrassed.

"Since the day you moved back home you literally haven't stopped talking about it but you get in front of Dani and get all self conscious?" Anna smirked. “I think he’s got a crush on you.”

“Shut up.” Arthur said, his embarrassment giving way to anger.

"I don't think that is stupid at all." I said, I've met a ghost. I had not, but the person whose eyes I had been seeing through had.

"Really? Do you want to go?" Arthur said, his wide smile spread across his face instantly.

Alone, outside, at night. My only way to defend myself was sealed shut by a barrier that I had no hope of breaking, not even in a moment of heroic desperation and it would be with two mortals I had just met.

It was possibly the worst idea I had ever heard.

Be smart, Autumn. Be Smart. I thought to myself. Just say no.

"When are we going?" I said aloud, knowing the excitement I felt would likely lead me to a violent death.

They left me with instructions to meet them outside just after nightfall and I had made sure to lock the door not a second after they had left. By all means, still playing the perfect kitten, Sam still sat on the corner of the bed that he had been placed on. My command had worked evidently. How would the siblings have reacted if the little blue kitten had spoken to them in a voice befitting a giant? "It seems you did not enjoy being handled like that?"

Sam gave me nothing but blank blue eyes and silence in return.

"Fine, be that way." I said, walking into the bathroom and starting the process of entering The Well. There were still hours of light left in the day and the faster I could be done with the memories the better. I ran the bath, waited for Sam to take an agonizingly slow amount of time to climb atop the light fixture, and undressed. I got in, the warm water feeling good on my sleep sore body and closed my eyes. Slowing my breathing, I reached for my aura and found it, but it wouldn't come. It ached within me at the slightest touch. Even if I was too exhausted to view a memory, I had already gotten in the bath. Letting myself enjoy the warm water, my vision blurred and I felt myself fall into The Well.

The room that had crushed me the last time I had been in it had returned to its normal state.

Three walls, three different types of metal, and three corners. Maybe I have to do something three times? I thought and immediately clapped my hands three times.

Nothing.

If only it had been that easy.

Feeling a bit dumb, I tried to question myself into some kind of sudden realization.

I had no memories of The Well before I had stolen it and I had no memories of stealing it. Turns out, absorbing an ethereal construct with the arcane mass something like The Well carried took quite the toll. The more I thought about it, why someone would put barriers up to prevent me from accessing The Well in full was an easy answer; They wanted to keep me from viewing all the memories within the place. Who would do something like that was a much more difficult question. The Mothers had the power, there was nothing they could not do, but there was no reason for it. They wanted The Well out of me and it couldn't be removed until I viewed every memory within its depths. There could have been a reason beyond my understanding, it was not difficult for that to be true, and thanks to the seal over my navel I was quite familiar with The Mothers work. The trimetal barriers did not feel similar.

It wasn’t The Mothers, but then who could it be? I did not have a clue considering the pool of people I knew was more of a puddle

A door of empty light faded into the room in the same corner it always did. Once again, I ignored it.

There has to be a weak spot. I thought. Having my arms and legs slowly crushed into my body hadn't left any physical effects on me, but I really didn't feel like going through that again quite yet. Something different. I turned to the corner behind my left shoulder and ran the thumb of my right hand down the seam the two walls made, feeling for any imperfection or flaw that I could exploit. There were none. Each thread folded back into the wall perfectly from top to bottom. The same was true of the right corner. I couldn't inspect the last remaining corner without stepping through the door of empty light. Back to the left, I refocused my aura, pushing it into my right hand within myself and held the aching energy despite the pressure of the seal. Running my finger down the seam again, I visualized my hand slicing through it like a warm knife through butter. Pain bloomed in my palm. I couldn't hold my aura for much longer, it needed time to recover, I needed time to recover. I gritted my teeth and continued nonetheless, pushing to the very end of my strength.

Thunk. The metallic sound from before shook the room and the door of empty light winked out.

