Before it all began-before the frogs and the forests and the forgotten bits of magic-Talitha lived in a very shiny place.

She lived in the Castle of Mirrors, which claimed to have been established in 1765-though in truth, time in that realm hadn't really begun yet. Not properly. Not until a story takes root, which is the only true way time ever begins in these parts. Before that, Talitha existed in a kind of polished eternity-prodded, propped, perfected like a doll in a very sparkly museum exhibit about womanhood. She smiled when cued, shimmered when expected, and felt almost nothing at all. It was peaceful, in the same way a snow globe is peaceful-sealed off, quietly curated, and entirely unaware that a storm is coming.

Talitha didn't choose to live there. She was raised inside it.

Taught how to sit gracefully in rooms full of reflections-each one gently correcting her posture, her tone, her emotions, her face.

Every mirror whispered rules.
Every hallway was a runway.
Every tear was swiftly dabbed away and replaced with a quote about gratitude and green juice.

It wasn't evil, exactly. Just... exhausting.

Talitha was very good at being what the castle wanted. So good, in fact, that she hardly noticed she wasn't whole.

Well-most of her didn't. But some smaller, frog-shaped part very much did. And this, dear reader, is where our story begins.

But one morning-on a Tuesday, which is statistically the most existential weekday-Talitha stood in front of her favourite mirror, repeating her daily affirmations in a cheerful voice that wasn't entirely hers.

"I am radiant. I am calm. I am abundant. I am safe. I am... fine."

Crack.

Just a little one. Like a tiny bolt of lightning zigzagging across the silver.

She leaned in.

And there, in the centre of the mirror, peeking out from behind her carefully practiced smile... was a frog.

Not a normal frog. This one looked like it had been summoned from an ancient fairy tale written by a poet going through a rebellious phase. Golden-green, with a crown of moss and eyes like melted amber.

It blinked. So did she.

"Who are you?" she whispered.

The frog didn't answer in words. It just smirked. A lopsided, mischievous smirk that said, "You've been lied to, and we both know it."

And then the mirror cracked again.

This time wider-like a door creaking open that had always pretended to be a wall.

She reached out. Her fingertips passed through the glass like ripples in a pond. The frog hopped backward into the shimmer.

"Well?" it seemed to ask. "You coming, or do you want to stay here and keep smiling till you calcify?"

Talitha didn't think. She stepped through.

And the moment she did, everything changed. The light dimmed. The air grew mossy. And the smell-oh, the smell-was suddenly less lavender-and-lemon-zest and more... wet bark and possibly unwashed feet.

She was no longer in the castle. She was in something else.

The Outer Realm, perhaps. The one no one talked about because it was full of unsightly things like disappointment, desire, longing, and opinions.

And frogs. So. Many frogs.

They were waiting, perched on logs and lily pads and philosophical stumps, looking at her like she was both an intruder and the opening act.

One of them leaned toward another and whispered:
"She's early."
"No, she's right on time," said another, nodding sagely and chewing on a beetle like it was a cigar.

The frog who had been in the mirror now sat before her, bold as prophecy.

"Welcome," he said-finally speaking. His voice was low and just a little too pleased with itself. "To the land where mirrors break, and stories begin."

Talitha took a breath. Then another.

And then-she did something uncharacteristic. She stopped trying to understand it. She just... walked forward.

The thing about walking forward into a place that shouldn't exist is that no one hands you a map. There are no welcome brochures. No enchanted tour guides. Just the vague suspicion that you may have just traded your curated daily affirmations for a bit of damp bark in your hair.

Talitha, for her part, was trying very hard not to panic. Which is to say, she was panicking-just politely.

She walked. The moss squished agreeably underfoot, the way polite carpeting does at very expensive hotels. But instead of soft jazz or lemon water, there were frogs. Watching. Still. Silent. As if waiting for her to say something wise, or at the very least, ironic.

And then the trees appeared.

Not gradually, not subtly. One moment she was standing in a clearing, and the next-poof-she was in a forest. Tall, dark, mildly judgemental trees surrounded her on all sides. They looked like they had seen some things. Possibly her browser history.

