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Chapter Text

We are warm now: chapter one

The Girl in the Snow

In the little mountain town of Canmore, Alberta, snow has a personality.

It doesn’t just fall. It arrives.

It comes tumbling down the shoulders of the Rockies in slow, patient drifts, rolls in over rooftops and schoolyards, and settles into every corner like it’s been invited. It squeaks under boots, slides off pine boughs in soft whumphs, and clings to kids’ mittens long after their parents tell them it’s time to go inside.

If you asked the adults, that’s all it was.

Weather. A nuisance on the roads, a blessing for the ski hills, a reason for an extra cup of coffee.

But if you asked the kids?

They’d tell you about her.

They’d whisper it on playgrounds and in school hallways and under lumpy duvets when they were supposed to be asleep. The stories changed in the details, the way stories always do, but the heart of it stayed the same.

They said there was a girl in the snow.

A girl who lived on the hill behind the park, the one that turned into a sledding track the second the first proper dump of winter hit. Some kids said she lived in the woods that crouched behind it, dark and deep; others said she was the hill, that she grew out of the drifts and melted away with them in spring.

They called her Frosty, when grown-ups were listening.

When they weren’t, they called her Ru.

The name started with a boy in a red toque who couldn’t read properly yet. One early winter afternoon, he’d squinted up at the hill, seen the faint shape of a girl in a leather jacket, and caught a flash of white stitching on the chest as she turned away.

Ruuuumi, sewn in letters he didn’t quite understand.

He’d sounded it out later on the playground, nose scrunched in concentration.

“R… Ru,” he’d declared, proud of himself. “Her name is Ru.”

The others had nodded like this was law, and that was that.

Ru in the snow. Ru on the hill. Ru who made sleds miss trees and left frost ferns on bedroom windows.

Adults said it was just stories.

The kids weren’t so sure.

They said she had lightning under her skin—thin white bolts that ran up her throat and down her arms and coiled around her legs, glowing iridescent when the moon hit them just right. They said her hair was like a snowstorm in the dark, chopped short and wild, always moving even when the air was still.

They said she could make it snow harder with a laugh, or stop a blizzard with a sigh.

They said she built snowmen at night and left them lined up along the paths like silent soldiers, only for them to be half-melted and lopsided by morning.

They said if your window had frost ferns curling across it when you woke up—little white leaves and branching fronds that hadn’t been there when you went to bed—that was Ru saying hello.

They said she could throw a snowball from the top of the hill and hit the back of your jacket from all the way at the bottom, even if you ducked. Especially if you ducked.

They said if your sled almost crashed and then somehow didn’t, that was her too.

Adults laughed, of course. That’s what adults do.

“It’s just wind,” they’d say, wiping away a child’s excited breath-mark from a window.

“It’s just the ice,” they’d say, when a sled skidded away from a tree at the last second.

“It’s just your imagination,” they’d say, when a kid swore they’d felt someone’s cold hand tug them upright before they fell.

They’d smile and tell stories about the things they used to believe in, as if that made it better.

But the kids still watched the snow like it was listening.

And on certain days—on the kind of day when the clouds sat low and heavy, and the world felt made of white and breath and sound—they’d swear that if you looked up at the sledding hill at just the right moment, you could see her.

A figure at the top, leather jacket dark against the bright slope.

A girl standing like she owned the whole hill.

A girl made of lightning and snow.

This is a story about her.

About Ru, who woke up on that hill with nothing but cold in her lungs and her name missing from her mouth. About the way she learned to make a life out of winter, and how one small family with too many moving boxes and not enough hands turned everything sideways.

But that part comes later.

Today, the story starts where the kids say it always does.

On the hill.

With the snow.

And the girl listening to it like it’s the only thing in the world that talks back.

This is a story about the girl at the heart of all of it.

About Ru—about Rumi—on day three hundred and seventy-five of a life that started on a snowy hill with no memory and too much sky.

———

Snow is loud when you’re the only one listening.

It doesn’t sound like much to anyone else—just soft hush and distant laughter and the steady scrape of sled runners on packed powder. But to Rumi, it’s a whole language: the crisp snap of ice under boots, the papery whisper of flakes landing on wool, the long, hollow whomph when someone falls and the snow swallows the impact like a secret.

She stood at the top of the hill like she owned it.

Technically, she did.

No one could see her, which made public property feel a lot like private property.

The sledding hill in the middle of town carved a bright, sloping stretch behind the park, where Canmore gathered the moment winter finally committed. Kids in puffer jackets clustered at the top, cheeks red and eyes bright, sleds piled like a colourful mess. Parents lingered around the edges with paper cups and tired smiles, calling reminders no one listened to.

Rumi breathed in through her nose.

Cold slid into her lungs like it knew the way.

Day three hundred and seventy-five.

She knew because she’d carved it into the inside wall of the little shed in the woods that morning—one more neat diagonal slash through a group of four lines, her knife biting hard enough to leave her palm buzzing after. Three hundred and seventy-four marks before it. One for every day since she’d jolted awake in this very town with snow in her hair and her mind wiped clean.

No name. No before. Just white sky, white ground, and cold that didn’t hurt.

She’d had to pick a name from the bits that clung to her like burrs—letters on a jacket, sounds in other people’s mouths. Ruuuumi… Rumi. Close enough to feel right in her chest.

And in the year since, she’d had to teach her body how to belong to the world again.

She lifted both arms, stretching like she’d just walked onto a stage. Her leather jacket—already worn, already scuffed as if it had lived a life without her—creaked at the shoulders. The collar sat up around her neck, protecting her from a wind she didn’t mind but still respected.

Her hair was a jagged mess around her jaw, shoulder-length and choppy. She kept pushing it out of her face like it was flirting with her on purpose.

Down below, a little boy in a neon blue coat shoved his sled forward and whooped as he launched himself down the hill like a cannonball.

Rumi grinned.

“Alright,” she told the empty air, voice low and amused. “Show me what you’ve got, kid. Do your worst.”

The boy hit a patch of uneven snow halfway down and started to fishtail. His sled swung sideways. For a second it was funny—the kind of chaotic wobble that made other kids shriek with laughter.

Then his trajectory sharpened.

Straight toward the big oak at the bottom.

Rumi’s grin vanished.

Her body moved before she even decided to.

She shot down the hill, boots barely skimming the snow, faster than she should’ve been able to run. Cold gathered around her like a cloak, biting at the air. She slid, knees bending, one hand reaching instinctively toward the sled—

—and then she stopped herself.

She could touch things. She’d spent a whole year proving it to herself: pushing doors open, catching falling mittens, stacking rocks on fence posts just to see if they stayed. The world didn’t slip through her fingers anymore.

But a kid on a speeding sled was momentum and weight and bone.

Magic was easier.

She exhaled.

A thin, sharp breath of winter snapped from her lips—visible even in the white air, a glittering ribbon of cold that laced across the snow ahead of the sled. Frost crawled outward in a fast bloom, the surface slicking over, smoothing into a clean, glassy curve.

The sled hit it and didn’t jolt.

It slid.

A perfect arc, gentle as a guiding hand.

The kid’s scream turned into delighted laughter as the sled veered away from the oak like it had always meant to.

Rumi skidded to a stop, heart hammering in her chest for reasons that had nothing to do with needing oxygen. She had breath, sure, but sometimes it felt like she ran on something else entirely.

On winter.

On impulse.

On the desperate need to not watch someone get hurt when she had the power to stop it.

The kid shot past her, cheeks split by a grin so wide it looked painful.

“Did you see that?!” he yelled at nobody in particular as he slowed at the bottom, boots scrabbling in the snow to stop himself. “I did the cool turn!”

Rumi’s mouth twitched.

“Yeah,” she murmured, gaze locked on him. “Totally all you, champ.”

He scrambled off the sled and ran toward a man waiting near the benches. The man had a thermos in one hand and the resigned posture of a parent who’d accepted chaos as a lifestyle.

“Dad! I drifted!” the kid shouted, nearly tackling the man’s legs.

The man laughed, ruffling his hair. “You drifted, huh? That’s not what we call almost eating a tree.”

The boy protested loudly.

Rumi stood in the snow and watched the interaction like she was watching a movie through a window. Something in her chest warmed and tightened all at once, like somebody was wringing out her ribs.

There was a time—right at the beginning—when watching families had just made her hollow. Now it made her feel too much.

She swallowed it down.

“Alright,” she told herself briskly, turning back toward the hill. “Focus. You’re on duty.”

Duty.

Like she was some kind of… what. Guardian? Hall monitor? Winter lifeguard?

Rumi snorted.

“God,” she muttered. “Imagine writing that on a résumé. Skills: snow manipulation, invisible, cries at other people’s happy endings.”

She trudged back up the hill along the side where parents stamped their feet and sipped coffee. No one moved out of her way. No one bumped into her either, somehow, which was its own kind of insult. She hated how the world naturally routed around her like she was an absence.

Except the kids.

Every now and then, one of them would stiffen as she passed, eyes narrowing into the snow-glare like they were trying to bring something into focus.

A little girl once had stared straight at the stitching on the front of her jacket—Ruuuumi—lips moving as she tried to untangle the loops. She’d gotten as far as “Ru” before her friend had thrown a snowball at her head and the moment snapped.

Rumi still thought about that sometimes.

At the top, a cluster of kids argued over a red plastic sled.

“It’s my turn!”

“No, you had two!”

“My mum said—”

Rumi leaned in, hands on her knees like a coach.

“Okay,” she whispered, dead serious. “Here’s what we’re not gonna do. We’re not gonna fight. We’re not gonna cry. We’re not gonna—”

One of the kids sneezed.

A spray of snot glittered in the air.

Rumi recoiled on instinct, face scrunching.

“—We’re definitely not gonna do that near me,” she amended, voice full of offence. “Personal space. I’m a ghost, not a biohazard.”

One of the younger ones looked up sharply, eyes briefly tracking… something. Their gaze slid almost to where she was, brow furrowing like they’d half-caught a movement at the corner of their vision.

Rumi went absolutely still.

The kid squinted at empty air for a heartbeat longer, then got distracted when someone shoved a sled into their hands.

Rumi exhaled slowly.

“Thought so,” she muttered. “Half credit for trying.”

She walked right through them, because she could. Because they couldn’t feel it. Because she was the only one in this crowd who didn’t have to worry about elbows or stepping on toes or dropping a mitten.

Her gaze swept the hill like she was scanning for threats.

Which was ridiculous.

It was sledding.

A bunch of kids on plastic boards and wooden runners, screaming and laughing and occasionally falling. It should’ve been harmless. It should’ve been the kind of mess that made parents tired and kids happy and left no mark.

But she’d seen what a small mistake could do. She’d seen kids crash into each other and split lips. Seen a sled flip and a child’s head bounce too close to ice. Seen parents go very quiet and very pale before their kid started crying again and everyone pretended it was fine.

And she—

She didn’t know why she cared so much.

Maybe because it was something to do.

Maybe because keeping kids safe felt like the closest thing to purpose she’d ever had.

Maybe because children were the only people who ever looked at winter with awe instead of dread.

Rumi’s eyes narrowed.

A girl—maybe seven—was climbing onto a sled with her little brother perched in front of her. She was too small to steer, too proud to admit it. The boy’s boots dangled, and his gloved hands gripped the rope like it was a lifeline.

Their mother called, “Slow down! No, wait—”

They didn’t wait.

They pushed off.

Rumi followed immediately, pacing them down the hill on foot. She stayed just to the side, close enough to intervene but far enough that she didn’t feel like a full-blown stalker. Which was hilarious, considering she was an invisible winter woman hovering around children.

