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Enid — or more precisely, Enid occupying Wednesday's body — sat in Wednesday's usual seat, spine straighter than a coffin lid.
This was the Addams family's long-overdue dinner gathering. Morticia had made the trip to Nevermore's headmaster in person just to get the siblings excused from curfew for one evening. Pugsley's heart had gone cold with excitement at the news. Enid, who had blundered her way into Wednesday's body by sheer accident, found her heart going just as cold.
A roasted, charred opossum was carved cleanly at the neck with an elegant stroke of the dinner knife, then set squarely onto Enid's plate. The corners of her eyes and mouth twitched in the most untimely fashion, as though the sauce pooled in the silver dish were congealed blood.
Her throat and stomach launched a full-scale revolt on the spot. Fortunately, before she could bring herself to disfigure the opossum's remains with a silver fork, family discipline descended without warning — Pugsley confessed to lying about releasing a zombie, and was promptly marched away by Gomez for punishment. Only Morticia and Enid remained at the table. Enid didn't dare look down at her dinner, and didn't dare look up at the witch's expression.
"Wednesday. What are you staring at?"
"…Nothing. I was just wondering if they'd be coming back to eat."
Morticia's brow arched upward, black as a butterfly lifting its wings, two pinprick reflections of candlelight alive in her eyes. "My dear, this is your favorite dish. It'll go cold."
"It's fine, I'm not hungry!" Enid's fingertips flinched, and her fork clinked sharply against the rim of the porcelain plate. She could hear her own heartbeat — thud thud thud thud — even more dramatic than that night in the music room when she'd discovered she was wolfing out.
From the far end of the long table, Morticia rose. Enid took it as her cue to exhale — and then realized the black-gauze gown was sweeping toward her, trailing across the floor like a serpent threading through a pile of dead leaves, emitting a long, thin rustling sound.
"Earlier, I caught Enid in Rosaline Rotwood's secret séance chamber. Any idea why she was snooping?"
Enid looked up with innocent eyes. How was she supposed to know what went on in Wednesday's head, or what Wednesday had been doing with her body? If she knew that, she wouldn't be sitting here like a prisoner awaiting sentencing.
"…I see that bewildered look in your eyes. It seems your obsession for getting your ability back has finally made you lose your mind. But don't worry. I'll have Lurch make up the guest room."
"No, no, that really isn't necessary — I should head back—"
A current shot up Enid's spine. The guest room faced the cemetery. Wednesday had mentioned it herself — in the dead of night, you could hear fingernails scratching at the windowpanes as a sort of greeting.
"Mother, I—" she blurted, her voice coming out far too bright and clear for a gothic girl's face. "I have a — an assignment. Due at midnight tonight."
Morticia stopped mid-step, frowning slightly, her eyelids half-lowered, candlelight casting twin shadows beneath her lashes.
"An assignment?" she repeated softly, as though tasting a word from a foreign language. "What sort of assignment can't be done here?"
Enid's mind scrambled furiously for a Wednesday-approved excuse, finally producing: "…Dissecting animal remains. It has to be completed independently — otherwise the professor will suspect I've drawn on family resources."
"…Since when has communal living made you conscientious about rules? Well. Perhaps that's not a bad thing." Morticia tilted her chin slightly, pronouncing her judgment in a quiet voice. "But no assignment takes precedence over the state of your mental health."
The instant she finished speaking, Lurch materialized behind Enid's chair like a ghost. The shadow cast by his two-plus meters of height pinned Enid to the spot entirely. Her knees had barely cleared the edge of the table by half an inch before an after-dinner tea was pressed into her hands. A scent rose from the cup — moss and rotting wood and rust, as though an entire graveyard's worth of coffins had been steeped in boiling water. Morticia's fingertips rested on the back of her hand for a few seconds, cold enough to freeze skin that was already corpse-pale.
"Drink up, then rest in the guest room." The witch parted lips painted the color of midnight in a tender smile. Enid managed to stretch her own mouth into something resembling a smile and inwardly released a breath — because compared to fingernails on glass, this dining table was considerably more terrifying.
Nights in the Addams household always felt too long — whether at the manor or at Rotwood's cottage. Enid sat on the edge of the bed, hands folded uncharacteristically still in her lap, her whole body wound tight as an over-tuned cello string — because after she'd answered a knock at the door, the handle had turned again.
Morticia pushed the guest room door open softly, carrying a candlestick. "It seems you have no intention of sleeping."
"I…usually don't unwind until after midnight." Enid answered. She had tried her best to mimic Wednesday's cadence. The result still carried an undertow of vitality she couldn't quite suppress.
Morticia's lips tightened slightly. "You have more color than usual tonight."
"Fresh air, probably. Side effects. I've been cooped up in Nevermore too long." Enid smiled stiffly.