She hadn't gone far when a clearing opened up ahead.

In the middle of it stood a frog.

Not the frog. A new one. This one was wearing what could only be described as a very small cape, dramatically pinned to one shoulder with a silver sequin and a sense of purpose.

He was standing on a toadstool as if it were a podium, addressing an invisible crowd.

"...and then I said to them, 'Applause is not optional. It's essential hydration for the soul!'"

He paused, catching sight of Talitha.

"Ah! My audience has arrived!" he declared, puffing out his chest. "Welcome to the realm of Recognition. I am Sir Applause, knighted by the Eternal Court of Public Validation, and darling, you are right on cue."

Talitha blinked. This one was going to be a lot.

"You see," Sir Applause continued, gesturing broadly with a lily pad he'd repurposed into a fan, "it is a tragedy-a tragedy, I say-how little recognition one receives these days for simply existing spectacularly."

He leapt from his toadstool with a flourish and landed, somehow, in a perfectly choreographed bow.

"You must be here because you, too, are tragically under-celebrated. A silent genius, a hidden jewel, a misunderstood main character in a supporting role's world."

Talitha opened her mouth to protest but found she couldn't. Mostly because-if she was honest-a part of her was drawn to him. To the way he shimmered when he was seen. To the part of herself that wanted to be noticed too.

She crossed her arms, uncertain. "And what if I want more than applause?"

Sir Applause paused. Looked genuinely scandalised.

"More? Than applause?"

"Yes. Like love. Or purpose. Or, I don't know... peace."

The frog recoiled as though she'd said something very un-chic.

"Peace is terribly overrated," he sniffed. "No one throws roses at someone sitting quietly with boundaries."

Talitha tilted her head. "Maybe they should."

Sir Applause froze. For just a moment.

She watched Sir Applause perform for no one. His voice echoing against trees that didn't clap. His eyes darting to her every so often, searching for admiration like breadcrumbs.

She thought about the times she'd done the same. The men she'd found dazzling, the compliments she'd waited for like rain in a dry season. The way her heart fluttered in rooms where eyes turned toward her.

"You're very good," she said gently. "But I don't want to be a performance anymore."

Sir Applause faltered.

For a moment, his sequinned confidence flickered. The cape drooped. And beneath it, Talitha saw something fragile and flickering-a longing to be loved not for the applause, but in spite of it.

He didn't speak.

But he bowed again-this time slower, without fanfare. Then he turned and hopped back into the forest, glitter trailing like a sigh.

Talitha stood. And walked forward.

Because this was only the first frog.
And she suspected the next one wouldn't be nearly as sparkly.

The forest had changed again, as forests are wont to do when no one's looking. It was colder now. Not "winter is coming" cold, but the sort of chill that sneaks in like an unpaid intern-quiet, persistent, and absolutely everywhere.

Talitha noticed it first in her breath, which puffed out in little clouds of visible existentialism. Then in the trees, now trimmed in frost like overachieving Christmas decorations. And then, most concerningly, in the way her feelings began to freeze up too, as if her emotional range had been placed under polite refrigeration.

And that's when she found it. A garden.

Or more accurately, a sculptural installation of floral perfection designed by someone who had clearly never heard of decay and didn't approve of it one bit. The blossoms were frozen mid-bloom. Petals shimmered in translucent ice, arranged in mathematically satisfying spirals.

In the centre, on a throne made of what could only be described as aggressively glamorous ice, sat a frog.

This frog had presence. He wore a circlet of jagged snowcrystals like he'd invented winter and was still slightly smug about it. His skin sparkled faintly, the way diamonds might if they'd gone to therapy and taken up ballet.

"You have found Glacien," he said, in a voice that was 40% longing, 60% crushed velvet, and 100% calculated.

"Welcome to my garden. It is a monument to beauty. To stillness. To exquisite emotional repression."

"Charming," Talitha said, rubbing her arms.

"Yes, I am," he replied without missing a beat.

He studied her. "You've cried recently."

"I... have not."