“Yeah, this is fine,” she muttered, jogging. “Totally normal hobby.”

Halfway down, another kid wiped out in front of them, sled spinning sideways like a rogue bumper car.

The girl’s eyes went huge.

She yanked the rope in panic, but it wasn’t enough.

They were going to hit.

Rumi sucked in a breath and snapped her fingers.

A flurry burst up from the snow like a startled flock of birds—white powder swirling in a tight spiral. The air thickened with cold, and the flurry nudged the siblings’ sled sideways just enough to miss the spinning kid by inches.

The little boy shrieked in glee like he thought the snow had done a trick for him.

The girl screamed too, but hers had fear in it. She clung harder, knuckles white under her gloves.

Rumi ran alongside, hand hovering near their backs, close to touching.

“You’re okay,” she said, voice urgent and gentle. “You’re okay. Keep your feet up. Don’t lean—don’t—”

They hit the bottom safely, skidding into a soft drift.

The boy erupted into laughter, flopping backward like he’d just won a battle.

“That was awesome!”

The girl shoved her brother’s shoulder. “You almost died!”

“I did not!”

Rumi stood there, breathing hard, and felt the adrenaline in her veins like electricity.

It was… fun.

Terrifying and stupid and completely unnecessary for someone who didn’t even know if she could die, but it made her feel alive in a way she hadn’t felt since the first dizzy days after waking up on this hill.

She laughed under her breath, sharp and bright.

“I should charge for this,” she told herself. “Winter Safety Services. Sled Insurance. I’m gonna be rich.”

No one heard her.

But a little boy at the edge of the group suddenly turned his head, eyes wide, staring straight through her chest to the drift she’d kicked up.

“Did you feel that?” he whispered to his friend. “It got colder.”

His friend followed his gaze, saw nothing, and shrugged.

Rumi smiled anyway.

She climbed back up.

Again and again, she shadowed the hill like a secret. Redirecting sleds. Smoothing icy patches. Throwing up soft flurries to cushion falls. Sending gusts of powder into kids’ faces when they got too cocky, just enough to make them squeal and stumble and laugh.

A kid tried to go down headfirst on a saucer sled, and Rumi planted a sudden ridge of snow in his path that made the saucer spin harmlessly in a slow circle.

He screamed like he was on a carnival ride.

Rumi snickered. “That’s what you get.”

A teenager tried to show off by hitting a bump too fast. Rumi softened the landing with a powdery drift that made him sink up to his knees. His friends howled.

Rumi put her hands on her hips, watching him flail.

“Absolutely not,” she scolded the air. “Sit down. Be humble.”

For a while, it felt almost like she belonged here.

Like she was part of the winter day, woven into it the way the wind was. The kids laughed, and her jokes bounced around inside her own head like she had company. She imagined them hearing her. Imagined a kid glancing up and grinning like they understood.

Sometimes, she swore, their eyes almost caught on her.

Almost.

A little girl with pigtails tripped near the bottom and started crying—big, wounded tears, embarrassed and loud. Rumi knelt beside her, instinct tugging her down into the child’s space.

“It’s okay,” she whispered, reaching out.

Her hand hovered, fingers aching with the urge to brush snow off the girl’s sleeve. She could do it. Physically, she could. She just… didn’t know what it would feel like from the other side—if that sudden cold would scare the kid more than the fall had.

She didn’t want to be a jump scare.

So instead she pressed her palm into the snow beside the girl and let frost bloom in a little pattern—tiny fern leaves curling outward, delicate and bright.

The girl sniffed mid-sob and stared at the new frost shape as if it had appeared out of nowhere.

Her crying slowed.

She blinked, wiped her face with her mitten, and poked the fern pattern cautiously.

It glittered in the winter light.

The girl’s mouth wobbled, then she giggled—small and surprised.

Rumi’s chest tightened so hard it almost hurt.

Her eyes prickled. She swallowed hard against it and smiled anyway, soft and private.

“There,” she murmured. “Better.”

As the girl ran back to her mother, chattering about “the pretty snow,” Rumi pushed herself to her feet.

It was always like this.

She could interact with the world—nudge it, shape it, bend it gently—but the world never quite turned and acknowledged the hand doing the bending.

She was a rumour.

A fluke.

A “huh, weird.”

She shook herself, forcing humour back into her face like it was armour.

“Okay,” she told herself briskly. “Don’t get sentimental. You’re not in a movie. You’re in… whatever this is.”

The crowd had thickened. More families. More sleds. More noise.

More life.

And yet, she was still the only one who was alone.

A boy near the top launched himself down on a long wooden sled. He was older—maybe nine or ten. His hat was too big, sliding down his forehead. His cheeks were red from cold and exertion, and his laugh was loud enough to cut through everything.

He hit the slope fast.

Too fast.

Rumi’s gaze sharpened instantly.

He wasn’t steering. He wasn’t adjusting his weight. He was just… going.

At first it looked controlled.

Then his sled hit a hidden ice patch and shot sideways like it had been slapped.

The boy squealed—joy turning into fear in a heartbeat.

His sled angled straight toward a cluster of smaller kids near the bottom.

Rumi’s stomach dropped.

“Nope,” she snapped, already running.

Her boots tore across snow in long strides, her leather jacket flaring behind her like a cape she didn’t ask for. She sprinted downhill, faster than gravity should allow, the cold rising around her as if it had been waiting to be called.

She threw her hands out.

A wall of frost surged up from the snow—not tall, not a harsh barrier, but a soft, curved bank like the side of a safe half-pipe. The sled slammed into it and ricocheted, redirecting smoothly away from the kids.

The boy lurched, wobbling, eyes huge.

Rumi ran alongside him, reaching for the rope at the front of the sled.

For one split second, her fingers closed around it.

Rough cord bit into her palm, real and solid.

Her heart leapt.

Then the sled jerked, the rope yanked hard, and it ripped free of her grip, friction stinging across her skin.

“Shit,” she hissed, breath steaming.

The sled spun again, heading for the oak this time—the same oak that waited at the bottom like a patient obstacle.

Rumi’s pulse thundered.

“Okay,” she panted, “okay—no, no, no—”

She darted ahead of him, planted her boots hard, and slammed her palm into the snow right in the sled’s path.

Ice bloomed.

Not slick.

Not dangerous.

A sudden, heavy, powdery drift—snow piling up in an instant, thick as a mattress.

The sled plowed into it and slowed sharply, the drift swallowing the runners, stealing momentum.

The boy pitched forward, face-first—

Rumi shoved another flurry up, cushioning him, slowing the fall. He landed in soft snow with a whump instead of a crack.

Silence hit for half a second—the stunned pause after a near-miss.

Then the boy erupted from the drift like a spring-loaded toy, sputtering snow.

“I DID IT!” he yelled, triumphant, breath puffing in white clouds. “I totally—did you see me? I—”

He looked around wildly, searching for an audience.

Rumi stood a few feet away, chest heaving, one hand throbbing where the rope had burned it, hands half-raised like she’d just caught a falling star.

Her lips were parted, an incredulous laugh trembling at the edge of her mouth.

“You’re welcome,” she started to say—she didn’t know why she kept doing that, why she kept offering words to a world that couldn’t take them.

The boy’s gaze swept right over her.

Not near her.

Not almost.

Right through.

His eyes didn’t flicker. They didn’t hesitate. They didn’t catch on to anything.

It was like she wasn’t there.

The boy’s grin widened anyway, because kids didn’t need the truth to celebrate.

He turned and sprinted toward his mother, who was already barreling forward with her arms out, fear written all over her face.

“Are you okay?!” she cried, grabbing him by the shoulders, scanning for injury.

“I’m fine!” he shouted, laughing now, the adrenaline making him loud. “It was awesome! The snow, like—like it made a wall! And then I stopped and—”

His mother hugged him so hard it looked like it hurt.

Rumi stood in the churned-up snow and watched.

Her excitement drained out of her so fast it felt like someone had pulled a plug. The laughter died in her throat. The bright energy that had carried her down the hill curdled into something heavy and sick.

Because she had been right there.

Because she had saved him.

Because her hands had shaped the snow, her breath had called winter up like a shield—

—and he hadn’t seen her at all.

Not even a flinch of recognition. Not even a confused pause.

Nothing.

The mother pulled back, gripping his face gently, checking his cheeks, his forehead, his arms.

“Don’t do that again,” she said, voice shaking.

The boy rolled his eyes like kids did when they’d just survived something and felt immortal. “I won’t,” he lied automatically.

His mother looked around at the hill, brow furrowed. She stared at the snow drift, at the strange curved bank of powder that shouldn’t be there.

Her eyes narrowed.

Her gaze passed right through where Rumi was standing, pupils dilating like she’d felt a temperature shift she couldn’t name.

For a heartbeat, Rumi held her breath.

Look at me, she thought, uselessly. Just—just for a second. Just so I know I’m not—

Another parent laughed and called, “Kids, right?” and the moment broke like thin ice.

The mother shook her head, chalked it up to luck, and steered her boy away, still holding his mittened hand too tightly.

Rumi didn’t move.

The wind pushed at her hair, flipping the choppy ends against her cheeks.

Snow glittered in the sunlight.

Laughter rose again around her—kids shouting, sleds scraping, parents calling warnings no one listened to.

Life surged onward without even noticing the hole it was flowing around.

Rumi stared after the boy until he disappeared into the crowd.

Her hands were still half-raised.

She slowly lowered them, fingers curling into fists inside her jacket sleeves.

Her throat tightened.

Her eyes burned, hot and humiliating. This time, the tear that escaped caught the cold, cooling almost instantly on her skin. She swiped it away with the heel of her palm, jaw clenching.

“Okay,” she said softly, speaking to no one. Her voice sounded too loud in her own ears. “Okay. That’s fine. That’s… normal. That’s what happens.”

She tried for a joke. Tried to lift the mood like she always did.

“Great job, Rumi,” she murmured, sarcasm brittle. “Really nailed it. Saved a child. Still invisible. Ten out of ten. No notes.”

The words didn’t land.

They fell flat, swallowed by the snow.

Kids were still sledding.

Still shrieking.

Still alive.

Good.

That was the point.

So why did it feel like she’d just been punched through the chest?

Her gaze flicked to the oak at the bottom of the hill. Its branches were heavy with snow, sturdy and unmoving. It hadn’t done anything. It had just existed in the wrong place.

Rumi’s jaw clenched.

She suddenly wanted to kick it. Which was ridiculous, because she’d probably just bruise her own toes and add insult to injury.

She dragged in a breath that hurt a little and turned away from the slope.

The further she got from the crowd, the quieter it became, until the loudness of winter faded back into softer sounds: wind in branches, snow falling from pine needles, the distant creak of a sign swinging.

Her shoulders hunched inside her jacket.

She shoved her hands into her pockets like she could hide the ache there.

As she walked, she talked—because silence was worse.

“Okay,” she said, trying to keep her voice light. “So. New plan. We don’t get emotionally invested in random children. We don’t expect gratitude. We don’t—”

Her voice cracked on the last word.

She stopped.

Stared at the snow under her boots.

Her breath puffed out in a small, shaky cloud.

She laughed once, sharp and disbelieving.

“Wow,” she whispered. “I am… pathetic.”

The wind tugged at her hair, pushing it into her eyes. She didn’t bother moving it away.

Halfway between the hill and the dark line of trees, she passed a row of houses with windows glowing warm against the cold.

She paused in front of one.

Not because it was special—she didn’t know it would be. It was just a house with a porch light on and a wreath already hung, a little early for the season.