"Not again," I whined, jumping back to the center of the room. I knew what happened next. Maybe, I could find some weakness in the wall's movements. "Alright, come on then."

Thunk

The walls never moved.

Thunk

The floor did.

With no warning except the metallic thumping, the floor vanished underneath me and I plummeted straight down. The room shrunk into a triangle of light that became smaller and smaller as I dropped until I found myself in total darkness.

If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

I crashed back into myself with a shout.. Thousands of little bubbles percolated on the surface of the bath water, the type of bubbles that prelude a full rolling boil. I rolled out of the bathtub and on to the cold tile of the bathroom floor, my skin red and steaming.

Sam asked his questions and I answered, laying on the cold floor to cool.

"What happened? Did you see anything," I asked my familiar who had not climbed down from his perch. “Were you just going to watch me boil alive?”

Nothing. Evidently my command had worked a little too well. I spoke to Sam with the small amount of power I had left laced through my words. "I release you from my previous command."

Sam, with his big blue eyes and blue tortoiseshell fur, continued to stare at me silently.

"Oh, okay, I see how it is," I said, leaving the bathroom and entering a nearly dark room. Shit. I thought, hurriedly drying off and getting dressed. I didn't want to be late for the first time in my life that I had something to do. "Do not speak to me, it is no great loss. I never found you all that interesting anyways." I called out to Sam as I shut the door behind me and locked it. Then, I took the stairs down to what I knew would be a terrible situation to let myself be caught in.

I couldn’t wait.

I reached the second floor landing and saw Anna coming out of what I knew to be the room directly under mine.

"Come here." She said, summoning me towards her with a crooked finger.

I listened.

When I reached her, she disappeared through the door she had been closing and pulled me in after her by my wrist. The room was nearly identical to mine minus the bathroom, Same worn wooden floors, same faded white walls, even the same hollow metal bed frame. Boxes, crammed to the top with books, were stacked just inside the door.

"You are founding a library?" I asked.

"Those? No, I get drunk and I read. It helps pass the time.” She shrugged.

“Are you moving in here?” I asked.

“Yeah, a new tenant is moving in tomorrow and Ma thought Mrs. Mole would be more comfortable with another woman as a neighbor," Anna said, moving close to me before continuing. "So, all I've seen you wear is my brother's sweatshirt and socks and my shorts,” She lifted the bottom of my sweatshirt and shook it to support her words. “ I'm going to guess you don't have any other clothes."

"What?" I blurted, too stunned to say anything remotely more fitting.

Anna turned away from me and began rifling through a closet filled to the brim with clothes.She threw a shirt and then a jacket and then a pair of pants over her shoulder and I caught them, only the shirt hit me in my face.

"Or shoes."

I readied myself to catch the next thing she threw.

Anna turned back to me and dropped a pair of brown boots at my feet. "All that should fit, we're close to the same size."

"I didn't know they were your clothes." I said, ashamed. I’d known they were someones, but not theirs specifically.

"Who cares, they look cute on you," She said, turning her back to me again. "Get changed, I won't look."

All things considered, considering she had already seen all of me, it would have been less embarrassing the second time. Still, I kept my eyes on her the whole time I changed. True to her word, she didn't so much as peek.

"Why?" I asked, buttoning the pants she had given me. They immediately sagged off my waist and just barely caught on my hips.

“Because I’m not a creep.” She answered.

“No, Why are you giving me clothes?” I asked, shrugging into the thick coat.

"Because it's going to be cold tonight." She turned back around to me. “And I’m not giving, you’re borrowing.”

"No. I mean, why are you being so kind to me?" I sighed. I picked up the sweatshirt and shorts that I had stolen from two people that had formed a habit of being kind every time I interacted with them. I had set out from Zenithcidel looking to find a place I could go unnoticed, a place that I could live mostly free and work my way towards making the mostly absolute. Just like I had not anticipated missing my mother the way I did, I had not anticipated meeting someone, let alone meeting two someones, that I wanted to be around despite the danger they posed to my fragile freedom.

