Misty Kitchen

Fog blurs the tops of the palms, the peeling bus stop sign, swallows all beyond the deserted terminal. 

Meira adjusts her pack straps and glances back at the readout: next stop, 7:30 pm.

Only an hour away. She could wait that long, take the next bus back to civilization. But then where would she go?

She has a fifty in her pocket. Cashed from her final paycheck on her way out of LA. Not enough for a single night in a roach-hotel. Forget breakfast the next morning.

No there's only this. The empty plot of land her Gran left. The rest of her fortune sunk into some trust that takes care of the taxes and insures it stays in the family. Meira would rather have the money about now. 

She passes a cafe with a hand-writen 'now hiring' sign yellowing beneath the darkened 'open' light. Her stomach whines, the fifty a pathetic lump of crumpled paper to its veracity. That's tomorrow's problem. Tomorrow's staring at a blank application while the words 'employment history' glare back, daring her to put the job she dedicated ten years and the better part of her twenties to. 

Until the day Mr. Hansen found her drinking a beer between shifts. He'd shouted for thirty minutes about how it's people like her that are ruining family businesses. Nevermind that her recipes were a staple of the menu, that some customers only came on days she worked. He'd fired her on the spot, and insured every prospective employer thereafter knew just how horrible he thought her.

Beyond the parking lot with one lone car tucked beside the dumpster, the little town gives way to shrouded wilds.

Moisture clinging to every hair, prickling Meira's flesh. Her sneakers sink into the sand, granules spilling over the edge, working into her socks and making a home there.

She slows. A half formed notion to dump them condensing at the edge of her mind, when the bush beside her gives a violet, snapping shudder.

She hauls back, pulse roaring in her ears, bracing against whatever horrors await. But nothing comes. Probably just a rabbit or stray cat.

She gulps down air, tucks her scarf closer and hurries on. 

The camping gear she borrowed from Ryan, weighing heavier with each step. He never ventures far from the comforts of his uncle's renovated basement, so it will be months before he notices.

The path scuttles beneath a slatted fence. Meira pulls up maps on her phone and sure enough, her dot is within the property line. Returning it to her pocket, she swings herself over the fence, landing with a muffled thump.

Ahead the undergrowth looks sparse enough for a twelve person tent, so it might fit her double sleeper.

Mist clings to the spaces between, blotting out any hint, aside from the salt scented air, that the ocean is close at hand. She drags a strap to the edge of her shoulder as the brush opens up.

Then the wind gusts, pulling back layers of white. To reveal narrow beams, cradling a house in ghostly tendrils above the slithering tide.

Her heartbeat flutters, a prickle scuttling up her arms. Gran never mentioned a house and there were no structures named on the deed. How was it possible to keep an entire building secret?

A narrow staircase rises to meet the wraparound porch, bound in swooping wrought iron. 

Meira glaces back at the uninterrupted patch of sand. It will be comfortable enough. Though not as much as a bed, even a moldy moth-eaten one. 

She shrugs her pack strap in place and looks up to find the mist has once again obscured the house. Like it was never there.

What was?

The house, she just saw. She must be more tired than she thought.

Meira shakes out her head and truges forward. Twisted railing sifts out of the fog, not more than five feet ahead, its edges out of focus. The stairs, brown with rust, except for the wash of salt, only follow when her foot comes to rest upon them. Ground falls away Her biting grip the only surety she’s not about to tumble into the abyss. 

At last her sneakers hit with the hollow clunk of wood. She raises her gaze and the breath lodges in her throat.

The view is crystalline. The deck, the light gray slatted cottage trimmed in navy, its planter boxes overflowing with silver flowers, even the distant ocean dotted with sailboats. 

Meira blinks hard, leans over the railing. Directly below is swirling white, a cloudy sky inverted. She backs away, her chest raw, and fixes her attention on the house. 

A prickle of recognition teases the threads of her subconscious as she steps before the blue door, turns the dark brushed metal knob and flings it wide.

The scent of baking cookies and cocoa ride the expelled current. 

She hovers a foot across the threshold. "Hello. Anyone here."

A muted half duplication is the only answer.

Legally the house is hers now. Not that the thought does much to stifle the feeling that someone else has already made themselves at home.

The marble counters gleam. Not a speck of grime adorns the stainless stove or chestnut cabinets. A long table is set with glass and silverware on lace embroidered placemats.

And at its center, a bowl, piled with fruit, fat grapes, ruby apples, bananas at their one day of peak ripeness.

As Gran's had always been. No matter how Meira had gorged herself, there was always a bunch of grapes to pluck on her way out to play. On a table just like this, in a kitchen with this same layout.