But the window was fogged on the inside.

Someone’s warmth pressing against the glass.

Rumi lifted her hand.

Held it near the windowpane without touching.

She hesitated, then breathed out gently.

Frost bloomed across the outside of the glass—delicate fern patterns curling outward, intricate and bright, like a signature made of winter.

Her fingertips trembled.

She watched the pattern form, watched it glitter, watched it sit there like evidence of her existence.

Her throat hurt in that way that meant crying was dangerously close.

“Don’t,” she warned herself again, softer.

A tear slid anyway, hot against the chill of her cheek.

Inside, a family moved around their kitchen. Shadows. Silhouettes. A woman laughing. A child darting past. The warm shape of life.

None of them looked out.

None of them saw the frost appear.

None of them saw her standing there, a glitch in the world, staring at a window like it might open for her.

Rumi swallowed.

Her voice came out small, almost embarrassed.

“Goodnight,” she whispered to the house, to the light, to the idea of being known.

Then she turned and walked toward the dark fringe of the woods behind the street, where the trees waited quiet and indifferent. Somewhere back there, hidden between trunks and snow-laden branches, was the little shed she’d claimed as hers.

The only place in town where she could carve days into walls and pretend the marks proved she existed.

Behind her, the hill stayed loud with laughter—sleds and shouts and joy—while winter kept falling soft and steady over Canmore, as if it had never cared who was watching.

——

Nine Years Later

She woke up the way storms did—without warning, without permission, and with no memory of how she’d started.

No slow climb out of dreams. One second there was nothing—blank, heavy, silent—and the next there was awareness snapping into place, sharp as cold air dragged into lungs too fast.

She stared at the dark rafters above her.

The shed creaked as the wind shifted outside, old timber complaining in small, familiar ways. Dust, dry leaves, and the faint ghost of snow clung to the air—her smell now, no matter the season. A thin line of light cut through a crack in the wall, turning the floating dust into tiny, aimless stars.

The couch beneath her sagged like it had given up years ago and was just stubborn about it. Springs uneven, fabric torn, one hard lump right under her shoulder blade she’d named Gregory during a particularly lonely February.

Still, the closest thing she had to a bed.

She lay there for a beat, listening for the same thing she always did: the wobble between here and before.

It came right on cue.

Not confusion about where she was. She knew this little shed tucked into the thin strip of woods behind the last house on the street in Canmore. Knew every knot in the planks, every squeak in the floorboards, every draft that slid under the door.

It was older than the shed.

The same question that greeted her every morning and hung around like fog.

Who was I before this?

She exhaled, long and slow.

Her breath fogged pale in the air, even though it wasn’t quite cold enough for that. It never really was around her. Winter clung to her like a second skin, ignoring the calendar.

She rolled onto her side and pushed herself upright, elbows on her knees. Her hair fell forward in choppy lilac strands—shoulder-length now, hacked shorter with stubbornness and a kitchen scissors weeks ago. It framed her cheekbones, tickled her neck, made her look less like a rumour and more like a person who might exist in daylight.

She shoved it back with both hands, leaving it sticking up in ridiculous directions.

“Nice,” she muttered. “Very ‘ghost who lost a fight with a hedge’.”

Her gaze dropped to the stitched patch on the breast of her jacket.

Her jacket.

The leather jacket hung on the back of a chair by the door, worn and battered and old in a way that didn’t match anything else she owned. But she could see the patch in her mind as clearly as if she were wearing it: small rectangle above the left side of the chest, white lettering on black.

RUUUUMI

That was all she’d had when she woke up on the hill ten years ago. No wallet. No phone. No ID. Just that jacket, that patch, those little letters.

It could have meant anything. A brand. A band. A joke. A nickname for someone else.

She’d stood there that first day, snow in her hair, lungs burning, brain empty, staring down at those letters and thinking, Maybe that’s me.

It had stuck.

Rumi in her own head when she needed a name to swear at. Rumi when she wanted to pretend she was real enough to introduce herself to someone. Rumi that could still be wrong.

Then, on day three hundred and twenty-three, a kid on the sledding hill had looked at that same little patch and accidentally made it hers.

She could see him clear as anything now: five or six, tongue poking out as he squinted at her chest from where he sat on his sled, half-turned, watching her like he could almost see her.

“R…” he’d sounded it out slowly. “Ruu… mi…”

Another kid had crashed into him from behind, bumping his sled and jarring the word right out of his mouth.

“Ru!” he’d yelped, laughing. “She’s Ru!”

He hadn’t known she was listening.

He definitely hadn’t known he’d just snapped the last piece into place.

Ru.

Rumi when she said it to herself. Ru when the kids whispered about her.

Nothing before that. No last name. Just letters on someone’s old jacket and a townful of children who believed in a girl made of snow.

Now, sitting on her sagging couch ten years later, she lifted her hands into the narrow beam of light.

Pale skin. Strong fingers. The faint shimmer of white ink at her wrists—tiny lightning veins that crawled up her arms, over her shoulders, down her throat and all the way to her ankles. They looked almost normal in autumn; in full winter they glowed, catching every little shard of light like they were made for it.

Proof that at some point, someone had dragged a needle through her skin on purpose. That she’d sat still and said yes to something.

Proof she hadn’t started here.

She flexed her fingers. Solid. Capable. She could pick things up now without them slipping through her palms. Mugs. Books. A kid’s forgotten mitten. The front of a sled rope if she timed it right.

People were still… complicated.

She let her hands drop and reached for the cracked mirror propped against a beam.

Someone had thrown it out years ago—warped glass, silver backing peeling, frame cracked. She’d hauled it into the shed like she was rescuing a wounded soldier. If the world didn’t want to reflect her, she’d force it to.

She tilted it toward the strip of light and leaned in.

In winter, when the hill was packed and kids were whispering Ru did it—Ru lives in the snow—Ru made the sled turn, her reflection was the easiest to catch. Almost sharp then. Almost normal. Like their belief stitched her into the world for a few heartbeats.

Autumn made her work for it.

At first the mirror showed nothing but the room behind her: couch. Wall. The sliver of door.

Then, slowly, the glass caught.

A faint suggestion of a face. Shadowy cheekbones. Dark hair around them. Brown eyes, more blur than colour, flickering into focus if she held perfectly still.

Breathing too hard made it wobble, so she didn’t.

“Hey,” she whispered to the almost-girl in the glass.

The reflection’s mouth moved with hers, half a beat behind, out of sync in a way that made her look like a bad dub.

“Look at you,” she murmured. “You show up more when the kids start talking about you, you know that? Bit clingy of you, Ru.”

Her chest tightened for no good reason.

Then the light shifted; a bird flew past, a brighter flash skimmed the glass, and her faint outline dissolved. Back to the torn couch, scratched wood, empty room.

Gone.

“Yeah, alright,” she sighed. “I get it. Stage fright.”

She set the mirror down carefully, like gentleness might earn her another glimpse later, and pushed to her feet.

On the small table beside the couch sat a stubby candle, a battered notebook she mostly ignored, and the little knife with the worn handle.

The knife was for one thing only.

Rumi picked it up and crossed to the far wall.

Once, the boards there had been clean. She remembered that first hesitant mark, hand shaking as she carved a single line because she was terrified days would slip past and take her with them.

Now the wood was dense with tally marks.

Rows and rows of them. Four neat vertical lines, then a sharp diagonal slash. Again. Again. Clusters snaking across the planks like a strange forest.

Time she could touch. Proof she hadn’t imagined ten years out of loneliness.

Her fingertips brushed over a middle patch, counting on instinct.

“So that’s about three thousand six hundred and something,” she muttered. “Happy anniversary, I guess.”

Her throat wobbled.

She focused on the newest row.

At its far end, four thin lines waited—today’s little cage, just missing the bar.

She pressed the blade in and dragged downward, cutting a diagonal stroke through them. The wood gave with a soft resistance that scratched loud in the quiet.

She stepped back.

From a distance, it didn’t look like anything special. Just another mark in a wall full of them.

But she knew.

Ten years.

Her eyes burned.

“Rule four,” she told the wall. “No crying at the time chart before breakfast. That’s illegal.”

She put the knife back on the table, fingers resting on it for a second longer than she meant to.

Her gaze drifted to the chair by the door.

Her leather jacket hung there, familiar as a scar. Soft from age and wear, scuffed at the elbows, collar permanently creased. And on the left breast, just where a name tag should go, that small patch: RUUUUMI.

She didn’t know if it was actually hers.

Some days it felt like an accusation. Other days a promise.

Today it just looked heavy.

She wanted to put it on. To feel that weight on her shoulders, to be the girl in the jacket, the one kids screamed Ru! about on snowy hills.

But the air squeezing through the gaps in the boards was warm and damp, more fallen leaves than frost, and the world outside smelled wrong for leather.

“Not today,” she told it. “You’re too moody for warm weather.”

Instead she dug through the crate that served as her dresser and fished out a tight black T-shirt. The cotton clung as she pulled it on, catching on the stretch of her shoulders, hugging the ridiculous V of her torso. Her tattoos at her throat and upper arms ghosted through the fabric, dim lightning under cloud.

She stepped into her usual cargo pants, tugged them up, buttoned them with a little snap of satisfaction. Pockets, already weighted with old habits—crumpled receipts she liked the feel of, a pen, a smooth stone from the riverbank.

Her boots waited by the door.

She slipped her feet in—heel, heel, wiggle toes down into familiar dents. Laces tugged tight. Leather hugging her ankles.

There.

Fully assembled.

Almost real.

She paused with her hand on the door latch, listening.

Not for a voice. She’d stopped believing in that particular miracle around year two.

Just… for anything that felt different.

Silence, creaks, faint birdsong, distant road noise.

No sudden memory. No name dropping back into her head. No last name, no hey, you used to love this song echoing from nowhere.

Just her.

And the town.

And the hill, humming somewhere in the middle of it all, the place she always woke if she drifted too far. Her reset button. Her tether.

“Rule one,” she told the door, because talking out loud made it all feel less fragile. “Don’t fall in love with places that can’t love you back.”

She waited like maybe the universe would argue.

A crow cawed rudely in the trees instead.

“Yeah,” she sighed. “That’s what I thought.”

She opened the door and stepped into the trees.

The little stretch of woods behind the last house in Canmore wasn’t big, but it tried. Spruce and aspen crowded together, needles and leaves soft underfoot. Her boots had worn a faint path between the shed and the house’s back fence, then on through the trees toward the town.

The house itself was quiet for now. Curtains drawn. Back deck empty. Old owners gone. New ones not yet arrived.

Her stomach did a small, inexplicable flip. She ignored it.

She shut the shed behind her and started down the path, boots whispering through damp earth.

“Rule two,” she added, to the trees this time. “Don’t obsess over memories you don’t have. Very unproductive.”

The trees did not offer feedback.

Out at the edge of the woods, she cut into the narrow alley that fed onto the street and slipped into her usual route.

Behind the hardware store, the big guy with the grey beard wrestled with his keys at the back door.

“Left pocket, Tom,” she called, drifting closer. “It’s always your left pocket. We’ve talked about this.”

He patted the wrong side twice, swore, then finally dove into his left pocket and came up with the keys, triumphant.

“Atta boy,” Rumi said, watching him unlock. “Character development.”

A jogger passed with her lopsided-eared dog.

“Morning, June. Morning, Peanut,” Rumi said, stepping instinctively out of their path even though they’d go straight through her if she didn’t. “We are not chasing that leaf, we will lose.”

Peanut’s head flicked, nose wrinkling. For a heartbeat it looked like the dog was sniffing right at her.

