Page 38 of Little Witch

"Marginally less tragic."

"I taught him three-card brag," Dad said, not looking up from his book. "He owes me approximately four hundred imaginary dollars at this point."

"I'm good for it," Cian snorted. "The second we get out of here, I'm opening a tab."

Spending time with Dad still felt surreal, no matter how many days passed. He was here, alive, a little older, grey threading through his hair and lines etched into his face that hadn't been there when I was small enough to think he'd always look exactly the same. But in every way that mattered, he was still the same man who'd taught me to ride a bike in the car park behind the bakery, who'd sung off-key lullabies when I couldn't sleep as a kid, who still remembered every embarrassing thing I'd ever done before the age of ten and brought them up at the worst possible moments. We talked about everything, catching up on the years we'd missed in fits and starts. Some of it felt bittersweet in a way that caught me off guard. For every laugh we shared, there was a quiet ache tucked underneath it, the years we hadn't gotten and never would get back.

The festival planning I'd been so wrapped up in a lifetime ago was almost certainly falling apart without anyone to run it. None of it felt like it should matter this much, given everything else going on down here, and yet the thought of it sat there anyway, heavy at the back of my mind most nights.

Today I needed a break from the endless circling. The Sanctum had a kitchen, nothing like the one back home, but functional — pans, ingredients, an old stove that worked better than it had any right to given how long it must have sat unused before we arrived. So I decided to bake. It was something my hands knew without my brain needing to be fully involved, and right now I needed exactly that kind of quiet.

"Pumpkin pie?" Dad asked, peering over my shoulder as I gathered ingredients.

"I figured we could all use something sweet today."

He grinned, stepping closer, already rolling his sleeves up. "Need a hand?"

"Sure." I passed him a bowl and the flour. "You can start on the dough."

He laughed, shaking his head, but took the bowl without complaint. "Haven't done this in years. You might regret asking."

"We'll see." I pulled out a tin of pumpkin puree. "Mess it up and I'm taking over."

Orias wandered in halfway through, drawn by the smell, and immediately made himself useful by eating a spoonful of filling straight from the bowl before I could stop him.

"That's for the pie."

"Quality control," he said, entirely unbothered, dodging the spoon I swatted at him with. "Someone has to make sure it's not poisoned. I'm being a hero."

"You're being a menace."

"Historically accurate description of me, yes." He hopped up onto the counter, swinging his legs, clearly settling in to watch rather than actually help. "Can I lick the bowl after? I feel like that's a sacred baking tradition I'm owed."

"You're not five." I giggled, knowing full well I wanted bowl licking rights.

"I contain multitudes, including a five-year-old's appreciation for raw pie filling."

Dad laughed at that, the first real, easy laugh I'd heard out of him since we'd found each other, and something in my chest loosened at the sound of it. We worked together in a loose, comfortable rhythm after that, mixing and rolling and prepping the filling while Orias hovered nearby stealing bites whenever he thought nobody was watching, which was often, and badly disguised every time.

"Remember taste-testing every batch of cookie dough before it even hit the oven?" Dad asked, glancing over with a familiar twinkle in his eye.

I grinned. "Still do that. Still get a bite of everything before we sell it, just to check. Then Orias does it too."

"Some things don't change." He chuckled, and for a moment it felt like we were standing back in Halloway's Hearth, flour on both our hands, the years between us folding away entirely like they'd never happened.

When the pie finally came out, golden and steaming, we called Cian and Rowan in to join us, all five of us crowding around the small dining table with slices still too hot to properly eat, blowing on forkfuls and burning our tongues anyway because none of us had the patience to wait.

For a little while, nobody mentioned magic or monsters or the darkness creeping through the Hollow above us. We just existed together, trading stories, laughing at Cian's increasingly embellished version of him sneaking the twins into their father's study as a kid to play with an old sword collection, Rowan rolling his eyes the whole way through while clearly enjoying every second of it, occasionally cutting in to correct a detail Cian had exaggerated for effect.

"It was one sword," Rowan said. "Singular. You make it sound like an armory."

"Artistic license."

"You nearly took my finger off." Orias added with a grin.

"That part's true, actually. Sorry about that, by the way."

As the day wore on, it started to feel almost normal. Too normal. We'd settled into a rhythm — wake, research, eat, talk, laugh, look for answers, sleep. Comforting. Also, if I let myself think about it too long, mildly terrifying. I could feel it sinking into my bones, that rhythm, and part of me worried about how easy it would be to get used to it, how easy it already was.