"Not on the outside," he said, gliding closer, "but internally, you're about one sonnet away from full emotional meltdown. I can smell it. It's very... poetic."

"Look," she said, "I'm just trying to find-"

"Love?" he offered, with the slight curve of a smirk. "Completion? A suitable emotional container for your otherwise splendid chaos?"

She scowled. "Answers."

"Ah," Glacien said, turning away. "That old pastime. Answers are overrated. Ice, however-ice never lies."

He gestured to his garden. "Look. See how every petal is preserved? Untouched. Perfect. Eternal."

"Frozen," she said.

"Exactly."

And there it was. The terrible, beautiful truth of him. The allure of untouchable things.

"You're incapable of love," she said, more to herself than him.

"Oh, I can love. Quite convincingly. In theory. In gestures. In curated eye contact and soft declarations made under the right moonlight. But actual love? The messy, melting kind? No. My heart is... occupied."

"By who?"

"Someone else," he said, vaguely. "She was very... ideal."

Talitha wanted to laugh, or slap him, or write him a heartfelt letter and then never send it. Instead, she did something worse.

She cried.

Not performatively. Just... tears. Quiet. Real. Undeniably warm in a world built entirely of frost.

The first tear hit the ground. The garden groaned.

Another, and a flower shattered like glass.

"What are you doing?" Glacien asked, suddenly alarmed.

"I'm grieving the idea that I could fix you," she said. "That if I was shiny enough, or graceful enough, or sad in the right poetic frequency... you'd melt."

"You can't," he whispered. "No one can."

"I know," she said. "That's why I'm leaving."

The ice cracked beneath her feet. The garden trembled like a lie told too often.

And then the earth gave way. She was carried on a river of her own sorrow, a current made of everything she had poured into people who had no space for her warmth.

As she drifted away, soaking wet and slightly clearer than before, she heard Glacien's voice behind her:

"They always cry."

And for the first time, Talitha didn't cry for him.
She cried for herself.
And let the river take her.

The river carried her gently, like a lullaby that didn't mind if you cried during the second verse.

Talitha floated.

She was soaked, exhausted, and thoroughly done with poetic men who used snow metaphors to justify emotional unavailability. She didn't want to meet any more frogs. She didn't want metaphors. She wanted a blanket, possibly some toast, and for the forest to stop being so symbolically accurate.

Eventually, the current thinned into a quiet pool nestled under silver-leafed trees. Fireflies flickered overhead like tiny, glowing punctuation marks in the unfinished sentence of her life.

She crawled out of the water and curled up on the moss, too tired to think, too tired to cry. Her eyes slipped shut.

That's when she heard it.

A voice. Warm. Deep. Silky. The kind of voice that could make a bedtime story feel like a sacred rite.

"You've travelled far."

He was perched on a smooth stone just across from her, illuminated by soft moonlight. A frog-but not like the others. Sleek. Iridescent. His eyes glowed faintly with a light that didn't belong to the moon or the stars but seemed to come from the part of the soul that reads poetry at midnight and makes questionable decisions shortly after.

He wore a cloak. Of course he did. Midnight blue, with little threads of silver that shimmered like constellations.

"I watched you arrive," he said. "You were weeping."

"I'm fine," she lied reflexively.

"No, you're not," he said gently. "But it's all right. You don't have to be. Not here."

That was it. The note. The precise tone of intimate concern wrapped in vague mysticism. The one that says: I see your soul and I'm low-key in love with it, but let's not use such pedestrian words as 'feelings'.

"You've been through so much," he said. "You carry the ache of past winters in your chest."

"I've known women like you," he continued. "Healers. Dreamers. Torn between the castle and the cosmos. I know what it means to hurt that way."

"Do you?" she asked.

He nodded solemnly. "I was once a wolf."

"I'm sorry-what?"

Over the next few days-if they were days at all-Talitha stayed in his part of the forest. It was lovely there. The fireflies told stories. The air always smelled like incense. There were cushions made of moss, and conversations about "energy" and "the illusion of time."