Rumi held very still.

Peanut sneezed, shook her head, and bounded after the leaf anyway.

“Rude,” Rumi muttered, trudging on.

By the time she hit Main, Canmore had properly woken up.

Sunlight spilled over the low buildings, catching the mountains ghosting in the distance. The café door was propped open, coffee smell rolling out. The florist lined up buckets of greenery on the sidewalk. The bakery was doing things to the air that should have been illegal.

She walked through it all like a ghost in her own movie, narrating under her breath.

“Morning, Mrs. Patel,” she said as the pharmacist flipped her sign and stretched. “Still ignoring that cracked step. Bold choice.”

A teenage girl chained her bike nearby, phone in one hand, backpack sliding off one shoulder.

“Chem test’s a scam, Ellie,” Rumi told her, purely on instinct. “Also, don’t text him back. You’re too cool for that level of mid.”

She passed the boutique with the immaculate windows and paused, like a magnet had bitten into her.

The glass made her almost real in winter.

She stepped closer now anyway, because almost was better than nothing.

For a long moment, all she saw was the street behind her—cars, people, a stroller, a flash of mountain.

Then, slowly, she appeared.

A faint outline first. Her shoulders, a little too broad. The sloping V of her torso under the tight shirt. The messy fringe of hair. Brown eyes flickering into focus if she didn’t breathe.

She lifted a hand.

The reflection’s hand followed a fraction of a beat late.

“Hi,” she said quietly.

Her other self mouthed the word with her, just off-sync. It made her want to laugh and wince at the same time.

“Look at us,” she whispered. “Not totally erased. Suck it, physics.”

Her throat tightened.

A woman with a stroller crossed behind her, her bright, solid reflection swallowing the faint suggestion of Rumi in the glass.

In an instant, the outline was gone.

Just sweaters, street, sky.

“Well,” Rumi said, forcing a laugh. “That was a fun hallucination.”

She pushed herself back from the window.

“Okay. No spiraling. We’re doing our little patrol. We’re enjoying this… unseasonably warm autumn day. Like a normal person. With normal problems.” Her mouth twisted. “Like deciding which friend to text. Or, I don’t know, knowing your last name.”

She walked before that thought could finish cutting.

The park was busy even without snow. Kids screamed on the climbing frame, shoes thudded on the soft ground, swings squeaked. A teacher in a safety vest tried and failed to wrangle a group into a circle.

Near the monkey bars, a knot of kids huddled, voices pitched low and urgent.

Rumi drifted over, boots whisper-quiet on the path.

“Ru lives in the snow,” a freckled boy hissed, eyes huge. “My cousin saw her.”

“No, she lives in the trees,” said a girl with braids.

“She made his sled not crash,” the boy insisted. “He said he saw letters on her jacket. R… u… mi.” He frowned, miming the squint. “Ruuu… Ru.”

Rumi felt her lips twitch.

“Close enough,” she murmured. “I’ll allow it.”

Another kid chimed in. “My brother says she’s called Frosty.”

“She likes Ru better,” freckled boy declared, with the confidence of someone who’d never been wrong in his life. “’Cause Ru is easier to yell when you’re going fast.”

An adult came over, juice box in hand. “What are we whispering about now? More Ru stories?”

The kids exploded into overlapping explanations.

The mother laughed, shaking her head. “Ru again? You all love that myth. It’s just snow and imagination, sweethearts.”

“It’s not,” the freckled boy groaned.

An older man on a bench chuckled. “We had a lake monster when I was a kid. You’ve got a snow girl. Same thing, different winter.”

Rumi folded her arms tight over her chest, like she could squeeze the sting out.

“Yeah,” she muttered. “Sure. Imagination. Tell that to the bruise you don’t have, Tyler, because I stopped your sled last January.”

The kids kept whispering like she was a secret. The adults laughed like she was a story.

She turned away before her face did something embarrassing, boots biting a little harder into the path.

She passed the café, the florist, and ended up in front of the bakery as if someone had dragged her there with a hook.

Warmth fogged the big front windows; it cleared, fogged again. Trays clanged. Someone laughed inside, the sound blurred by glass.

Her stomach pulled tight and mean.

She stepped close, hand hovering just off the warm pane.

“Don’t,” she told herself. “We are not about to emotionally imprint on a cinnamon roll.”

She dropped her hand and walked on, arguing with herself.

“You can’t just walk in there and steal a pastry.”

“I wasn’t going to steal it,” she muttered. “I was going to… gently redistribute the carbohydrates.”

“Still theft.”

She snorted. “Well, the universe stole my entire life, so I feel like I’m owed a bun.”

A man barreled past, laughing loudly into his phone, shoulders right through where hers were.

The sudden nothing of it—no contact, just that cold spike—made her flinch.

She stepped aside hard, jaw tight, shirt twisted slightly against her skin.

She hated that. Being walked through like she was bad reception.

She was still adjusting her shirt when she heard it.

Not the everyday shuffle of town. Not chatter or car doors or clinked cups.

A deeper rumble. The growl of a big engine easing down. The beep-beep-beep of something reversing. The metallic clang of a ramp being dropped.

A moving truck.

The sound snagged her attention so fast it felt like someone had grabbed her by the collar.

Her head snapped toward it.

Somewhere just off Main, an engine idled. A child’s voice shrieked—excited, high, not scared.

And something inside her chest…

Pulled.

Not curiosity. Not oh, new people.

A clean, sharp tug, right behind her breastbone, like a thread that had been hanging loose all decade had just been yanked tight.

She sucked in a breath.

“What the—” she started, then cut off as it tugged again, harder.

Her tattoos prickled under her skin, little static sparks racing out along her arms, down into her fingertips.

It felt like the first crack of a storm rolling over the peaks.

Recognition without memory.

Like hearing the first bar of a song she didn’t know but somehow… knew.

Her feet were already moving.

She cut down the side street between the café and the florist, boots almost silent on the pavement, the usual morning noise of Main blurring behind her.

The truck noise grew louder as she hit the quieter cul-de-sac along the edge of town.

She turned the corner and there it was.

Big white truck. Ramp down. Cardboard boxes scattered across the lawn like weird, brown boulders.

And there, in the driveway of the house whose backyard backed straight onto her strip of woods, her shed—

People.

Two women by the ramp.

One of them shorter, dark hair tucked under a beanie even though it was too warm for it, sleeves rolled up, gently tanned skin flashing when she moved. She was talking with her whole body, hands flying, roll of tape swinging like a microphone, laughing at something only she could’ve phrased exactly that way.

The other taller, long hair catching the light when she turned, posture relaxed but somehow precise. She lifted a box labeled KITCHEN like it weighed nothing, balanced it easily, and sent the shorter woman a look that could only be described as fond exasperation.

Two kids blurred around them.

A little girl, maybe five, clutching a stuffed rabbit, moving with careful intent even when she ran. A little boy, younger, cape tied crookedly around his shoulders, freckles dusted over his nose, launching himself up the porch steps like each one was a victory.

Rumi stopped dead on the edge of the driveway.

The pull in her chest snapped tight and stayed there.

The air around her felt different. Charged. Like all the thin winter-threads she’d woven through this town over ten years had turned their heads and gone that way. Right there. Look.

Her fingers curled inside her pockets.

She watched the taller woman speak, lips moving in a line Rumi couldn’t hear. Watched the shorter woman bump her hip into her, grin wide and ridiculous. Watched the kids shriek as they ran up the steps, then back down, like the concept of “house” was a brand-new game.

She’d watched so many families arrive and leave this town.

It had never felt like this.

Her throat went dry. She swallowed, hard.

She didn’t know who they were.

Didn’t know why just looking at them made the cold inside her feel suddenly… focused. Why the little shed behind that house no longer felt like a secret but like a front-row seat she’d been assigned without being asked.

All she knew, with a certainty that had nothing to do with memory, was that something in her life had just quietly slid into a new track.

She took one careful step onto the driveway.

Then another.

Her heart—or whatever she had that passed for one—thudded against her ribs like it wanted out.

“Okay,” she breathed, barely audible under the idle engine and the kids’ noise. “We’re not being weird. We’re just… observing. This is science. Ghost science.”

The shorter woman hopped up onto the bottom porch step, stretching on tiptoe to hang a wreath on a hook that was just a little too high. The roll of tape dangled from her wrist; her balance was questionable at best.

“You’re gonna fall,” Rumi muttered automatically. “Shortstack, that is not your skillset.”

The woman wobbled.

The taller one turned without looking surprised, like her body already knew what was happening. She stepped in, one hand landing sure and steady at the smaller woman’s waist, steadying her before she could tip backward.

The shorter woman burst into laughter, cheeks flushing. She elbowed the taller one in the ribs, eyes bright with something easy and well-worn.

Rumi’s breath hitched, sharper now.

The thread in her chest warmed and ached at the same time.

She didn’t understand it.

Didn’t have context.

All she had was the pull.

Stronger than anything she’d felt since waking up on that hill with snow in her eyelashes and a jacket that might have belonged to a stranger.

She stood there in the too-warm autumn air that never sat quite right on her skin and stared at the family unpacking their life into this driveway, into this house pressed up against the woods she’d claimed as hers.

And for the first time in ten years, something in her carefully held routine cracked.

Because the storm that was her existence—unwanted, unasked for, relentless—had just found something it couldn’t blow past.

Something it wanted to circle.

Something it wanted, desperately and irrationally, to stay near.

Her fingers flexed at her sides, lightning tattoos prickling like they were waking up with her.

“Oh,” she whispered, so quietly the word could’ve been a thought.

It sat there in the warm air between her and the house.

Small.

Dangerous.

Like the very first note of a song that already lived in her bones.

———

By late afternoon, the house looked like it was mid-swallow.

Cardboard boxes sat in lopsided stacks across the front room, half-hidden behind thin curtains. Through the open front door came the sounds of a family trying to wrestle their lives into a new shape—tape ripping, something being dropped, Zoey- Rumi had learned her name quickly, was swearing softly and then laughing it off, a kid shrieking with the kind of delight that said someone had found a box of toys.

Rumi stayed under the maple.

It was technically in the Choi’s front yard, but the trunk grew right by the sidewalk, roots pushing up through the grass and into public space. She’d picked it deliberately: close enough to see in, far enough to pretend she wasn’t doing anything weird.

She hit the bark lightly with her knuckles.

“Perimeter check,” she told the tree. “We are staying outside. We are not breaking the No Houses rule. We are not a creep.”

The maple, rude, did not answer.

From here she could see the big front window when the curtains shifted. Warm light spilled out in uneven slices, catching on dust and packing paper. Zoey crossed the frame first, hair jammed under a beanie, T-shirt riding up every time she lifted a box.

“Please don’t drop that, sunshine,” Rumi murmured, watching her arms strain. “My heart can’t take it.”

Mira appeared a moment later, tall and steady, taking the box right out of Zoey’s hands like it weighed nothing. She mouthed something that made Zoey roll her eyes and stick her tongue out before leaning in to steal a quick kiss.

Rumi slapped a hand over her own face.

“Okay. Nope. We’re not doing this,” she told her fingers. “We are not catching feelings for married women on day one. Absolutely not. Denied.”

Inside, Yuni—the oldest child, darted past the open doorway, clutching a plush rabbit to her chest like a life raft. Jae-Jae bounced behind her, cape holding on by a thread around his small shoulders, already stepping on every piece of bubble wrap he could find.

“Same, buddy,” Rumi muttered as each pop echoed out to the yard. “Honestly, mood.”

