“…Mia.”

  Mia. It was the first time I heard her name. Just one word, softly spoken, but it settled into the space between us like something important. Heavy. Real.

  I nodded, like I understood, even if I didn’t. Even if I had a hundred questions piling behind my tongue. But I didn’t ask them. Not yet.

  The silence returned, not awkward, but stretched thin like a thread between us. I stared at the blue-night-flowers swaying faintly in the still air, their glow soft as candlelight. The lake behind us was quiet now, just water again. No magic. No mirror. No stars frozen in its surface. It almost felt like I had imagined it all.

  But I hadn’t.

  My body reminded me with every breath. I was tired, deep in my bones, down to my fingertips. The kind of tired that made your thoughts slow and your eyes heavy, no matter how hard you tried to stay sharp.

  I didn’t want to fall asleep. Not in front of her. Not when everything still felt strange and raw. I wanted to be brave. I wanted to look like I belonged here, like I wasn’t just a scared girl who had cried alone in the trees hours earlier.

  But my body had its own plans.

  I blinked hard, hoping she didn’t notice the way my head tilted for just a second too long, or how my fingers had stopped gripping the satchel and simply rested there now, limp.

  I straightened a little, pulled my mother’s cloak tighter around me again. The scent of herbs and blue-night-flower still clung to the fabric, though faint now, like a memory trying not to fade.

  Mia didn’t say anything. Just watched.

  It wasn’t unkind. Just... steady.

  And maybe that’s what finally made something in me ease. Not the words. Not the silence. Just the fact that she was there. Still. Unmoving. Like she wasn’t going to vanish the moment I closed my eyes.

  "I’m not tired," I said, too quickly. Too late.

  Mia’s mouth twitched. Almost a smile. “You don’t have to be.”

  I looked down at the moss, cheeks burning. “I just... want to think for a while. That’s all.”

  She nodded. Didn’t argue. Didn’t call me out.

  But a moment later, I felt something shift, her cloak moving ever so slightly as she shifted to lean back against the trunk beside me. Like she was saying, I’m staying right here.

  And I believed her.

  So, I breathed.

  And then, despite everything, I let my eyes close.

  Just for a minute.

  ?

  I woke to the scent of smoke and something warm in the air, rich, savory, unfamiliar. For a long moment, I didn’t move. The ground beneath me was soft with moss, and I was wrapped in more warmth than I remembered falling asleep with. My mother’s cloak was still around my shoulders, but there was another layer too, Mia’s, rougher in texture, smelling faintly of cold air and strange metal.

  The fire cracked softly nearby. Not the wild kind you make in a panic, but small, controlled, like someone who knew how to shape it rather than just start it.

  I blinked the sleep from my eyes and lifted my head slightly.

  Mia was sitting with her back to me, one knee drawn up, her other leg stretched toward the fire. She held a slim branch over the flames, and at the end of it, something pale and silver-skinned hissed softly. A fish, I realized. Cleaned, spiced with something that smelled sharper than any herb I knew, and slowly turning golden at the edges.

  She didn’t turn to look at me.

  But somehow, she still knew.

  “You’re awake,” she said quietly, voice low and even. “Are you hungry?”

  My stomach answered before I could. A soft growl that felt loud in the morning hush.

  I pushed myself upright, cheeks warming. “...Yeah,” I admitted. “A little.”

  Mia gave the fish a slow turn, still not looking over. “You talk in your sleep,” she added after a pause.

  I froze. “I—what did I say?”

  Now she did glance back. Just once. A flick of silver eyes and the smallest of shrugs.

  “Mostly your mother’s name.”

  I looked down at my hands.

  The fire snapped again, and the scent of roasting fish filled the space between us.

  “The lake is full of them”, she said after a moment. “They were biting. Slow, but steady. I took only what we needed.”

  Only what we needed. The words settled on me gently.

  She handed me the smaller of the two fish, speared through a forked stick, still sizzling faintly. I took it with both hands, careful not to drop it. It was warm. Real. Comforting.

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  “Thank you,” I said softly.

  Mia didn’t answer. Just returned her gaze to the fire.

  And for a while, we sat in silence.

  Eating. Breathing.

  Together.

  The warmth of the fire helped, and the food helped more. But it was the light that changed everything.

  Morning had crept in without me noticing, soft and golden, filtering through the trees in slanted beams that made the mist shimmer like something out of a dream. And as I ate in slow, grateful bites, I finally had the clarity to look—really look—at the girl sitting across from me.

  Mia.

  She wasn’t just older than me. She wasn’t just strange. She was... something else entirely.

  In the firelight last night, I’d seen only glimpses, a pale face, bruises, torn fabric. But now, with sunlight painting her in full color, I saw her properly.

  Her hair wasn’t white, not exactly. It was silver, but with streaks of light so fine they caught every shift of gold and blue in the air. It spilled past her shoulders in loose, tangled waves, some strands catching the breeze like threads of starlight.

  Her skin was like snow before anyone walks on it, unmarked, cool, almost too perfect. Pale, but not sickly. Porcelain. Like the painted dolls in the glass case at the village elder’s house, only real.

  And her face…

  There was no other word for it. She was beautiful. Unmatched. Not the kind of pretty the older girls in the village tried to be with flowers in their braids and borrowed perfume. Not like the paintings in the temple either. No, this was different. Striking. Sharp. Regal. Like she belonged somewhere far from here, somewhere carved from moonlight and marble.

  A noble, I thought. Or someone even higher.