"You can leave those on the bed," Anna said, walking over to me and unzipping the jacket I wore. She lined up the bottom of it and zipped it up properly. I hadn't known it was crooked. Although I had stolen them and had recently learned who I had stolen them from, I felt a twinge of sadness at the thought of not having the clothes I had come to think of as mine anymore. "I'll wash them for you," She continued. "And your sheets and towels, you've been here over a month and they haven't been washed once. That’s gross."

"Anna," That was the first time I had ever said her name aloud. "Answer my question."

She looked me in my eyes when she stepped to me. She took the ends of each side of the thick coat, pushed them together, and pulled a brass tab all the way up to my collar, closing the coat. "Because I like you, I want to be your friend."

Friend. I thought, then replied too honestly. "I've never had one of those."

Anna’s eyes widened and then laughter burst from her. "Damn Dani, that's the saddest fucking thing I've ever heard.”

“It is true.” I said, worried I had done something wrong.

“You’re lucky,” She helped me keep my balance as I slipped my feet into the brown boots. “Not everyone’s first is as good as me. Now come on, I’ve got a little brother whose delusions we must indulge." She said, walking out of her room.

I followed along behind her. Had I just made a friend?

Arthur waited for us at the bottom of the stairs outside the backdoor. The weather had been mild enough since I had arrived on the mortal plane that I had not had to think about it at all, but the second I walked outside, even with the additional layers of fabric shielding my skin, It was bitterly cold. I had to force myself to not turn around. A violent wind howled through the trees that surrounded the house and it battered against me as I walked down the steps and into the yard. The night was bright with moonlight from the full moon that hung heavy in the sky.

"Hey, you are wearing shoes this time!" Arthur grinned. As soon as his sister shut the door behind herself, he took off towards the wood line.

Anna hooked her arm in mine as she passed me. "Come on, we’ll lose him if we don't stay close."

"What are we looking for, exactly?" I asked, finding that traversing the woods was indeed much less painful with boots on. They had said we were ghost hunting, I had no knowledge of a ghost haunting the woods but I had met a spirit. The two were very different from my hand and a half understanding.

"That's the fun part, I have no idea," Arthur said, walking and talking. "When I was a kid, I used to play out here all the time and I always felt like something was watching me," He stopped, turning to his left and then his right. "I stayed out too late one night and it got dark and I got lost.

"Ma came and got me out of bed to help look for him. What kind of sense does that make? I can't find my kid, let me send the other one into the woods I lost him in to find him." Anna started.

"Shut up. Anyways, I was a kid you know? So, naturally, I thought I was going to die." Arthur laughed, beginning to walk again.

I found myself laughing with him. Anna pulled me along behind him, curving around a cluster of long dead trees. Down a small slope and then back up the other side, we crossed a gully filled with fallen leaves.

"I found a cave and huddled up just inside of it, knowing that any second, something was going to crawl out of the dark and swallow me whole." Arthur continued.

"I honestly didn't know you were that dumb as a kid. There are no caves out here." Anna added.

"Shut up," Arthur answered without slowing down. " Okay, maybe it wasn't a cave, but it felt like one. Anyways, I don't know how long I had been lost for, but I started hearing something. At first, I couldn't make out what it was but it got louder and I could make out someone saying this way, this way, this way. It was coming from outside of the cave and I followed it. Every time I would get to where it sounded like it was coming from, it would repeat this way, this way, this way. And, I would follow it."

"Then I found him, barely out of sight of the house, face covered in dirt and snot, rambling about a ghost he had made up." Anna said.

"I didn't make it up. I'm gonna find it." Arthur snapped.

I don't know how far into the woods we had gone, but the moon beamed from directly above us. My hands and feet were near numb but It could have been my whole body if not for Anna. I wouldn't be out there at all if it weren't for Arthur. I smiled. Since we had been walking and all the way through Arthur's story, I hadn't thought about The Well once. The Mother's Seal or Zenithcidel hadn't existed. I hadn't even thought about Sam, locked away in my room. It had just been the siblings and I, doing something together. I was getting myself into trouble, I knew it, and I chose not to care.