She could have left then. She should have. She had an entire town to walk, a whole circuit she usually did before evening: the main street, the hill, the grocery store that always over-salted their sidewalks. Routine was how she held herself together—rules and loops and paths she knew by heart.

But that thread in her chest tugged again.

Not gentle. Not polite.

A pull, deep and insistent, toward the little blue house and the family trying to fit inside it.

Rumi dug her heels into the still-green grass.

“No,” she told herself. “We’re just… checking. Making sure nobody dies on day one. That’s responsible. That’s community service.”

Behind the new house, the woods sat dark and familiar, the first trees of the slope she’d claimed as her own. Her shed was back there somewhere, tucked into the line where the town ended and the forest began. She could feel it like a second heartbeat.

Between here and there: the Chois’ backyard.

Her backyard now, too, technically.

The thought made her stomach flip.

She pushed away from the maple, boots scuffing softly on the sidewalk.

“Fine,” she muttered. “We’ll go check the back stairs and then we’re out. In, out, no feelings. Ghost honor.”

She cut along the side of the house, sticking close to the hedge. It was the kind of narrow gap kids turned into a racetrack, dirt already worn into a path. She didn’t rustle the leaves. She didn’t disturb anything. She was a shadow threaded along the wall.

The backyard opened up wider than she’d remembered.

Patchy late-summer grass, a few stubborn dandelions, a laundry line with no pegs yet. A small raised porch stretched along the back of the house, three wooden steps leading down to a cracked concrete pad. Someone had left the sliding door half open; warm air and house noise spilled out.

Rumi stopped at the treeline where the grass gave way to pine needles.

“This is the line,” she breathed. “Tree good. Porch bad. Say it with me.”

She took one exaggerated step backward until her heel touched a root.

“Good girl,” she told herself under her breath. “We’re learning boundaries.”

On the porch, Zoey wrestled with a box labeled KITCHEN in all caps, shoulders straining, her T-shirt stretched tight across her back. Mira appeared behind her, reached around, and took half the weight without comment, hip bumping Zoey’s to make her move over.

Zoey tipped her head back against Mira’s shoulder with a grateful groan.

“Every time I think we’ve reached the bottom of the box pile,” she complained, “another one appears. I swear they’re breeding.”

Mira’s mouth quirked. “You wrote ‘miscellaneous’ on three of them. This is your fault.”

“It’s called mystery, babe. I’m keeping the spark alive.”

Mira dipped down to kiss the side of her neck.

Rumi pinched the bridge of her nose.

“I get it,” she hissed to the pine needles. “You’re in love. Congratulations. Please stop being so cute, I’m trying to be emotionally distant back here.”

A high-pitched shriek cut across the yard.

“Maaaaaaa!”

Yuni exploded out the back door, nearly tripping over the threshold. She recovered immediately, shoulders stubbornly squared, stuffed bunny jammed under one arm like an executive briefcase.

Behind her, Jae-Jae barreled after, bare feet skidding on the deck. His hair stuck up in three different directions. A patch of dirt already decorated one knee.

“Slow down—” Mira started automatically.

Both kids ignored her.

Yuni stopped at the edge of the porch and stared out at the yard with a serious expression that looked wrong on such a tiny face. Her honey-brown eyes narrowed, scanning as if she were evaluating the property for purchase.

Her bunny drooped upside down, long ears brushing her bare calf.

Jae-Jae had zero interest in thoughtful inspection.

“This is so big,” he blurted, the word catching once, twice, before tumbling out. “So, so, so big!”

Rumi’s chest squeezed.

She’d heard kids stutter before; it was part of the soundtrack of playgrounds and kindergartens. But there was something about Jae-Jae’s determined little face, the way his eyebrows knotted like he could physically push the stuck syllables through by sheer force of will—it did something to her.

“Take your time, Beanie,” she said quietly, the nickname slipping out before she could stop it. “You got it.”

He couldn’t hear her. Of course he couldn’t. He was too busy leaping off the bottom step and landing in the grass with a whoop.

“I found sticks!” he announced to absolutely no one, scooping one up like he’d discovered buried treasure.

Yuni remained on the porch, nose wrinkling.

“There’s bugs,” she pointed out, sounding equal parts fascinated and offended.

“You are a bug,” Zoey said fondly, nudging her with a knee as she came out with another flattened box in her arms. “You’ll all get along.”

Yuni scowled. “Mommy.”

Rumi’s mouth twitched.

Bug.

She tucked that away with an almost painful softness. Yuni and her bunny and her high-cheek dimples, forever Bug in her mothers’ mouths.

Zoey dropped the box, shook out her hands, and leaned against the porch railing, watching the kids.

Mira stepped outside behind her, wiping her hands on a dish towel, pink hair thrown up into a messy knot that still somehow looked like a magazine spread.

She slid in behind Zoey, arms looping around her waist, chin dipping to rest on her shoulder.

“Look,” Zoey said in a stage whisper, gesturing at the children. “Wild offspring in their natural habitat.”

Jae-Jae swung his stick at absolutely nothing, sound-effecting his own battle. “Pew! P-p-pewpewpew!”

Yuni hopped carefully from crack to crack in the old concrete path, bunny clutched up under her chin whenever she hit a wide gap.

Rumi leaned into the tree trunk, its roughness grounding against her spine.

“The natural habitat of my heart attack,” she muttered, eyes fixed on the porch steps. Each riser looked sharper now, more dangerous. She could already see small heads at the wrong angle.

Stay calm, she told herself. They’re fine. All kids survive smacking into things—

Jae-Jae lost interest in sticks exactly one second later.

He turned back toward the house, spotted the stairs, and his entire face lit up like someone had offered him fireworks.

“Oh, no,” Rumi said instantly. “Absolutely not.”

He scrambled up the steps, small hands gripping the open railing slats. At the top, he spun around, wobbling dangerously on his toes.

“Yuni! Look!” he cried. “I’m tall!”

The word snagged in his mouth, stuttering on the T until his cheeks flushed and his jaw locked tight.

He stomped one foot in frustration.

Rumi took a step closer, heart in her throat.

“Tall,” she supplied from the yard, voice gentle. “You’re tall. It counts, buddy, you said it.”

Jae-Jae’s chest heaved once.

Then he tried again, slower.

“I’m… tall.”

The second time, it came out clean.

His whole body relaxed, triumphant, the kind of victory that made his limbs bounce. He didn’t know about the invisible winter woman cheering for him from the tree line. He didn’t have to.

Yuni considered him with all the gravitas of a judge on a reality show.

“You’re still small,” she said finally. “Bunny is taller.”

Bunny was absolutely not taller.

Jae-Jae gasped anyway, clutching his imaginary pearls. “No!”

He threw his arms out and—because of course he did—he jumped.

Rumi moved.

Time did the stretchy thing it did in near-misses. One moment Jae-Jae was a blur of motion, bare toes leaving the top step with zero concern for gravity. The next, Rumi was already off the tree, boots tearing grooves in the grass.

She crossed the yard in three long strides, cold rushing up under her skin like it had been waiting for the cue.

He should’ve gone face-first into the concrete.

Thud, crack, scream.

Rumi got there first.

She dropped to one knee, arms sweeping up under him in a clean, practiced scoop she hadn’t known she still remembered how to do. He hit her chest instead of the ground, all small limbs and startled sound, the impact knocking air out of both of them.

“Got you,” she breathed, the words bursting out of her before she could stop them. “Hey, hey, I’ve got you—”

He couldn’t hear her. Not really. But his body understood the catch; muscles reflexively curled toward the support.

For one strange heartbeat, he fit there perfectly—warm and heavy and real against her ribs.

Rumi’s eyes stung.

She swallowed hard, breath shuddering out in a small laugh.

“Buddy,” she scolded softly, even as relief made her shaky. “You can’t just launch yourself into the concrete. There’s, like… physics. And my nerves to consider.”

Jae-Jae’s bewildered little face screwed up.

He hadn’t hit anything. He knew he hadn’t. He knew he’d jumped wrong; he’d felt his feet skid on the top step, the moment of oh-no as his body pitched too far forward.

But instead of pain, there was… this. A cold, steady wall where air should’ve been. A weird, soft stop that smelled faintly like snow and dust and something sharp.

He wriggled, trying to see around the feeling of being held without arms.

“Jae-Jae!”

Zoey’s shout cracked across the yard.

Rumi flinched like she’d been caught doing something illegal.

She eased him down fast, guiding his bare feet to the ground, palms gentle at his back. The moment his weight transferred to his own legs, she stepped sideways, letting him spill forward onto his hands and knees in the grass.

He let out a delayed yelp—more from surprise than pain.

“OW.”

Zoey thundered down the steps, socks sliding on the wood. Mira was right behind her, dishtowel still in hand.

“What happened?!” Zoey scooped him up in one go, hands flying over his limbs in a frantic parent scan. “What did you do? Are you bleeding? Are you dying? Mira, is he dying?”

Mira, calmer, peeled his hair back from his forehead, checking for bumps.

Jae-Jae sniffled, eyes wide.

“I… I f-f-fell,” he said, brow scrunching, “but… but I didn’t.”

Rumi hovered at the edge of the concrete, half on the grass, half not, ears burning. She wasn’t in the house. She wasn’t on the porch. She was technically still outside. Legal enough.

“Yeah, that’s because you had a secret safety net,” she told him under her breath. “Patent pending.”

Zoey cradled him closer. “You almost kissed the concrete. You cannot kiss the concrete in this house. That is the only rule.”

Mira’s mouth twitched. “We have other rules.”

Zoey gestured wildly with the hand not currently mom-gripping their son. “Okay, but this one is at the top now.”

Jae-Jae hiccuped a laugh. “S-sorry.”

He hated how the S snagged, like it kept tripping over itself. His cheeks pinked with a flash of shame.

Rumi felt it like a physical thing, a punch behind her ribs.

She crouched, staying out of direct line of sight, and addressed the back of his head.

“You did great,” she told him quietly. “You fixed it. You’re okay. That’s the important part, yeah?”

Jae-Jae sagged against Zoey’s shoulder.

Zoey pressed a kiss into his hair like it was a reflex. “You’re going to make me go grey, Beanie,” she muttered. “And I can’t pull that off yet. Let me age gracefully.”

Mira snorted. “You dye it black, Zo. Grey is the least of your problems.”

“Hey,” Zoey protested faintly. “My hair is a personality trait.”

“Unfortunately.”

Zoey stuck her tongue out at her.

Mira leaned in and stole a quick kiss off it.

Rumi made an ugly, strangled noise into her own fist.

“Okay,” she told the pine needles at the edge of the yard. “We get it. You’re disgustingly in love. Thank you for your service. Some of us are trying to do emergency risk assessments and not fall in love with you from the bushes.”

Yuni, meanwhile, had watched the entire almost-fall with wide eyes, bunny crushed to her chest.

Now she stomped over, tiny jaw set.

“Jae-Jae, you’re not allowed to die until we’re eighty,” she informed him. “I already decided.”

“I d-didn’t,” he protested, glaring at the offending steps.

Yuni glared too, like she might put the stairs in time-out.

Rumi couldn’t help it; a laugh escaped her, soft and fond.

“Yeah,” she said. “You tell those steps what’s what, Bug.”

Zoey caught Yuni around the shoulders and reeled her in for a hug as well, rabbit and all.

“Okay, new rule,” she announced into their hair. “No jumping off things that are taller than Bunny.”

Yuni considered this gravely.

“Bunny is very short,” she pointed out.

Zoey sighed. “Okay, no jumping off anything taller than mama.” She jabbed a thumb at Mira. “She’s the tallest. That covers everything.”

