Matias

Selene takes a deep breath before standing up. She picks up her mug, cupping it with both hands, before leaving the kitchen and making her way to the spell room. I follow silently behind her. I know she needs to be alone with her thoughts right now. Even though she's agreed to do the spell, something within her changes at the agreement.

It's the first time I'll witness someone doing magic for the first time, and it's not even someone who's born with the ability burning their fingertips. Eve had already done little spells by the time she found me. I remember her little fingers reach for me in the shadows. She picked me up and cried "kitty!"  The next thing I knew, I was connected to her. Not just through love, but through magic. It was that moment I began the path to who I am today.

Maybe, just maybe I can help this village girl become who she needs to be. But for now, I'll help her with her first ever spell.

The spell room is dark when we enter, but I'm able to make my way over to the table. The girl has already placed the mug on it and is now walking around lighting the candles. As they burn they cast dancing orange light on the bookshelves. 

"Will it be in this spell book?" she asks once she's lit all the candles. 

I shake my head. "There should be a book somewhere called Helpful Spells."

She raises a brow. "That's it? It just has that simple title?"

I roll my eyes. "Not everything witch related has to be complicated."

She hums and starts looking at the books. I sit where I am and bring my paw up to look at. 

"Are you going to help?" she asks. I look up to find her staring at me.

"Well... The thing is..." I really don't want to tell her. Her one brow raises. I sigh. "I can't read," I mumble.

"Sorry, what was that?" The way she's looking at me tells me she knew what exactly I said.

"I said, that I can't read." It comes out as a growl.

"Who would've thought?" she says with a smirk. She turns back to the shelves before I can even hiss at her. 

"Whatever. I haven't needed it before and I don't need it now."

"Really?" I can hear the eyebrow raise in her voice. "What about when Eve went missing, wouldn't it have been helpful to read the spell yourself?"

"I had you."

"And what if you didn't?" she asks with a quick glance over her shoulder.

I let my tail thump against the table as my response. 

The room falls almost completely quiet. Only the noises of the night critters outside, just barely audible, reach us. I turn to look out the window, up at the moon. Is Eve really up there? Has she really been trapped on, or possibly in, the moon? That would have taken some powerful magic. As much as I believe in Eve, I know she isn't that powerful. 

"I think I found it."

I jump as a bang echoes throughout the room. I spin around to find a cloud of dust lifting up around the book. She must have dropped it. Rubbing her hands together, she looks at me. "Does this look familiar?"

I inch forward and sniff it. "It certainly smells like Eve's tears."

"Eve's tears?"

I nod and sit at the top of the book. "Eve spent a lot of time crying over this book."

The girl is silent as she stares at it. 

"Well? Are you going to look at the spell?"

She shakes her head. "Right. Of course. Do you know the spells name?"

"It should be the locator spell, or something along those lines."

She nods as her fingers trail down the page. She taps a spot twice before flipping through the  pages until it's open somewhere near the end. She's quiet for a little longer.

"So what does it say?" I lean forward and peer down at the page, but it only looks like squiggles to me. Not a single picture is present. 

Her hand comes up and meets my neck as she gently pushes me out of the way. "I can't read with your shadow over the page."

I huff but stay back as she continues to read. Finally, she looks up at me. "All it asks for is a bowl of water and something of the person you want to find."

"Last time we did this spell I think Eve had used a shoe." I look up as I think about it. 

"Is that where Pa's shoe went?" she asks, but it doesn't seem like she's looking for an actually answer.

"I know what you can use for Eve. Will you get the water while I fetch the other thing?"

"You aren't planning to use the bird, are you?" She pushes away from the table.

"Of course not. I would volunteer myself before him. Plus, I don't think the spell would work if you used something living."

She sighs. "That makes sense." 

As she leaves the room, I jump off the table and start to follow her. Once we hit the hallway she heads to the right, but I go to the left. To Eve's room.

Her bedroom is pitch black to the normal eye, but for me I can see perfectly. Even if I couldn't, I've spent so much time in here that I could navigate around in the dark. I jump up on Eve's bed, it slopes under me, making it slightly difficult to walk, but I manage to get to the head of it, where her pillows lie. 

I would love to just lay down on them but right now I have a job. So instead of napping on them, I grab the tiny little blue blanket that sits atop them. This has been my bed for the past few days. Eve's blankie smells the most like her, and it made me feel like she was beside me each night. Even as she wasn't.

With it gripped between my teeth, I jump back to the floor. As I walk I make sure to not step on the blankie. I don't need to rip it and for Eve to get mad about it. Her scent fills my nose as I head back into the spell room, allowing me to almost believe she's here with me.

"What's that?" the girl asks. She bends down as if she'll back it up, but I jerk out of her path and leap onto the table with it still in my mouth.

I place it down beside the bowl of water and sit before I answer her. "It's Eves blankie. She's had it since she was a baby." Something warm flutters through me. "It was her last gift from her mother before she left."

"And you're sure it'll lead to Eve?"

I nod. "Eve's used this blankie before to try and find her mother, but the light always found Eve instead."

"It seems like Eve's had a hard life," the girl says. She stares at the blankie, something unreadable in her eyes. 

"She has." 

She takes a deep breath. "Okay. I... I think I'm ready." She reaches up to her hair and ties it back with a ribbon.

I take a step back away from her space. "Do you need me to push you?"

Her eyes widen. "Push me?"

"With magic. It'll give you some extra power."

She shakes her head. "I'd like to try by myself first." I nod and fall silent. She picks up Eve's blankie and lowers it into the bowl, inch by inch. As she's doing that she whispers, "Nađite izgubljenu. Vodi nas do Eve." Her brows are furrowed in concentration.

Once the blankie is submerged in the water and the words are complete a ball of light flies up from the bowl. The girls eyes widen. In an instant the ball turns into a line. It flies out through the window, curving up, and up, and up, until it points to the moon.

"So it seems we have our answer," I say, looking up. The locator spell surrounds the moon. "She isn't on the moon. She's in it."

Chapter word count: 1,343

Total word count: 16,673