Page 11 of Orc Me, Maybe

I blink. “Seriously?”

“I won’t be long.” His tone says he doesn’t have time to debate. “Don’t let her light anything she can’t un-light.”

And then he walks away. Just like that. Leaves me with a fire-happy eight-year-old and a half-eaten bag of marshmallows like that’s a normal Tuesday.

Again.

I glance at Lillian. She glances at me. We regard each other like two suspicious cats.

“So,” I start, crouching beside her, “what’s the firepit plan? Are we summoning something, or just cooking marshmallows like mortals?”

She snorts. “We’re doing a ritual.”

“Oh. Cool cool cool. Should I be concerned?”

She grins. “Only if you’re scared of pixies.”

I lean in, whispering, “I’m terrified of pixies.”

That gets a laugh, and I take it as a win.

She gestures to the pile. “We have to build a shape. A moon circle.”

I nod seriously. “A moon circle. Got it. I am very qualified for this.”

“You don’t know what a moon circle is, do you?”

“Not a clue.”

Lillian sighs like a tiny professor dealing with the village idiot. “You use bendy twigs to make a circle that catches moonlight. Then you put something inside it to make a wish.”

“What kind of wish?”

She shrugs. “Anything. But it has to be something real. Not, like, a pony.”

“Well, there goes my entire plan.”

We start building. The twigs are not cooperative. They snap when they shouldn’t, and poke when they really shouldn’t. I end up with a splinter in my thumb and a piece of leaf in my hair.

“Do you miss your mom?” Lillian asks out of nowhere, voice quiet.

I freeze. My hands still mid-circle.

“Yeah,” I say, just as quietly. “I miss her a lot.”

She nods. “I miss mine too.”

There’s a silence that settles between us—not awkward, not heavy. Just real.

“She used to tell me stories,” Lillian says, sticking a twig into the dirt. “About fae who lived under roots and gnome kings that rode bunnies into battle.”

“Okay, I’m gonna need to hearallof those.”

She giggles and leans back, brushing her hands off on her shorts. “She made up new ones every night.”

“Your mom sounds incredible.”

“She was.”

---