Mira rolled her eyes, but there was a softness there that made Rumi’s throat close.

She stepped back, giving them space.

Her heart was still beating too fast. That little adrenaline spike—catching a falling kid—had woken up something she’d kept on a low simmer for years. That instinct to intervene. To protect. To throw her body between small humans and hard surfaces like she was bulletproof.

She wasn’t.

But it felt better pretending she was than accepting the alternative: standing still and watching.

Zoey corralled both kids toward the sliding door, muttering about snacks and hydration and “no, you cannot eat tape again, I don’t care if it’s ‘yummy sticky,’ why are you like this.”

Mira held the door open, one hand resting at the small of Zoey’s back when she passed, fingers lingering like they couldn’t help it.

Rumi looked away, cheeks hot.

“That’s enough feelings for one afternoon,” she told the air. “We did safety. We did soft mom-moment. We’re out. We are absolutely not watching them eat granola bars as a special treat. That’s weird.”

She turned to the trees.

She took one step.

“Just a quick perimeter check,” she bargained with herself, pivoting mid-stride. “I need to make sure their back window locks are okay. That’s responsible. That’s not weird.”

The house’s windows glowed gradually warmer as the sun slid down behind the mountains. Canmore’s ridge line cut the sky into sharp angles, the last light catching on snow dust higher up while the town stayed stubbornly autumn.

Rumi moved along the fence line, sticking to the shadows under the evergreens.

From the side yard, she could see into what would clearly be the kids’ room: two small beds squeezed into a square of a space, boxy dresser, one wall already colonized by an army of plush toys and paperbacks spilled out of an open box.

Yuni sat cross-legged on one bed, bunny propped upright in front of her like a VIP guest. The stuffed rabbit sported a brand new ribbon around its neck—probably scavenged from packing paper—and a terribly lopsided paper crown.

“You’re queen,” Yuni informed her gravely, patting Bunny’s floppy head. “But you still have to listen to me.”

Rumi grinned, teeth catching her lower lip.

“Healthy boundaries,” she noted. “We love to see it.”

On the other bed, Jae-Jae bounced on his knees, holding a toy car in each hand, making them crash in the middle with dramatic explosion noises.

When the cars smashed together, he flung himself backwards in slow motion, tongue sticking out the side of his mouth as he fake-died on the pillow.

Yuni didn’t look up from Bunny’s coronation.

“You can’t die either,” she said absently. “I told you.”

Jae-Jae popped back up immediately, resurrected. “I have m-m-magic,” he declared.

The way he said it made Rumi’s chest ache.

He didn’t mean ice powers or secret sled-saving or the strange physics she operated under.

He meant resilience. The kind you had to grow early when your words tripped you and you had to keep getting up anyway.

“Yeah, you do,” Rumi whispered, fingers curling into the bark of the tree. “You both do.”

Zoey swept into the room a few minutes later with an armful of mismatched blankets. Her hair was up now in a messy bun, small wisps escaping everywhere, freckles bright even from a distance. She dumped the blankets on the floor, then immediately tripped over them and nearly face-planted.

Mira appeared in the doorway with two small nightlights dangling from her fingers.

She watched Zoey’s near-death with a raised, unimpressed eyebrow.

“Graceful,” she said, lips barely moving.

Zoey flipped her off without looking, then caught herself, eyes darting to the kids.

“Don’t do that,” she told them automatically.

Yuni frowned. “You just did it.”

Zoey opened her mouth, realized she had no defense, and turned back to the blankets.

“I’m a professional educator,” she muttered to herself. “They let me shape young minds.”

Mira crossed the room with her slow, steady stride, setting one nightlight on each bedside table. One was shaped like a star, the other like a little snowman.

Rumi’s breath caught at the second one.

“Too on the nose,” she informed the universe. “That’s rude.”

Mira plugged them both in. The room glowed with twin puddles of soft light.

Zoey was busy tucking blankets around Yuni like she was wrapping a burrito.

“Babe,” Mira said, watching. “She has to be able to breathe.”

“She’ll be warm,” Zoey argued, adding one more layer for good measure.

Yuni lay very still under the quilt mountain, bunny clutched in both hands, only her eyes visible.

“I can’t m-move,” she announced.

Zoey beamed, satisfied. “Perfect. Safer that way.”

Jae-Jae clambered obediently into his own bed when Mira patted it. She smoothed his hair back from his forehead, fingers gentle. His eyes drooped immediately, exhaustion catching up now that the day’s chaos was slowing.

From outside, Rumi watched the scene like someone pressed against a cinema window.

Nightlights.

Bunny.

Two small bodies tucked into safety.

She’d seen so many bedtime routines through flickers of glass—different houses, different families, the same soft beats. It always hit her somewhere tender.

But watching this one, with that stupid thread in her chest wound tight around the house, did something worse.

Made her imagine standing in that doorframe, instead of the tree line.

Made her picture walking in, ruffling Jae-Jae’s hair, high-fiving Yuni’s bunny, cracking some dumb bedtime joke until Zoey rolled her eyes and Mira pretended not to smile.

“Denied,” she told herself firmly. “Fantasy not authorized. Retract.”

Her voice trembled anyway.

Zoey bent over Yuni and kissed the strip of forehead peeking out.

“Goodnight, Bug,” she whispered. “Welcome home.”

Yuni’s little hand snaked free enough to pat Bunny’s head and then Zoey’s cheek.

“Night, Mommy and Mama,” she murmured. “Night, Bunny.”

Mira did a last sweep of the room, gaze scanning shadows like she could intimidate monsters into leaving.

She kissed Jae-Jae’s temple. He mumbled something incoherent and immediately drooled on his pillow.

“Disgusting,” Mira said fondly.

Zoey flicked the overhead light off, leaving only star-and-snowman glow.

“New house, same us,” she said, leaning against the doorframe. “That’s the rule. Okay?”

“’Kay,” came the sleepy chorus.

Rumi pressed her forehead to the tree, eyes closed for a beat.

“Same you,” she echoed under her breath. “New ghost.”

The door closed.

The house shifted from loud chaos to that particular hum of tired adults cleaning up just enough to function tomorrow.

Rumi ghosted along the back fence until she found a better angle on the kitchen window.

Inside, Zoey stood barefoot at the sink, rinsing out two mismatched mugs. Her sweater hung off one shoulder, exposing a stretch of freckled skin, collarbone disappearing under old fabric.

Rumi stared for a second too long, then slapped a hand over her eyes.

“We are not noticing shoulders,” she hissed. “We are a disembodied spirit of winter. Shoulders are none of our business.”

She peeked through her fingers anyway.

Mira moved behind Zoey, drying plates from the dish rack. Every motion precise, efficient. She bumped Zoey’s hip lightly to make her move aside and check that the window above the sink actually latched.

Rumi watched her fingers test the lock.

“Good,” she approved softly. “Points for home security.”

Zoey finished the mugs, shook water off her hands, and then just… stopped. Fingers resting on the edge of the sink, shoulders dropping a fraction.

She stared out into the dark backyard.

Straight toward where Rumi stood.

Rumi froze, lungs forgetting how to work.

The glass reflected the kitchen lights enough that Zoey couldn’t see beyond her own face. She was just looking at her own tired eyes. Rumi knew that. She did.

Still, something about the way Zoey’s gaze lingered on the night made that thread in Rumi’s chest tug, the pull almost painful.

“Hey,” Zoey said quietly, not moving her eyes from the window. “We did it.”

Mira stepped up beside her, their shoulders almost touching.

Her reflection appeared in the glass too, taller, steadier.

“We did,” she agreed.

Zoey huffed out a breath, cheeks puffing for a second. “It looks like a tornado got trapped inside IKEA.”

Mira’s lips curved. “Accurate.”

Zoey’s hand lifted, fingertips tracing an absent little circle on the foggy part of the glass, right where the warmer kitchen air met the slight cool outside.

Her fingertip left a tiny streak, like a very bad ghost doodle.

Rumi’s fingers flexed in automatic answer, the urge to lay her palm over that spot nearly overwhelming.

“Do you think we made the right choice?” Zoey asked.

The words were quiet, swallowed by the room, barely audible even to Rumi straining to catch them through the glass. She’d gotten good at reading lips over ten years. At stitching together conversations from scraps.

Mira didn’t answer immediately.

She set the plate in her hands down, wiped her fingers on a dish towel, and then stepped closer.

Her hand found Zoey’s waist with the ease of long practice, thumb pressing into soft fabric, grounding.

“Yes,” she said, voice certain.

Zoey’s shoulders dropped properly this time, tension leaking out.

“Even if it’s chaos,” Mira added. “Even if we have to eat granola bars for dinner because someone forgot which box the food is in.”

Zoey tipped her head back against Mira’s shoulder with a groan. “The food box is mislabeled, okay? I gave up labeling them correctly preeetty fast.” Then she smiled softly. “Plus like I said I’m keeping the spark alive with mystery”

Mira turned her head, pressing her mouth to Zoey’s hair.

“We’ve been together for over ten years,” she murmured. “I think the spark is fine.”

Zoey twisted just enough to look up at her, eyes bright again despite the exhaustion.

“Yeah?” she asked, mock-shy. “You still like me?”

Mira’s answer was silent in Rumi’s vantage, just the soft curve of her mouth as she leaned in and kissed her slow and sure.

Zoey melted into it like she’d been waiting all day.

Rumi’s hand tightened on the fence so hard a splinter bit her palm.

“Okay,” she croaked. “I am… actually going to combust. Fantastic. New power unlocked: spontaneous gay combustion.”

Inside, the kiss broke with reluctant amusement. Zoey’s shoulders shook; she said something that made Mira snort and flick the dish towel at her.

They moved around each other in the kitchen for a while, brushing shoulders, bumping hips, trading small touches without thinking. Mira kept reaching out—to steady a stack of lunchboxes, to tuck a loose strand of Zoey’s hair behind her ear, to rest a hand on the small of her back when she stepped around an open cupboard.

Zoey kept leaning back into every touch, every time.

Rumi watched all of it, throat tight, heart doing things it had no business doing.

This wasn’t hers. None of this was hers.

But it felt like standing next to a bonfire after a decade of living in the cold.

And she didn’t know how to walk away.

Eventually, the Chois turned off lights, one by one. Living room dim. Hallway dim. Only the kids’ room and the kitchen left glowing, like two little beacons.

Rumi stepped back from the fence.

Her boots sank into the edge of the woods, pine needles soft underfoot.

She looked up at the house—at the rectangle of Yuni and Jae-Jae’s window with its two little nightlights glowing, at the kitchen window with Zoey and Mira’s silhouettes moving closer together in a let’s go to bed we’re both exhausted hug.

Her chest ached.

She couldn’t go inside.

She wouldn’t.

That rule had kept her sane for a decade. No houses. No crossing thresholds she wasn’t invited through. Watching was one thing. Walking into people’s private spaces, breathing their air, touching their things—that felt like theft.

But there were other ways to reach them.

Smaller.

Quieter.

Ones that left no footprints.

Rumi flexed her fingers, cold prickling at her fingertips like it always did when she let herself lean into it.

“Tiny crime,” she told herself. “Victimless.”

She stepped back out of the treeline, circling the yard slowly.

Below the kids’ window, she stopped, creasing a mountain of snow to take her up to the second floor.

Night breathe puffed from her mouth in a soft cloud. She lifted her hand, held her palm a few inches from the glass.

“Sleep safe, Bug. Sleep safe, Beanie,” she murmured, voice barely a scratch in the air.

Then she exhaled.