Lupinolux told her tales. About star-crossed loves and half-remembered lifetimes. He hinted at a connection they might have shared "before." He said things like, "Do you ever feel like we've done this dance before, but in a temple? In gold? With incense?"

And she did.

Because that's the trick of a man like Lupinolux. He reflects your longing back to you-but polished, mythologized, and just slightly out of reach.

And still... something felt off.

Whenever she asked him a real question-about his past, his desires, his wounds-he answered with riddles. Or stories. Or he simply smiled and looked into the fire.

One night, she found the courage to ask.

"Have you ever truly loved someone?" she said.

"Oh, many," he said. "But none of them understood me."

"What about now?"

"Now?" He smiled wistfully. "Now I shine. And sometimes, others gather around the light."

"But... you don't let anyone touch it," she whispered.

"Not everyone is meant to touch," he said. "Some are meant to witness."

And that was the moment. That was when the ache stopped being enchanting and started being familiar.

She had been here before. With someone who said just enough to keep her hoping, but never enough to build anything real.

She stood up.

"Thank you," she said, voice shaking. "You were beautiful. But I don't want to be a witness anymore."

"Then go," he said quietly. "But know this: you will miss the stories."

"Maybe. But not as much as I miss myself when I'm with you."

And with that, Talitha turned, walked into the trees, and left him there-telling stories to the fireflies who no longer believed him.

Talitha wasn't quite sure how she got there.

One minute she was walking through the forest, recovering from a mystical storytelling frog who may or may not have been a walking mood board with a tragic backstory-and the next, she was standing in a glade made entirely of soft lighting, ambiguous glances, and light citrusy fragrance.

The grass was suspiciously dewy, the mist hung like unspoken poetry, and somewhere a frog cleared his throat in a way that suggested he might be clearing his throat-or merely hinting at a conversational opening he didn't plan to use.

At the centre of it all, seated on a rock that was doing its best impression of a throne, sat a frog.

He was handsome. Exceptionally so. Not in a flashy, frog-model sort of way, but in that infuriatingly elegant manner that made you think he'd read poetry in original languages and owned a very well-curated tea collection.

He gave a small nod, eyes unreadable.

"Do I... know you?" Talitha asked, unsure whether to curtsy, run, or confess something.

"Hard to say," the frog replied enigmatically. "That depends on what you believe about time."

This was going to be one of those frogs.

"Do you like me?" she blurted, more surprised by her own question than he seemed to be.

He tilted his head, as if her vulnerability was a delicate object he didn't want to mishandle.

"I notice you," he said gently.

That wasn't nothing. But it also wasn't something. And therein lay the trouble.

This frog, whose name was never quite offered but would later be known to her as Alturio, seemed so full of meaning, so gently intentional, that every word felt like it could be profound-if only she understood the language.

He offered her tea made from a flower she couldn't pronounce. It tasted like mystery and maybe.

She found herself interpreting the angle of his silences. Reading significance into his sighs. Imagining a hidden affection coded in cryptic glances and half-smiles that said everything-except what she actually needed to know.

After a few days of lyrical vagueness, meaningful glances, and tea that never quite answered her questions, Talitha stood.

"I'm going," she said.

"Why?"

"Because I don't know if you care."

"Does it matter?"

"Yes," she said, gently. "Because I've been harmed before. And I need someone who makes me feel safe-not someone I have to guess about."

He said nothing.

She waited.

Still nothing.

So she smiled. One of her own this time.

"You're lovely," she said, "but I've spent too long trying to read stories in blank pages."

He didn't argue. Didn't chase. Just blinked, very slowly.

"I hope you find what you're looking for," he murmured.

"I hope you decide to speak clearly, one day."

And with that, she walked on-heart a little sore, but clearer now on what silence isn't.

The forest had been steadily getting stranger, which was saying something considering it had already featured talking frogs, ambient story fog, and at least one emotionally unavailable ice prince.

Talitha was beginning to sense a pattern.

So when she stepped into the next part of the forest and the smell hit her-a humid bouquet of wet gym socks, overcompensating cologne, and fermented flattery-she knew, in her soul, that something was about to go very wrong.