  But her clothes—what was left of them—weren’t like anything I had ever seen. Deep blue and silver layers with patterns stitched in thread I didn’t recognize, edges trimmed in symbols that shimmered faintly when the light touched them just right. Her cloak had a crest on it, strange and elegant, nothing like the lion or tree symbols I knew from the villages or kingdoms nearby. Even torn and dirt-streaked, her outfit looked... expensive. Like it shouldn’t have been worn in a place like this at all.

  She sat tall, back straight, one hand resting on her knee, the other still turning the fish slowly over the fire. Everything about her was controlled, precise, like she was used to command, to being obeyed. Even when tired. Even when wounded.

  I caught myself staring.

  She must have felt it, because without looking up, she said quietly, “You’re not very subtle.”

  I nearly choked on a piece of fish.

  “I—I didn’t mean to stare!” I stammered, cheeks burning. “I just... it’s just that I’ve never seen anyone like you before.”

  That made her pause. She tilted her head slightly, still watching the fire.

  “Good,” she said after a moment. “I’d be worried if you had.”

  I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I didn’t ask.

  Instead, I looked down at the snowflake still faintly visible on my hand, glowing pale blue in the morning light.

  Then I felt it.

  Mia’s gaze.

  When I looked up, she was no longer watching the fire. Her eyes were fixed on my hand.

  “That mark,” she said, her voice lower now, more focused. “Where did you get it?”

  I hesitated, fingers curling slightly. I wasn’t even sure how to explain it, it had just appeared. But she waited, silent and expectant, and something in her tone made me answer.

  “There was a birch tree. With carvings. A snowflake, and some strange runes beneath it. I touched them, and… I don’t know, it just… happened.” I glanced down again. “It’s been there ever since.”

  Mia leaned forward slightly, her expression unreadable. “That’s not just a decoration. It’s a mark. An anchor point.”

  I blinked. “An anchor?”

  She nodded slowly, eyes narrowing in thought. “Certain kinds of spells use marks like that to tie energy to a place. Or a person. Or... a moment in time. Sometimes they’re left behind by powerful magic. Sometimes they’re deliberate.”

  Her gaze drifted toward the trees, the fading mist. “But for something like that to still be active... here? In a forest like this?” She shook her head. “That shouldn’t be possible.”

  “But it is,” I said quietly. “You saw what happened at the lake.”

  She nodded again, still distracted. “It might not be a coincidence,” she murmured. “That I ended up here. That you were there. That this mark is on you.”

  Her voice wasn’t scared. More… curious. Like she was putting together the edges of a puzzle but didn’t have the center yet.

  I watched her in silence for a moment.

  Then I asked the question I’d been carrying since last night.

  “Where are you from, Mia?”

  She didn’t answer right away.

  Her hand tightened around the stick she’d been using to cook the fish, just slightly. Her shoulders lifted, then settled again. When she finally looked back at me, there was something distant in her eyes. Like she was seeing somewhere I couldn’t.

  “I’m not from around here,” she said simply.

  “That much I figured,” I muttered.

  She gave the faintest hint of a smile. Then it vanished again.

  “The place I come from... it’s far. Farther than I can explain. The sky is different. The stars too. And the mirror? That wasn’t supposed to break. It was something I… saved. Or stole. Or maybe both.” She looked down at her hands. “Either way, it wasn’t meant to open like that.”

  “And the fall?” I asked before I could stop myself. “From the mountain?”

  She gave a soft exhale, almost a laugh but without any joy in it.

  “That fall should have killed me,” she said. “It would have, if not for the mirror.”

  Silence stretched between us again, but this time it felt heavier.

  She didn’t offer more.

  And I didn’t press her.

  I just sat there, beside a girl from another realm, watching the flames dance between us and wondering what strange magic had brought us together.

  And why it had chosen me.

  Mia stood up.

  There was a quiet shift in the air as she did, like the forest itself paused to acknowledge her presence. She stepped away from the fire, the morning light catching the silver threads in her cloak, and raised one hand lazily, almost like it was an afterthought.

  Then she whispered something under her breath. I couldn’t understand the word, not exactly. It was soft, sharp, and unfamiliar, more like wind catching frost than language.

  The fire didn’t sputter or smoke.

  It froze.

  Right there in the pit where it had burned a moment ago, the flames curled in on themselves and turned to ice, clean, white-blue frost spiderwebbing outward across the stone ring until the ground hissed softly and went still. Cold shimmered in the air, then faded just as fast.

  I stared, lips parted, barely remembering to breathe.

  My mother had taught me how to steep herbs for fevers, how to chant a healing charm over a bruised leg. She could ease a headache or calm a crying child with a whisper and a warm poultice. That was magic. Her magic.

  But this?

  This was something else entirely.

  The only other person I had ever seen use real magic was the man who came to our home the day my mother vanished. The one who lit the fire with a single word and left behind an envelope I still hadn’t opened.

  I thought of him now. Of that moment. And then I thought of all that had followed, the silence, the storm, the trees, the scent of blue-night-flower, and the girl who had fallen from the sky.

  Looking back, it almost felt like a fairy tale.

  Almost.

  Except for the part where my mother never came home.

  Mia turned to me then, her pale eyes thoughtful, calm. The frost at her feet was already fading.

  She met my gaze—not with pity, not with distance—but something steady. Certain.

  “Let’s search for your mother,” she said. “Shall we?”

  I nodded before the words could even form.

  Because whatever Mia was, whoever she truly turned out to be, I believed her.

  And I wasn’t alone anymore.