Frost blossomed across the lower corner of the window in a delicate spray—tiny flowers made of fern-like curls, each petal branching into smaller and smaller spokes. It caught the glow of the nightlights from inside, turning the pattern into a pale, shimmering crown around the glass.

Yuni, half-awake, blinked once at the new glitter on the window.

Her eyes were heavy, brain already slipping toward dreams. She squinted at the frost with a vague little frown, then rolled over and stuffed Bunny under her chin, satisfied that the room was still hers.

Rumi moved on, making sure to melt her mountain of snow. She didn’t want to leave to much evidence behind.

At the small square bathroom window above the back porch, she drew a ring of frost flowers. At the living room window, she coaxed the frost into a lacey border that looked like someone had crocheted snow.

At the kitchen window, she paused, watching Zoey and Mira one last time as they turned off the overhead light, leaving only the small lamp in the corner on.

Zoey leaned into Mira, head on her shoulder, arms curled around her middle.

Mira’s chin rested on top of her hair.

Rumi swallowed.

“Thank you,” she told them softly, even though they couldn’t hear, even though they would never know. “For… existing, I guess. For moving here. For laughing so loud it reaches the trees.”

She lifted her hand.

This time, the frost curled into something more intricate—a small cluster of tiny tulip-shaped blooms at the bottom corner, each petal edged in sharp white, the stems twisting into a quiet spiral.

It looked like flowers left on a doorstep.

A blessing.

A hello.

A line crossed right up to, but not over, the threshold.

Rumi stepped back, admiring her own work like a vandal with a conscience.

“Okay,” she decided, voice steadier now. “That’s enough. We’re leaving. We did our weird little snow graffiti. We kept the kid’s brain inside his skull. Gold star. Go home.”

Home was the shed in the trees, the lumpy couch and the wall of carved days and the little mirror where her reflection only showed up properly when winter came and belief in her got so loud she couldn’t ignore it.

She turned toward the woods.

The house behind her glowed softly, ringed in frosted flowers and patterns, each window wearing a little piece of her.

As she walked, the air cooled further, warm autumn edging reluctantly toward the season she belonged to. Somewhere up above, hidden in the dark sky, the first thin veil of high cloud slid in front of the stars.

Rumi shoved her hands into her pockets, shoulders hunching.

“Goodnight, Choi house,” she muttered, the words slipping out without permission. “Be safe. Don’t fall down the stairs. Don’t eat mystery tape. Don’t… fall apart.”

She stopped, just at the edge of the trees.

The thread in her chest tugged one last time, winding itself around the little blue house with its question-mark future and its ridiculously lovable residents.

Rumi exhaled, mist puffing in front of her.

“Fine,” she told the dark. “We’ll check on you tomorrow. For safety. Obviously. That’s the only reason. Totally normal ghost thing to do.”

The woods swallowed her up, cool and familiar.

Behind her, the hill in the center of town sat quiet for once, waiting for snow.

Behind her, the Choi house stood under its new frost crown.

And somewhere between the two—tethered to the hill and pulled toward the house—a winter girl named Rumi, or Ru, or whatever else the kids would decide to call her, walked through the trees with her heart doing something impossible.

She was not ready to name it.

Yet.

But it felt suspiciously like a beginning.

Rumi didn’t remember walking back.

She remembered the porch light bleeding warm gold onto the steps. The frosted flower glittering on the window like a confession. The soft thud of her boots on the Choi’s front path, the way the yard light haloed the grass and the edge of the woods like the world was politely pretending it didn’t see her trespassing.

Then—trees, dark trunks like ribs, the familiar narrow track into the little clearing that was hers.

Now she was in the shed again.

The door was shut. The air was cooler than outside, dust and old timber and the faint trace of her own winter clinging to everything she touched. The darkness was softer in here, wrapped around the shape of the room like a blanket that didn’t quite fit.

She lay on the couch on her back, boots still on, arms folded over her stomach like she could hold herself together by force.

Above her, the ceiling was a patchwork of beams and water stains and little spiderweb corners that never quite collected dust the way they should. She’d stared at it so many nights she could’ve drawn it from memory.

Tonight it looked different anyway.

Maybe because everything did, now.

Rumi exhaled slowly, the sound thin in the quiet. Her eyes stayed open, fixed on a knot in the wood that looked vaguely like a face if you stared too long.

She let her brain do the thing she knew she shouldn’t let it do.

She replayed the house.

The mess of boxes. The hallway light softening the edges of everything. The star-shaped nightlight glowing in Yuni and Jae-Jae’s room like a tiny planet holding up the dark. The way cardboard and chaos had still somehow looked… like a beginning.

She heard Zoey’s laugh again, bouncing off walls that weren’t even theirs yet. Bright, frayed at the ends, but stubbornly warm.

She saw Mira moving through the chaos like she’d been born for it—steady hands, steady gaze, the kind of calm that made other people calmer just by existing in the same room.

She replayed Yuni’s quiet little seriousness, the stuffed bunny under one arm like a permanent accessory, those big honey eyes tracking everything. And Jae-Jae’s reckless joy, the way he’d gone barreling toward the porch steps earlier—

Rumi winced at the memory and groaned quietly.

“Little gremlin,” she muttered to the ceiling. “You’re going to give me a heart attack. If I… still have that.”

Her mouth twitched before she could stop it.

A smile. Small, helpless.

She pressed her lips together like she could shove it back down.

“No,” she told the beam-knot-face firmly. “Nope. Absolutely not.”

Her voice sounded too loud, too personal in the shed’s quiet. Like she was admitting something to the walls.

She swallowed and tried again, sterner. “We are not doing this. We are not… attaching.”

Because she knew what attachment did.

Attachment made you hopeful.

Hope made you stupid.

And stupid got you hurt.

It didn’t matter if you were human or half-borrowed winter—those rules still applied. She’d seen it even from the outside. People clinging to each other in snowstorms, or to houses, or to jobs, or to the idea of “next year will be better.” The ones who believed hardest looked the most wrecked when things fell apart.

She’d promised herself she wouldn’t do that.

“You made a whole list,” she reminded herself, eyes flicking sideways to the wall covered in marks. “Rule one, remember? Don’t fall in love with places that can’t love you back. Pretty sure ‘people’ was implied.”

Her gaze caught on the tally marks instead.

Ten years carved into a surface that didn’t fight back. Ten years of waking up alone, moving through Canmore like an uncredited extra, making jokes to an empty street because the alternative was letting silence eat through her.

She should have been used to it.

She was used to it.

So why had one family moving in made her chest feel like it was full of something sharp and bright?

Rumi squeezed her eyes shut and scrubbed both hands over her face, palms cool against her skin.

“Stop,” she muttered into her fingers. “Stop, stop, stop.”

It was useless, obviously. Her thoughts were gremlins. Tell them not to chew on something and they’d take it apart faster just to see what was underneath.

She dropped her hands again and tried to picture the Choi family like any other family.

Just people. Just a house. Just another story she would watch and never touch.

It should’ve worked.

It didn’t.

Because her brain kept doing the worst thing it could possibly do: it kept circling back to Zoey and Mira.

Zoey, with her animated hands and dramatic sighs, that grin that made exhaustion look like a joke instead of a weight. Zoey bouncing between boxes like she’d drunk three coffees and eaten a handful of glitter. Zoey talking to her kids like every word was a secret spell that meant you’re safe, you’re loved, you’re mine.

Mira, tall and composed, eyes that said everything even when her mouth didn’t. Mira’s hand at Zoey’s waist without thinking about it. Mira’s low voice wrapping around small practical sentences like we did it and we’re okay and making them sound like oaths.

Rumi’s throat tightened.

She opened her eyes again, blinking hard.

“No,” she said to the rafters, sharper now, like she could scold her own thoughts into behaving. “No. We’re not—”

Her sentence died, because the image of them wouldn’t leave.

Zoey’s black hair—dark enough to drink the light, blue where the sun caught it in the driveway—messy from the day, bun half-falling apart. Mira’s pink hair pulled back, little wisps escaping to frame her face. Two women standing in the mess of their new life, close enough to share breath, looking at each other like they were home even when the house was still a cardboard disaster.

Rumi’s smile returned, uninvited.

It tugged at the corner of her mouth like it had a right to be there.

“God,” she whispered, half amused, half mortified. “They’re… beautiful.”

The word hit her like a little shove.

Beautiful.

Not just in the way her eyes had immediately catalogued—Zoey’s soft edges and strong legs, Mira’s long lines and quiet strength—but in the way they fit. The way Zoey’s chaos curved around Mira’s steadiness like they’d been poured into one shape. The way they handed exhaustion back and forth like a joke. The way “we” came out of Mira’s mouth like it had always been plural.

Her chest ached.

It wasn’t the sharp heartbreak of being unseen. Not tonight. That ache was still there, always there, but this was layered over it. Softer. More dangerous.

Longing.

She hated it.

She rolled onto her side, then kept going, turning her face into the couch cushion until the rough fabric brushed her nose. She mumbled straight into it, voice muffled.

“Nope. Not healthy. Not doing this. This is weird. You’re weird.”

Her own breath warmed the cushion. She could feel the faint chill of her skin against it, the contrast that never really went away. She could feel her body—solid enough to ache, solid enough to hold, solid enough to want.

That was the problem.

Ten years ago, she’d been more ghost than girl. Wanting anything had felt pointless. There was no one to want. No one to hold. No one to even know her name—if it was her name.

Now?

Now she could catch a child before he split his head on concrete.

Now she could leave frost-flowers on windows where warm light spilled through.

Now she could walk past a bakery and feel her stomach twist with hunger that didn’t make any sense.

Now she could stand at the edge of a driveway and feel the world tilt because a black-haired woman laughed at a pink-haired woman like the sun rose for an audience of one.

Now she could lie here, cheeks heating, because she’d made the mistake of letting herself imagine—just for a second—what it would be like if they knew she existed.

Rumi rolled onto her back again, staring up.

The shed felt smaller tonight.

Or maybe her thoughts were just too big for it.

“Okay,” she muttered. “New plan. We’re going to logically dismantle this crush.”

She pointed at the ceiling like she was lecturing herself.

“One: they can’t see you,” she ticked off, fingers lifting one by one. “Two: they definitely can’t hear you. You are basically a weather phenomenon with opinions. Three: they already have a whole life.”

That last word came out a little softer than she meant it to.

Her hand dropped back to her stomach.

A whole life. A full one. Jobs and bills and school forms and favourite mugs and in-jokes. A routine that would settle into the bones of the house in a few weeks. A rhythm.

They had a “we.”

She had a hill.

And a shed.

And a wall full of tally marks that proved she’d been here and that nobody had ever said her name on purpose.

“Well,” she said dryly, “when you put it like that, this is even dumber than it felt in my head.”

Her cheeks still felt warm.

Rumi lifted one hand and held it above her face, fingers spread. Tiny threads of frost gathered at her fingertips, delicate as breath on glass. It was automatic now—like her magic responded to emotion without asking permission. Joy made snowflakes. Panic made ice walls. Whatever this stupid soft ache was apparently made glittery nothing that faded as soon as she noticed.

Her hand trembled. Not with cold.

With something else.

“Ten years,” she whispered, “and now you show up.”

She meant the family, but her voice sounded like it was talking to the hill too. To the invisible leash she’d never managed to slip.

Her thoughts snagged on that, like they always did.

The hill.

Her tether.

No matter where she walked in Canmore—no matter how far she pushed herself along back roads or up deer trails—there was always a point where the world seemed to tug her back. A gentle but undeniable pull, like gravity had decided that particular slope behind the park was her center of mass.