Her throat tightens, hands clamped beneath her ribs. Tucked beside the fridge is the very stool she knelt on to help Gran knead dough, dust flower out for sugar cookies, and inevitably, all over herself. With a blackened hole from where Meira once leaned a poker on it, the contours of its legs severed from when she'd grown too tall for it but not enough to reach the cabinets.

Her eyes prickle. Could that have been this place, layered over by a different canvas.

A dream house, memories folded into rooms that bear no resemblance but are somehow these rooms.

Meira dashes to the pantry, hesitates for the briefest moment before wrenching it open. Her chest swells. It's bursting with food. She runs her finger over containers of flour, five different sugars, jars of candied nuts...

Ingredients for all the recipes Gran taught her. Her stomach squeals its assent. But what to make first. 

It comes at once. Her favorite, the one recipe she could never quite recall the proportions for. Or didn't want to remember, one thing she could keep as her own, when she gave everything to Mr. Hansen's bakery.

But as she reaches to pluck a box of bakers chocolate from a high shelf, something brushes past her finger. All her breath vacates her lungs in strangled yelp. She lunges back clutching the offended hand, dragging in wisps of air.

Around the edge of the box pokes a minute, angular face, curtained by silver hair.

Meira stares with plucked eyes at the creature. Two sets of feathered antinea wave back.

Then it's gone. Had she blinked? More likely imagined it. She gathers herself, forces her hands open, squares her shoulders and returns to gathering ingredients. Each time her memory falters on what else is needed, a syrup seems to glow, or a toothpick box shuffles in her peripherals.

Arms load and nerves jagged, she returns to the kitchen and sets about finding utensils, until all that remains are measuring spoons.

Meira peeks in on a stack of pans, finds four sizes of plates, scours a cabinet with every other measuring element. She opens the drawer beneath the coffee maker, slams it shut and, hands trembling, opens it once more, to a little humanoid with twig-limbs and iridescent wings dancing between silverware slats. They peer up at her, a wicked smile curving their lipless face. Then, from a space that should not have concealed anything, they produce a set of measuring spoons as big as them, hold it out with an almost sheepish expression.

Meira tilts her head, takes it with deft fingers. The creature bows, makes a closing motion and, as she rolls the draw inward, returns to dancing.

She stares at the drawerface, trails a hand through her hair. This can't be. Yet, an ach that a memory is close to being recalled, skims the borders of her mind. 

She tightens her grip, the spoons biting into her palm. 

Oh, yeah, food. Puzzles are better on a full stomach anyways.

With all her tools in arms reach, she begins. Dry ingredients first, as Gran instructed. Whip the butter and sugar till smooth, but make extra cause it's the fairies favorite part. Her hand stills, the mixer whirring in place. Meira had always loved to scoop finger-fulls of it whenever Gran's back was turned. That must have been what she'd meant. 

Meira finishes mixing and opens the fridge. Her chest hollows. Milk won't, by any stretch, still be good. She spins off the cap, takes a tentative sniff. Doesn't gag. She inhales a lungfull. It smells like… milk?

Of all the ridiculous things. She hovers a measuring cup over the bowl. Now empty save for narrow rows of yellow, the kind of tracks left by digging fingers.

She lets the cup fall to the counter. Where, around the edge of the flour container rest a pair of little legs that look to have been carved from sticks, one knee crooked up.

Snapping her mouth back together, she begins again. 

When granules give way to silky peeks, she has gained an audience. The creature's chin resting atop a salt shaker, solid black eyes trained on her.

She's either gone off the deep end or there's a fairy in this kitchen. Whichever is the case, hunger tears at her insides.

With each completed step another appears, cross-legged on the egg carton, poking from the paper towel roll, stretched over the butter dish. 

By the time she pulls the tray from the oven, loaded with raspberry croissants drizzled in vanilla bean glaze, nine fairies adorn the kitchen. One less than plates set at the table.

Each face now familiar. From the countless times she played hide and seek in the cupboards with those three, that one who helped with her math homework on weekends, these two that would sneak cookies to her room in the middle of the night when she woke from a bad dream.

They leap to the table, stand before the plates, most barely able to see over the rim. A smile erupts on Meir's lips as she distributes the food.

When every last crumb is scraped from the plates and cocoa is drained from glasses, a high melodious hum drifts on the air. Other notes join in as the fairies rise, balancing plates on heads, tossing cups in a line to the sink sparkling with bubbles.

Plans take shape as memories trickle back, of bouncing in Gran's wake, on her way to the cafe down the road to sell her treats. Meira sighs, heart as full as her belly. Tomorrow she will begin preparations.