At that moment the overhead light cut out entirely. The witch stepped inside, trailing the fingertips of her free hand over the dead flower on the windowsill — a withered black rose. Then she sat on the edge of the bed. Right beside Enid.
Enid went slack-jawed. What unsettled her even more was that in the next instant Morticia reached out and passed her hand through the candle flame — the light flared once and was gone. The guest room was left with only the muted glow filtering through the stained-glass window. Morticia's black hair and black-gauze nightgown dissolved into the darkness, leaving only the pale arc from collarbone to jaw, like a new moon faintly framed by storm clouds.
"Mother—" Enid let it slip, then caught herself at once. The word scorched the tip of her tongue.
"I noticed you didn't want to eat tonight, and didn't want to stay," Morticia said quietly. "Perhaps being around me is at times suffocating. I understand that, my dear. But you know how the Addams family is — we learned to breathe inside suffocation and darkness."
Enid drew a slow breath. "I didn't mean to—"
She stopped herself, sensing that was not something Wednesday would say.
"I just didn't want…to be seen by you."
Morticia was quiet for a moment. The fingertips that had hovered over Enid's hand withdrew.
"Those are words," she said at last, "I never expected to hear you say aloud." Her voice was unhurried. "You seemed to believe I have always longed for a mirror image of myself in this world. But I have never asked you to become me."
Enid opened her mouth. Nothing came. She could feel her performance crumbling rapidly to powder.
"What I have only ever wanted," Morticia's voice dropped lower, "is for someone to catch you when you fall. Even if that someone looks nothing like what you'd expect."
She considered adding because you won't let me be that person — then swallowed it back.
"…So you're talking about my roommate?" Enid blinked, feeling, for perhaps the first time, that she could actually follow the rhythm of this conversation.
Morticia's gaze shifted almost imperceptibly. She didn't answer the question — only looked toward the window.
"Light and shadow have always been born from each other, my dear. Light simply fears that drawing too close will make it disappear."
Morticia reached out and brushed a loose strand of hair from her daughter's face, her gaze resting on the familiar yet subtly dissonant features before her.
"Your expression tonight is unfamiliar to me. Strangely, though, I find I'm not unsettled by it — if anything, there's a sense of…something I haven't felt in a long time. Something like longing."
She paused, then added slowly: "I have said you grow more like Ophelia with every year…but the truth is, when you were small, you were even more like her."
Then Morticia's tone resumed its usual composure: "Rest now. Perhaps by tomorrow you'll be back to yourself — or at least look a little more like yourself."
Enid's breathing grew unsteady; her gaze drifted out of focus in the dark, as though being pulled by some ancient, unseen force. Almost unconsciously, she murmured:
"…Mom."
For an instant the air seemed to freeze, and the night fell into complete silence. Yet something rare moved through Morticia's eyes — a soft, nostalgic light.
"It seems you haven't yet learned to lie," she said, her tone so gentle it was almost the voice one uses to soothe a sleepwalker. "I find that…reassuring."
Enid's breath stopped short. There was only the sensation of Morticia's fingertips — drifting slowly from her hairline, coming to rest against her cheek.
"Tell me, my dear," Morticia said, barely above a whisper. "Who are you?"
In that moment, Enid finally understood: Morticia had never truly been deceived. She had only, with characteristic grace, allowed the fiction to continue until the precise moment it was ready to be undone.
"…I'm Enid," she said, quietly, with the relief of setting down something heavy. "Enid Sinclair."
Morticia's hand did not withdraw. It simply slid downward, coming to rest on her shoulder.
"I see," she said softly, and exhaled. The candle by the bedside rekindled itself, its flame tearing a small wound in the dark. "Then where is she? Why did she give you her body?"
"It was an accident," Enid answered honestly. "But I think…maybe not entirely. Maybe she needed to escape from something for a little while."
"Escape is an Addams family tradition," Morticia replied after a long pause. "We pretend to pursue the dark — but in truth, we are fleeing the light. Because light strips every secret the Addams family has ever kept completely bare. Then again, keeping secrets…can sometimes have fatal consequences."
Her voice dropped until it was nearly inaudible, as though rising from somewhere deep underground. Her fingertips tightened without meaning to — Enid felt the fabric at her shoulder gathered up, then slowly released.
"Whatever the case, I'm glad you were honest with me." Morticia finally turned her head, looking through Wednesday's eyes directly at Enid, her pupils catching the shifting candlelight, a glint of green surfacing in their depths — like a flame searching the air for every last escaping particle of dust.
"I have long been accustomed, I think, to Wednesday's complete sovereignty over herself — over everything. And then tonight, you were willing to simply sit beside me. And for the first time in a long while, I felt what it is to be…a mother with a daughter."
Enid found herself pressing her knuckles together, nails biting into the soft flesh of her palm. She swallowed. "Is having a daughter different, then? Or — maybe what I mean is…different from being Pugsley's mother."