Every time she flared too big with winter, every time she stretched herself too far, she woke up there.

Flat on her back, snow in her lashes, lungs full of cold.

It was the closest thing she had to an origin story.

She didn’t remember the moment she died. If that’s what had happened.

All she had was a hill, a blank space where her life should be, and a jacket with Ruuuumi stitched over the heart like somebody once cared enough to label her.

The first kid who’d seen her properly—really seen her, not just a smear of white out of the corner of their eye—had squinted, lips moving, trying to sound it out.

“Ruuuuu… mi?” he’d whispered, breath fogging. “Ru.”

And that was it.

That was all it took.

Ru.

A misread patch and a child’s half-formed syllable and suddenly the hill had a rumor.

The not-quite-girl in the snow had a name that might not even be hers.

She’d clung to it anyway.

“Rumi,” she murmured now, trying the word on her tongue again, like maybe one night it would click into place differently. “Maybe-Rumi. Probably-Ru.”

It still felt… almost right.

Like a song with a missing verse.

She rolled her head on the pillow, turning to look at the wall again.

The tally marks stared back, rows and rows of scratched proof.

Her throat tightened, and this time she didn’t pretend she couldn’t feel it. She could cry. She’d learned that the hard way, on the fifth night of watching herself fail to pick up a cup at the café when the barista set it down for a customer and her hand had gone straight through it.

She’d gone back to the woods and sobbed until her chest hurt and her face felt raw from salt and cold.

Tonight, the burn in her eyes was softer. Not the sharp knife of panic. More like… the ache of being very, very aware of what you don’t have right after you’ve spent an evening almost having it.

She blinked hard until the tears blurred the rafters.

“Do not cry over strangers,” she told herself, voice a little wobbly. “That’s… creepy. That’s weird behaviour. You saw them for like—” she hesitated, thinking “—okay, several hours, but still.”

Her brain helpfully queued up highlights.

Zoey in the yard, balancing on the edge of the porch while Mira held the box steady below. Zoey laughing so hard at something Mira had said that she nearly slipped, and Mira catching her around the waist without missing a beat, rolling her eyes but smiling like this was her favourite disaster.

Zoey crouched to Jae-Jae’s level, voice soft, waiting out his stutter instead of rushing him. “Take your time, Beanie. I’m not going anywhere.”

Mira leaning in the doorway, watching them with that tiny curve at the corner of her mouth that meant she was a little bit in awe and would die before admitting it out loud.

Yuni, sitting on the floor in their shared room, lining up her stuffed bunny, a dinosaur, and a chipped plastic horse in a perfect row before bed, like she was checking attendance.

All of it, threaded together, made something that hurt to look at directly.

Warmth, her mind supplied quietly.

That’s what it was.

They were warm.

She snapped a hand up and slapped it over her own face.

“Absolutely not,” she said into her palm. “We are not thinking the word ‘warm’ about strangers.”

Her hand slipped a little as her mouth curved again.

Because it was too late.

The word had landed and it fit.

Warm, warm, warm.

The porch light. The way Zoey’s laugh filled a room like steam. The way Mira’s voice softened around the kids. The small glow of the star nightlight in that box-strewn bedroom.

They were warm.

And for a few hours, she’d been close enough to feel it.

She let her hand fall away again and stared at the ceiling, cheeks still hot.

That was maybe the worst part.

She wasn’t just… admiring from a distance. This wasn’t the harmless aesthetic appreciation of someone people-watching in a café they don’t belong to.

There was a part of her—small, traitorous, loud—that kept slotting herself into the pictures without permission.

Where would you sit, if you could?

Would you fit at that battered kitchen table between Zoey and Yuni? Would Zoey call you “Rooo-miiiii” in that teasing tone and shove a plate of too-sweet pastries at you, chin in her palm, eyes bright and nosy?

Would Mira pass you the coffee mug with the chipped handle, the one she clearly trusted more than the cabinet full of new things, and ask in that calm voice, “So. What are your plans today?” like it mattered?

Would Jae-Jae lean against her leg while he played, unconsciously trusting her the way he trusted his family not to let him fall?

Would Yuni eventually look up from whatever Very Important Task she was doing and offer a quiet, thoughtful comment that made Rumi feel both seen and mildly called out?

Her heart did something awful in her chest.

“Stop,” she whispered again, softer now. “Just… stop.”

Because what was she even imagining? It wasn’t like she could show up and say hi. Couldn’t knock on the door with a Hey, I’m your local semi-corporeal winter problem, any chance you’re into adding a ghost to your family package deal?

Even if she somehow became fully solid—if the hill loosened its hold and the belief in town thickened enough that she could pass for human—what then?

“Hi, I’ve been living in the woods behind your house for a decade and I think you’re both very pretty, your kids are amazing, and I might be dead, anyway do you need help with the dishes?”

Yeah.

That wasn’t horrifying at all.

Rumi groaned and dragged her hands down her face again.

“You are a disaster,” she told herself. “An actual, certified mess. Congratulations. Ten years of not getting attached and the hill throws two wives and two kids at you and you just—” she snapped her fingers weakly “—implode.”

Her brain, helpfully: Two wives.

Her stomach did a weird little swoop.

She’d noticed that, too. The ring on Mira’s hand. The matching one on Zoey’s. The way Zoey had said “We did it” and meant we like a unit. The casual intimacy of kisses in the kitchen, of hands sliding around familiar waists, of that unconscious gravitational pull they had toward each other.

It made something warm and shy bloom in her chest, the kind of feeling you get watching a scene in a movie you want to rewind and live in.

She liked that they were so obviously in love.

She liked that they were soft with each other even when they were tired. That Zoey didn’t hold back affection in front of the kids, and Mira didn’t either. That “mama” and “mommy” had already settled into the house like new names for the walls.

And she liked—

She swallowed, face heating again.

She liked the way they looked.

The sharp line of Mira’s jaw when she was focused. The way Zoey’s stance went wide and grounded when she was comforting one of the kids, making herself a little island they could cling to. The flash of Mira’s smile when Zoey said something truly stupid. The curve of Zoey’s mouth when she watched Mira from across the room like she still couldn’t believe her life.

Rumi could feel her own cheeks warming, the faint embarrassingly-normal burn of blood under skin that technically shouldn’t behave like this.

“Crush,” she muttered, admitting it out loud felt like dropping a stone in a still pond. “Absolute, textbook, pointless crush.”

Or two.

Great.

“So talented,” she added dryly. “Can’t remember your own last name, but sure, fall for both moms of the family you’re haunting. That’s normal.”

She turned her head toward the wall again, eyes tracing the tally marks.

Somewhere under all that bitter humour, something else was moving. A quieter thought. One that made her chest feel… strange.

The hill had pushed her toward them.

Not literally—she hadn’t felt it shove her like a hand—but it had loosened its grip just enough this afternoon that she’d ended up on that particular sidewalk at that particular time, staring at a moving truck like it had swallowed the sky.

Out of all the people who’d come and gone through Canmore in ten years, the hill had never done that.

She’d never felt this… pulled.

But the second she’d seen Zoey’s blue-black hair and Mira’s pink hair and the kids racing up the porch steps, something deep in her—something made of snow and lightning and unfinished stories—had gone, “Oh.”

“What are you doing to me?” she asked the invisible tether now, voice soft. “What do you want?”

No answer, obviously.

Just the creak of the shed settling and the faint whisper of leaves outside.

She thought about the hill in town, the first time she’d opened her eyes with snow in her lashes. The rush of cold, the blank stretch in her mind where a life should be. The feeling—so strong it still rang in her bones sometimes—of not ready, not yet.

What if this was the “yet”?

What if the reason she’d been stuck here, orbiting Canmore, playing guardian angel to sledding kids and drunk tourists on icy sidewalks, was because there was… something she hadn’t done?

Someone she hadn’t met?

Some family she was supposed to find?

The idea was ridiculous.

It also made her heart beat faster, which was unfair.

“Don’t do that,” she told it firmly. “We do not assign meaning. Meaning is how you get disappointed.”

Still, the thought sat there.

Heavy.

Persistent.

What if this is why the leash had never let her leave?

What if these four people—two wives and two little chaos goblins with matching eyes and different laughs—were the thing the hill had been holding her in place for?

The idea made her feel like her bones were humming. Like the frost under her skin had formed a new pattern she couldn’t quite see yet.

She sat up abruptly, swinging her legs off the couch. The movement sent a faint chill across the room, dust motes spinning in the beam of light leaking through the crack in the wall.

“Okay,” she said, pacing in the small space, fingers tangling in the hem of her shirt. “Okay. Ground rules. We are not going to decide a magical hill has shipped us with the local parents. That’s insane on… several levels.”

She pointed at the air in front of her like she was making a contract.

“You will not try to figure out how you would fit at their kitchen table. You will not imagine being the weird aunt who shows up with snow days and bad jokes. You will not picture helping Jae-Jae with his reading or Yuni with her Very Serious Homework. You will definitely not imagine what it would feel like to have Zoey lean into you on a couch and complain about her day, or Mira pass you a cup of tea and say your not-name like it belonged to her mouth.”

Her imagination immediately supplied the sound of Mira’s voice, low and thoughtful: “Rumi.”

Her knees nearly buckled.

“Oh my god,” she whispered, dropping back onto the couch. “You’re hopeless.”

She scrubbed both hands over her face again until her skin tingled.

But even under all the self-scolding, there was a thin ribbon of stubborn hope running through her thoughts.

It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t even formed properly. Just a quiet, repeating question every time she saw their faces in her mind:

Why them?

Why this family?

Why this house, finally perched right at the edge of her woods like someone had set a warm, beating heart down just out of reach?

Why had the hill tugged her toward them like it was tired of her orbiting alone?

She didn’t have answers.

She just had the feeling.

She lay back slowly, letting her head find the worn dip in the couch cushion that had formed over years. The shed’s silence settled around her again, broken only by the faint rustle of leaves outside and the far-off hum of the town she’d never belonged to but couldn’t leave.

She stared at the ceiling one more time, letting her eyes unfocus until the beams blurred into pale, soft lines.

She thought about Yuni clutching her bunny, serious little face relaxing just a fraction when Zoey kissed her forehead and Mira adjusted her pillow.

She thought about Jae-Jae’s startled giggle when her invisible hands had caught him before the porch steps did. The way his body had trusted the support, even if his brain couldn’t explain it.

She thought about Zoey’s laugh in the kitchen. About Mira’s hand at Zoey’s waist. About the way they’d stood for a moment in the middle of their cardboard storm and said, “We did it.”

She thought about the frost flowers she’d left on all their windows, little crystalline petals catching the light.

Tiny, frozen proofs that she’d been there.

A ridiculous little wish that maybe, just maybe, someone inside would pause and wonder who had drawn them.

Rumi’s lips curved again.

Small.

Secret.

She knew it was stupid.

She knew she shouldn’t let herself want anything from them.

But lying there in the semi-dark, with the tally marks on the wall and the pull of the hill humming faintly under her skin, she couldn’t quite smother the feeling that tonight hadn’t just been… another lonely lap around town.

Something had shifted.

In her.

In the air.

Maybe in the story she’d been stuck in for ten years.

She let her eyes close finally, the ache in her chest settling like snow—soft, heavy, impossible to shake off.

“Don’t,” she whispered once more, like a prayer, like a warning to herself.

But the word didn’t stop anything.

It didn’t stop the smile.

Didn’t stop the blush still fading slow and stubborn in her cheeks.

Didn’t stop the thought that rose anyway—quiet, relentless, impossible to shake:

What if this is the beginning?