"How are we going to find it?" I asked, nearly certain that Arthur had been guided out of the woods by the very same owl spirit I had met. How common was something that had a proclivity for repeating nearly everything it said in triplets?

"Uhm." Arthur said, descending into another gully.

"Tell her your plan Arthur. I'm sure she will think it is just as smart as I do."

We followed Arthur down again, the fallen leaves so deep they nearly rose above my hips, and up the other side where he finally stopped his brisk walking and turned to us.

The tall pines spread out just enough that the leaf strewn ground could be called a clearing and Arthur strode into the middle of the clearing, grinning from ear to ear. "We're here."

I looked around and saw nothing to differentiate here from any other part of the woods. "Where is here?" I asked him as Anna and I stepped in front of him. Being still, even for a moment, was enough to let the cold creep in and I wrapped my arms around myself to try and shrink further into the big coat.

"I don't have a clue," Arthur shrugged. "That's the point. That's the plan. If I was lost when it found me the first time, I need to be lost again if I want to find it.”

"Isn't that the stupidest thing you've ever heard?" Anna asked me.

"Actually, It kind of makes its own strange sense." I said. I couldn't explain to them that ideas like Arthur's seemed exactly like the kind of sideways thinking that spirits must be driven by.

Arthur beamed at me. He dropped to the ground and started rifling through his coat. "To thank you both for agreeing to come look the paranormal in its ghostly face, I brought this." He said, pulling out a large metal cylinder out of the collar of his coat.

"What is that?" I asked.

"A thermos that better be filled with what I think it should be filled with or I'm going home." Anna said, sitting down and snatching the thermos from her brother. She unscrewed the top and steam wafted out of the container. Anna plunged a finger into the thermos and brought it out again before sticking it into her mouth.

“Hey, that’s for all of us.” Arthur groaned.

Realizing I was the only one still standing, I joined the siblings on the ground.

"Let Dani try it," Arthur said, prying the thermos away from his sister and handing it to me. "I made it myself."

The outside of the container was cold to the touch despite the steam rising from it. I drank from the same cup the siblings had. "Mmm," I tried to speak through a full mouth of surprisingly warm liquid. I swallowed. "Hot chocolate!"

"You've never seen a thermos before?" Arthur asked, taking his turn to drink.

I hadn't, there was no need for such a thing when every Maiden but me could change the temperature of a cup of tea with barely a thought, but I couldn't tell them that. So, I lied. "I have, its just dark out here."

"What do we do now?" Anna asked, sliding herself closer to me.

"We wait until the ghost shows up?" Arthur said as if it was the most obvious answer in the world.

Anna said something about how dumb the plan was and Arthur told her to shut up again.

I lost my focus on the siblings. The wind came rushing through the trees, blowing flurries of leaves against me and the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. It had not been caused by the chilling gust. A feeling I had become all too good at recognizing came over me.

I was being watched.

Past the siblings and into the crowded trees, within the darkness beyond the clearing, something moved. From the shadows It silently crept, out of my peripherals and into my full sight on the far side of the clearing. I tracked it, trying to make out any detail beyond that it walked on four legs.

"Did you hear me Dani? Arthur asked, offering the hot chocolate back to me.

"No." I said, my eyes still focused on whatever was moving within the darkness. Another spirit?

"Are you alright?" Anna asked, putting her hand on my knee.

The thing in the darkness took a step into a sliver of moonlight that had found its way through the wood’s branches and onto the ground. The head of some kind of canine creature slowly passed into view, teeth bared. The moonlight glinted off both sets of its silver eyes.

The memory of the owl spirit came rushing back into my mind. Looking, looking, looking.

I knew then, with a certainty that sent my heart racing, that the four eyed wolf was no spirit.

It was a familiar.

And it was looking at me.