This was the swamp.

And not a gentle, mystical swamp with whispering reeds and wise turtles. No. This was the Swamp of Unwanted Advances.

It was dark. Squishy. The trees leaned too close together, like old men trying to catch a glimpse of something that wasn't their business. And everywhere, perched on rocks, half-sunk logs, and questionable lily pads, were frogs.

The worst kind.

"Hey sweetheart, you lost?"
"That skirt of yours looks like it's full of potential."
"Smile for me, princess!"

Talitha froze.

She didn't know whether to run, fight, or... apologise, which is how she knew she was still working through her social conditioning.

Because the truth was-she was scared.

Scared of what they'd say. Scared of what they'd do if she didn't respond nicely enough.

These weren't romantic frogs. They were entitlement in amphibian form.

"Where you off to in such a hurry?"
"What, too good for us?"
"Don't be rude now. You don't want to make us angry."

She tried to walk calmly. Tried to keep her breath steady.

But fear isn't always polite.

It built in her chest like a swallowed scream. She kept smiling-tight, apologetic, inoffensive. Just trying to be small enough not to provoke.

And then-she fell.

Not dramatically. Not cinematically. Just... plop. Into a hole.

One minute she was avoiding eye contact with a frog who looked like he collected rejection letters from princesses, and the next, she was sliding through roots and damp earth, swallowed by the soft, loamy silence of underground.

And just like that, the noise was gone.

The jeering, the tension, the forced smile-it all faded above her, sealed by mud and moss.

She sat there, blinking in the dark.

And for the first time in ages... she exhaled.

It was quiet here.

Not empty. Just quiet. The kind of quiet that listens. That doesn't ask you to smile. That lets you cry without commentary.

And so she did.

She cried for all the times she'd laughed at jokes that hurt her. For all the moments she'd stayed in conversations that made her feel small, because leaving felt too dangerous. For the way she'd frozen, not because she lacked strength-but because she didn't yet know she was allowed to use it.

Talitha sat up slowly, blinking. Her hands were muddy. Her hair was in her mouth. Her courage had curled up somewhere behind her ribs and was pretending to be very small and very busy.

Then, somewhere in the deep stillness, there was a rustle. Not a scary rustle. A rustle with personality.

"You alright down there, love?" said a voice like warm biscuits and forgotten wisdom.

"Depends. Are you a frog?"

"Certainly not," came the indignant reply. "I'm a mole. Spirit guide division. Call me Holy Moly."

A little torch flicked on. It was attached to the nose of a very round, very endearing mole wearing a toolbelt and a soft pink headscarf that read "Wounded But Wise" in glittering thread.

"Name's Moly. Holy Moly, if you're feeling dramatic. I'm your guide. Spirit division, Shadow Work department. Subterranean services."

"Sweetheart," said Holy, adjusting her spectacles, "everything that helps you remember who you are is real. Even if it has whiskers."

"This is the in-between," Holy said. "Not up. Not out. Just... in. This is the place where the pretending stops. It's messy, yes. But it's where you finally meet yourself."

"And now," Holy said, rising and brushing herself off, "we go deeper."

"Deeper? I thought I was supposed to climb out of the hole."

"Out's nice," said Holy. "Out gets you applause. But through? Through gets you transformation."

She pointed toward a narrow path, barely visible at the edge of the chamber. It was glowing softly, as if the earth itself had begun to remember.

"This tunnel leads to the gifts," said Holy. "The ones they said were too much. Too weird. Too you."

The Realm of Diamonds

The tunnel didn't open so much as unfold-like a secret finally deciding you were ready.

The walls shimmered faintly with veins of crystal, their edges soft and pulsing with memory.

Talitha gasped.

Diamonds. Not scattered, not stashed in treasure chests like in children's tales-but grown into the walls, the floor, the ceiling. They jutted like frozen lightning, clustered like memories with too much feeling to stay buried.

"This," said Holy Moly with a sweep of her tiny moss-coated paw, "is you."

"Me?"

