Why?
Why am I here?
Why… again?
I stared at the ceiling, the shape of it too familiar. My breathing is shallow, chest hollow. My legs were curled under the blanket, but my mind was stretched somewhere else—between disbelief and dread. The air smelled like childhood, like fabric softener and mildew. A life I thought I'd buried had cracked itself open.
I kept asking the same question over and over, like it would give me a different answer.
Am I back in the past?
Then:
"Molly!" My mom's voice, sharp and careless, cut through the walls. "Go eat your dinner. I'm going out, so do the dishes."
She didn't ask if I was hungry. She didn't ask how school was. She didn't even come to the door.
I looked at the clock. 8:02 PM. Dark outside. I already knew where she was going—off to the same bar with the same friends, to drink away the same bitterness she refused to name. If I remembered this week right, Dad wouldn't be coming home.
He was angry. Distant. Sick of fighting. Sick of the bottles on the sink and the way Mom stumbled through her sentences by 10 PM. Back then, I didn't understand why he stopped coming home. Now, I did.
Not to us, I thought. Not anymore.
I sat up, suddenly.
My chest ached, but not from sadness. From a spark of something else. Something sharp. Something alive.
If I went back to the past… then I could change.I could fix what broke. I could become someone. I could leave this house someday without hating myself.
But before the thought could fully form, something moved at the window.
I turned.
It was small—barely the size of a fist—and glowing softly.
A light blue spark.
At first, I thought it was just a firefly or the reflection of a car light through the trees. But then it drifted closer.
It floated like dust caught in slow wind—except it wasn't dust. It shimmered. It pulsed.
And as it moved into the room, I saw it had ears—long and soft, like a rabbit's. Its shape was strange: not quite animal, not quite insect. Its wings fluttered silently, translucent like thin paper, its body round and glowing faintly from the inside.
It wasn't just floating.
It was watching me.
I stood frozen.
My heart thudded once, hard.
And then it spoke.
Not out loud. Not in a voice. But in a thought, as clear as if someone had whispered it directly into the center of my mind:
"You wished for time. And time listened."
The words didn't sound. They pressed directly into my head, like a dream, and I wasn't sure I was dreaming.
I swallowed hard. My hands were ice-cold.
"What... are you?" I whispered, barely able to hear myself.
The creature tilted its head, ears bobbing slightly in the air. It blinked once, wide, glassy eyes like marbles full of stars.
Then, it floated closer. I stepped back automatically until my spine hit the edge of the bed.
"Your wish carried weight," it said. "You said you'd change it. That you'd do things differently."
"I—" My throat tightened. "That was just a thought. I didn't mean—"
"But you did. You meant every breath of it."
The light around it pulsed, soft and steady, like it was syncing with my heartbeat.
"Are you... Are you a ghost?" I asked. "An alien? A dream?"
"No," it replied gently. "I'm your envoy."
"Envoy?"
"A guide. From the old pact. Before your kind forgot how to hear us."
"What pact?"
It hovered a moment longer, silent, then spun in the air. Dust glimmered in its trail.
"You don't need to understand everything now. You only need to remember one thing: Time listened. And now it's watching."
A pause.
"And you've been chosen."
I let the words sit in my mind, but they didn't sit still. They twisted. They bloomed.
"Chosen… for what?"
"To protect," it said. "To mend. To begin again."
Then, with the tiniest twitch of its wings, it hovered toward me, stopping just inches from my chest.
"But first," it whispered, "you have to awaken."
Before I could ask what that meant—before I could even react—it leaned forward, pressing its forehead lightly against mine.
A searing flash of light flooded my vision—not painful, but deep. Like something ancient opening behind my eyes.
Images I didn't understand flickered like lightning:A broken sky. A field of shadows. A sword made of light. A girl's voice screaming my name.
And then—Darkness.
When I opened my eyes, I was alone.
No fairy. No light.
Just my bedroom. My bed. My hands were shaking against the blanket.
But something had changed.
On the back of my left hand, a faint glow—like a sigil, curled like a rabbit's ear and the moon in motion—flickered once, then faded.
I stared at it in silence.
Whatever this was…
It had already begun.