The Drawing That Always Finds Her

A quiet, lyrical fantasy where a book opens the way to memory, magic, and a hidden realm.

Chapter One – The Drawing That Always Finds Her

Auralin sat at the wooden table in the corner of the kitchen, legs curled beneath her, a woollen sock drooping down one ankle. Her pencil moved across the paper in slow, quiet strokes — not rushed, not hesitant, just steady. Like the lines had already been waiting inside the page and only needed her hand to find them.

She was small for her age, willowy, with a fall of silvery-blonde hair that always seemed a little too light for the world around her. Her eyes were the colour of woodsmoke — soft, shifting, always watching. She had the kind of face that made people lower their voices when they spoke to her, though no one ever said why.

Outside, the sky hung low and grey. It had rained earlier, and the forest behind the cottage was still dripping, the sound of water finding its way down leaves and gutters. Inside, the fire cracked behind her, giving off more sound than heat. The stones around the hearth were worn smooth — like everything else in her grandmothers cottage — touched by time, not comfort.

She was drawing again. The same scene as yesterday. And the day before.

A tree, curved as if it were bowing. A stream winding past it. And behind the tree, a doorway — not of wood or stone, but of light. Thin lines shaped like golden threads, shining only when she didn’t look straight at them.
She didn’t know where it came from.

Only that it came. Every time.

Across the room, Mavora moved like a shadow that had learned to hold a kettle. Her back was straight, her silver-streaked hair tied in a low twist, a long grey apron covering her dark skirts. Her hands, though still strong, trembled slightly when she thought no one was watching.

“You’re at it again,” Mavora said, her voice rough but not unkind.

Auralin didn’t look up. “Just drawing.”

“It’s always the same, isn’t it?” Her tone sharpened a little. “That tree.”

Auralin shrugged, suddenly unsure if she should answer. “It’s just what comes.”

Mavora made a soft sound in her throat — not agreement, not disagreement. She turned back to the stove. She didn’t ask to see the picture.

They didn’t talk much, the two of them. Not about anything real. Not about Auralin’s mother. Not about the dreams Auralin sometimes had. Not about the house’s strange stillness, or the way the woods sometimes bent the light in odd ways.

Auralin was nine now — had just turned, in fact — and the air around her felt… changed. Not louder or brighter. Just different. Like it was holding its breath.

She drew another line. The tree again. The stream. The door she didn’t understand.
And still, Mavora stood with her back turned, staring out the window over the sink, her eyes lost in the mist.

The kettle began to hum, but Mavora didn’t move right away. She stood still, one hand resting on the windowsill, the other curled loosely at her side. From behind, she looked carved from the house itself — all corners and shadows and silent years.

Auralin glanced up from her drawing, then back down. She didn’t speak. She knew better than to interrupt the moments when Mavora drifted away like that. Her grandmother would come back soon enough — she always did — but there was a stretch of time where her eyes fogged over and her hands went still, and it felt like she was talking to someone who wasn’t there.

Sometimes Auralin wondered if it was her mother.

Zephina.

She only knew the name because she’d found it once, scratched in soft ink on the inside cover of a book in Mavora’s sewing basket. She had whispered it aloud, and the wind had moved just slightly in the curtains.

Mavora never said it. Not once.

“The past is the past,” she had said, flat and final, when Auralin asked why there were no photographs.

The kettle whined louder now, and Mavora shook herself loose from her reverie, snatching the handle with a cloth and pouring the hot water over the dried leaves in her mug.

“There’s bread on the counter,” she said, not turning around. “If you’re hungry.”

“I’m not,” Auralin murmured.

Mavora didn’t push. She never did. But she also never asked why anymore. She had once — when Auralin was younger and cried for no reason, or woke up with a hollow in her chest she didn’t know how to name. But over time, Mavora had grown quieter, more careful, as if too many questions might unravel something she wasn’t ready to face.

Auralin watched her from the corner of her eye.

Her grandmother moved with that same steady grace she always had — but there was a weight to her steps, like every movement passed through a filter of something left unsaid. She wasn’t cruel. She never raised her voice. She made sure Auralin was warm, fed, and safe.

But there was a space between them.

A space filled with the name they didn’t say.

Mavora loved her. Auralin knew that. She saw it in the way Mavora tucked the blankets tight at night, in the slices of apple left waiting on the table. But there was also something else. A kind of hardness, like the stone step at the front of the house — worn down from years of use, but never soft.

And Auralin felt it, even if she didn’t understand it.

Like Mavora was holding something heavy.

Something with wings.

Something with her mother’s smile

The room was quiet again, except for the clock that didn’t tick.

Auralin added another line to the tree in her drawing. She didn’t know why, but today she made it lean more — like it was listening. She shaded the curve of the roots. She always started with the tree. She always ended with the door.

Behind her, Mavora sat down with a sigh that was more breath than sound. She cradled her tea as if it might burn her or vanish if she let go. Her fingers were long and thin, knotted at the joints. They looked like branches. Strong ones. Weathered.

“That’s a lot of paper you’re going through,” she said after a while, not looking at the drawing.
“I can use the back,” Auralin offered softly.

“Mmm.”

There was no anger in it. Just the noise someone makes when they don’t know what to say but don’t want to sound cold.
Auralin turned the page over. The back was clean. Still room to begin again.

“Do you ever draw?” she asked suddenly.

Mavora didn’t answer at first. She sipped her tea, stared into the middle distance — not out the window, not at Auralin, but somewhere between.

“Not anymore,” she said finally. “I used to. Long time ago.”

“What did you draw?”

“Things I wanted to remember.” A pause. “Things I was afraid to forget.”

“Like Mama?”

The question was so quiet it might not have happened. But it did. And Mavora’s fingers tensed ever so slightly around the mug.

“Your mother,” she said slowly, “wasn’t something I needed to draw. She was… everywhere.”

That was the closest Mavora had ever come to saying Zephina’s name out loud. And it landed like soft thunder in the space between them.

Auralin didn’t press. She just looked back down at her page.

She was going to draw the stream next, but her hand hesitated. Instead, she drew a small figure under the tree — slight, with hair blowing to one side, hand stretched toward the golden door. She didn’t know why she was drawing her now. She had never drawn her before.

“What is it this time?” Mavora asked, her voice careful.

“A girl,” Auralin whispered.

“Who is she?”

“I… I think it’s me.”

Mavora said nothing.

Her fingers didn’t move from the mug. And in the windowpane behind her, the light caught just enough to make it look like her eyes were glistening — but only for a second.