"Of course it is, child. I want Wednesday to go further than I ever have — and yet I cannot bear for her to go so far that she disappears into a darkness beyond my reach. My heart cannot function apart from her existence."
Morticia paused, then continued: "Pugsley is a passing thunderclap. Wednesday is the eye of the storm. Lightning can fall alone — but the eye of the storm…needs to be surrounded. Needs to be watched."
"…But my mom thinks needing to be watched and surrounded makes me clingy. She doesn't want me to be that soft." Enid bit her lower lip. "I'm scared that when Wednesday comes back, she'll find I handed the most vulnerable part of her directly to you — and she wasn't ready for that. God, just thinking about it — she'll kill me."
Morticia listened to every word. Her eyes were still as the night; her lips carried the faintest trace of something that almost resembled warmth.
"…Is that so," she said quietly, as though speaking to some version of herself that existed only in memory. "The tenderness between a mother and her daughter is always mistaken for weakness."
Enid looked up — and collided with those eyes, deep enough to swallow the soul. Instinctively she tried to look away, but Morticia's finger intercepted her — barely a touch, just a light point beneath her chin, but it held her gaze firm.
"Miss Sinclair. Weakness is not a sin. It only sometimes exposes itself too nakedly." Something close to lightness passed through the witch's voice. "And Wednesday won't kill you. She'll only pretend she doesn't care. That is a talent she inherited from someone — the ability to deny her most shadowed feelings, in order to preserve appearances."
Enid went still. Morticia's hand remained on her shoulder; candlelight moved across the black stone of her ring like a small serpent breathing.
Outside, rain came suddenly — lightning split the stained-glass window with a brief flash of white. In that instant, Enid saw her own reflection in Morticia's eyes. Not Wednesday. Just a stranger-child who had wandered, by mistake, into a mother's dream. She watched Morticia rise, the hem of her robe brushing the carpet, her steps so quiet they made almost no sound at all.
"A Wednesday who calls me 'mom,'" Morticia said, like a bird slowly spreading its wings, easing the door open. "That, I have to admit, is unexpectedly…endearing."
She paused at the threshold.
"Remember to find her before sunrise and switch back — unless you want to spend the rest of your life allergic to color."
* * *
At three in the morning, the rain stopped quietly. Mist seeped from between the cemetery stones and poured down through the branches overhead, the way the dead might exhale their last warmth into a winter night. Enid wrapped Wednesday's black coat around herself, wading through wet grass that reached her ankles, and broke into a light run alongside a Wednesday wearing a rainbow-colored sweater dress, both of them making for the Rotwood grave.
Enid sighed and leaned against the cold, moss-covered headstone.
"Wednesday, do you know what I was most afraid of tonight?"
Wednesday didn't answer. Enid kept going.
"Not the overcooked opossum. Not Mrs. Addams's eyes. Not even the guest room with the scratching at the window—"
"…What I was most afraid of tonight was letting you see—" her voice went soft— "maybe something you didn't want to see. My own vulnerability." The cold and damp crept through the fabric of her dress and into her skin. She rubbed her palms together, and in doing so grazed the soft knit of Wednesday's coat — like touching a memory that was strange and warm at once.
Wednesday, wearing Enid's face, pressed her brow down low. The somber expression looked oddly out of place on those bright, colorful features.
"The best thing about being Enid is your quiet strength. If what you're calling 'vulnerability' is simply not wanting to be alone — I won't let that happen."
"You could try not being alone either. You don't have to push your mother away. She has more to teach you than you think — and if you're worried your darkness is too much for her to bear—" Enid, looking out from behind Wednesday's eyes, let show a sadness and a resolve she rarely let anyone see. "That might be exactly the part of you she most wants to carry."
Wind moved through the grass between the gravestones; small drops of water fell from both their hair.
Wednesday was quiet for a long time. Only when a distant roll of thunder came again did she speak.
"I think you've misunderstood. I'm not afraid she can't bear the dark. I'm only afraid that someday — the version of me she finds in the darkness won't be her daughter."
Enid raised her head. Wednesday's black eyes reflected her own face back at her. She reached out gently, her eyes curving into crescents, soft and certain.
"Then let me walk back with you. Light and shadow are born from each other, after all — aren't they?"
Wednesday still didn't answer. By then the morning mist was beginning to lift. Enid felt a powerful pull rise up from beneath her feet, as though the cemetery itself had become a vast whirlpool drawing both their consciousnesses out at once. The shadows of the wolf and the raven overlapped on the ground — twisting, tearing, then swiftly knitting back together —
Their souls returned, at last, to where they each belonged.
* * *
After that night, Morticia never brought up that accidental mother-daughter conversation with Wednesday again.
Only the next morning, Wednesday — finally restored to her own body — found something on the writing desk in the cottage.
A freshly cut black rose.
Beside it, a note:
To my daughter, who insists on being her own ghost.
– M.
[END]