"Yes. The parts of you you thought were broken. The parts you tried to trim, hide, explain away. They've been down here growing facets."

She stepped forward. The diamonds flickered as she passed-one pulsing as it revealed a younger version of herself, wildly painting with her fingers and telling stories to invisible friends.

In the centre of the chamber stood the beginnings of a castle. Not grand in the way the House of Mirrors had been-this was wild. Alive. Made of stone and light, story and soil. It was still forming, piece by piece, rising from the ground as if summoned by recognition alone.

Her anger, once folded into apologies, had become a gatekeeper-a fierce sentinel of fire-eyed grace at the castle's entrance.

Her joy, untamed and unashamed, bloomed into the chandeliers overhead-swinging and radiant, lighting even the corners she once feared.

And her imagination-wild, unfiltered, childlike-had grown into living vines and flowers. They whispered celestial truths in oddly adorable ways:

"You are stardust and refusal."
"If you want to change the world, start by loving your weirdest idea."
"Please hydrate."

Talitha laughed. Really laughed.

As the light of her own castle wrapped around her like a welcome she'd been waiting her whole life to receive, Talitha felt it for the first time:

Not perfection.
Not approval.
But home.

"Is this... it?" she asked. "The destination?"

"Darling, this is just your centre. But now that you've found it, you'll never be truly lost again."

The kingdom was quiet. Not asleep. Just... listening.

Somewhere in the garden, a vine hummed an old lullaby about boundaries. A squirrel politely declined a conversation with a passing hawk. And a daffodil whispered, "Today feels like an arrival day."

At the far edge of the garden, where the land still shimmered faintly with becoming, someone approached.

He wore a breastplate. Slightly scuffed. The kind of armour that looked less like a declaration and more like a question.

He wasn't entirely sure why he was here. But he had heard... something. A note in the wind. A dream he couldn't remember. A pull.

He did not come with a map. He came with a feeling.

And before he could reach the castle, he would need to pass through the garden-not just the garden as it looked, but the garden as it knew.

First: The Owl

She sat high in a flowering tree, half-asleep and fully unimpressed.

"Name?" she asked, not looking up from her tea.

"Um. I... I'm not sure that matters?"

"Correct," she said. "First question passed."

"Why are you here?"

"I... don't know," he admitted.

"Excellent. Second passed."

"Third question: what would you do if she didn't want you?"

"I'd still want her to be free."

"Two and a half. That'll do. Onward."

Next: The Dragon

She was enormous, iridescent, sunning herself on a hill of blooming moss.

"You look flammable."

"Only mildly," he said.

"You love her?"

"I don't know her."

"But you came."

"I felt something."

"You sure it wasn't your ego?"

"I've met my ego. It talks louder than this."

The dragon grinned, smoke curling from her nostrils.

"Good answer. But can you dance?"

He hesitated. Then... he tried. It was not good. But it was earnest.

"She might like you," she said. "Or she might not. But either way-you're not boring. Go."

Then: The Cat

She was lounging in a sunbeam that had clearly been placed there just for her.

"You afraid of magic?" she asked.

"No."

"You sure? I ask because she is magic. Not the sparkly kind. The real kind. The messy, intuitive, too-honest kind."

"I'm not afraid of her."

"But are you afraid of your own shadow? Because you'll have to meet it here."

"And will you still love her when she glows so bright it shows you everything you're not?"

"Yes. Even if it stings."

She gave a long, slow blink. The kind that either meant welcome or you'll do for now.

He reached the gate.

There was no fanfare. No trumpets. No fairy dust.

Just her.

Talitha.

She stood at the entrance to her living, breathing castle. Cloaked in wild light, barefoot in her own soil. Not beckoning. Not resisting. Just being.

Radiant. Rooted. Real.

He didn't speak. He didn't kneel. He looked at her. And she looked back.

And in that long, soft moment-something passed between them.

Not a promise. Not a forever.

Just the simple, sacred recognition of two whole beings meeting at the threshold.

She smiled.

And the garden exhaled.

And somewhere in the vines, a flower whispered:
"Let's see what he plants."