Wishing out the Window (Marjorie)

[Arcanus]

Wishing out the window. Father had always told Anat that wishing out the window was bad luck. Especially on a night such as this one. Quiet sobs echoed through the quieter street, cutting through the silence of twilight like a woodsman's axe hacks through a tree. A moonless night, only the starlight to see by, except a small flickering candle burnt down to the nub on the sill of an open window. It was here that Anat rested her head, sobbing into the dingy white arm of her nightclothes, long copper red curls spilling over her arm and out the window of he uncle's home.

They had lost everything. And it was all Anat's fault. "I shouldn't have hit him." Whispering through tears, words punctuated by sobs. "It's all my fault." Her father's words echoing from her mouth. "I should have just... I should have just..." Trailing off into sobs as she left her sentence unfinished, Anat sat up and grasped a tattered old book to her chest. The book was tattered, patched, and bound together with a hair ribbon.

The stories within sustained her. Helped her believe that somewhere outside of her little world was a world with hope and wonder. With magic. "There is no magic happy ending." Anat rolled her eyes as she mimicked her father's tone and mannerisms through her tears. "I wish there was magic." Anat said through tears as she looked at the book clutched in her hand. "I wish someone would just take me away from all this."

[Marjorie]

Neese

There was magic in this world - maybe not magical happy endings, they were not really much fun, in Neese's opinion, at least. Though every now and again, someone found a haply ever after... it was not the case for most people. But there was magic in the world. Even in simple, every day things... like a reflection in the window. Neese had only just happened to be walking by, he'd heard the girl's sobs, her self deprecating words - words likely, he thought, that were not her own, words of someone she thought was supposed to value her more than they did.

Neese smiled to himself, for here was a gem indeed - pretty, with copper red hair that shined in the starlight. She couldn't see him as he walked for he was invisible to the world at that moment, but he could see her with sharp clarity even in the dim light of a single dying candle. He stepped into a puddle on the ground and out of a reflection in her open window. He did so silently, and when her back was turned to him.

"Oh, but my dear," Neese's voice was soft and warm, gentle, and smooth, musical and light, it held promise and interest, and weight, "magic is real." But... maybe not magical happy endings. When she did look upon him, she would see a man - taller than her father, but shorter than his usual appearance. Neese appeared as a man in the current fashion of nowhere, but still stately in a suit of vibrant sapphire and ebony. He nearly glittered in the faint light, with eyes the color of emeralds, and hair like moss, cut short around his head so that it framed his face nicely.