The adventures of Lisa-Marie and Yasmin

Sometimes it occurs to me that I must have been living here for years.

Not because I’ve actually forgotten that it’s only been a few weeks since I stood in front of this door with two suitcases, still believing I was coming to visit for a short while. If I try hard enough, I can definitely remember that day. At least individual images. The drive. The house, when I saw it for the first time. That strange feeling—somewhere between curiosity and caution—that you probably always carry with you when you enter a place whose significance you don’t yet know.

I can remember that.

It’s just not particularly important to me anymore.

Other images have since layered over it, one layer after another, like glazes on a painting, until, while something of the original color still remains, it no longer determines what you see.

Lisa, calling my name from some room.

Yasmin on the couch with a book.

Amber, still a little disheveled in the morning, while Mario gets us ready for the day.

The smell of coffee.

Music coming from some speaker.

Conversations that start somewhere, get interrupted, and pick up hours later in a completely different place.

And Mario, who’s almost always doing something.

Cooking.

Working.

Tidying up.

Looking for things he himself put somewhere just five minutes earlier.

Or making plans.

You can tell when he’s doing the latter just by looking at his face.

There’s this very specific little smirk that’s neither particularly noticeable nor particularly convincingly innocent.

Lisa recognizes it, too.

Probably faster than any of us.

That morning, however, I had a different problem at first.

I was standing in the dressing room and had been trying to put on a pair of pants for several minutes.

Or rather: I was trying to convince them that it was in both of our best interests if they’d just let me put them on.

They disagreed.

Mario had pulled them up past my hips and then paused.

I looked down.

Then at him.

Then back down at myself.

“Have I gained weight?”

He didn’t answer right away.

Which is never a good sign.

“Mario?”

“Hm.”

“Have I gained weight?”

“No.”

“That didn’t sound convincing.”

“You haven’t gained weight.”

I looked at the pants.

They weren’t tight.

“Tight” would have been an extremely polite way to put it.

They were at war.

“These pants still fit last week.”

Mario looked at the little tag inside the waistband.

Then he grinned.

That grin again.

“What?”

“They didn’t fit you at all last week.”

“Of course they—”

He held the tag out to me.

It took me a moment.

Then I looked across the room.

Amber was sitting there.

Shorter than me.

Thinner than me.

Significantly more petite than me.

I looked back at the pants.

Then at Amber.

“Ah.”

Lisa started laughing.

“Laura put on Amber’s pants!”

“I noticed.”

“And I thought she’d gotten fat.”

“I didn’t say I’d gotten fat.”

“You asked if you’d gained weight.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“Almost.”

“No.”

Yasmin, who had been watching the whole thing with remarkable discipline up to that point, raised an eyebrow slightly.

“From a scientific standpoint, I’d disagree with Lisa’s statement.”

I nodded gratefully.

“Grazie.”

“From an entertainment science standpoint, though, I wouldn’t.”

Lisa laughed even harder.

I looked at Mario.

“Please put my own pants on me.”

“I’d be happy to.”

“And don’t put Amber’s stuff between mine anymore.”

“That was Lisa.”

“Of course it was Lisa.”

“Hey!”

I looked at her.

“Was it you?”

A brief pause.

“Maybe.”

It was amazing how quickly things like this had become normal.

My clothes no longer hung on one side of the closet and the others’ on the other. There hadn’t been an invisible boundary for a long time that said: This belongs to Laura. That belongs to Lisa. Some things moved around. Some things were borrowed. With unsettling regularity, Lisa discovered things of mine that she was convinced would look at least as good on her.

And that was probably even true.

My two suitcases, on the other hand, still stood empty in a corner.

At first, I’d placed them neatly side by side.

Ready.

Not necessarily to leave, but in that posture that empty suitcases just have when no one has decided what to do with them.

Then they’d drifted a little closer to the wall.

Later, a bit further.

At some point, a basket was placed in front of them.

Then a bag.

Eventually, you had to deliberately look into the corner to even notice them anymore.

I did just that this morning.

“Can’t we just put them away?”

Mario looked in the same direction.

“The suitcases?”

“Yeah.”

I shrugged.

“I don’t need them anymore anyway.”

The sentence just rolled off my tongue without a second thought.

It wasn’t until after I’d said it that I realized what I’d actually said.

Mario apparently did, too.

He didn’t make a big deal out of it, though.

That’s what I liked about him.

“We could put them in the attic.”

“Perfetto.”

“But I wouldn’t give them away.”

“Why?”

He was just taking my regular pants out of the closet.

“Maybe we’ll still need them.”

“For what?”

“Well…”

He looked at me.

“If we ever go on a trip together.”

And there it was again.

Just a little sentence.

Unspectacular.

Almost offhand.

You could have easily missed it.

Maybe we’ll need them when we go on a trip together.

Not: “if you ever go somewhere.”

Not: “when you leave again.”

We.

Together.

I didn’t say anything.

There are moments that lose something when you immediately frame them with words, examine them, analyze them, and label them, as if you had to preserve them under glass.

So I just let it stand there.

That sentence.

Between us.

Like a small, warm splash of color.

Later that afternoon, Mario suddenly stood in front of me.

“Do you feel like doing a photo shoot?”

I looked at him.

“With me?”

“No,” Lisa said immediately. “With the pumpkin.”

Mario grinned.

I stuck my tongue out at her.

“With you, of course,” he said.

Lisa was instantly electrified.

That’s probably the right word.

With Lisa, enthusiasm rarely comes in small doses. It doesn’t flicker. It ignites.

“Oh yeah!”

She sat up straight.

“Laura, we’ve got this black set, and the red one with the—”

Her gaze had already wandered mentally to the closet.

I could practically see her pulling open drawers in her head.

“And as a witch,” said Mario.

Lisa stopped.

“Excuse me?”

“As a witch.”

He paused briefly.

“In a cemetery.”

Now she slowly looked around the living room.

Couch.

Carpet.

Fireplace.

Pillows.

Plants.

“We’re going to have to move a lot of stuff around here to make this pretty living room look like a cemetery.”

Mario grinned.

“Nope.”

Lisa narrowed her eyes.

“I like that grin.”

“I’m not supposed to.”

“Yes, you are.”

She pointed at him.

“That’s your ‘I’ve got something planned’ grin.”

“I don’t have an ‘I’ve got something planned’ grin.”

We all looked at him.

“Yes, you do,” said Yasmin.

Amber nodded.

So did I.

Mario sighed.

“I’ve got something better.”

Lisa immediately tilted her head.

“Oh, really?”

Mario didn’t say anything else.

And that’s exactly what made her even more suspicious.

“What?”

“Come with me.”

“Where?”

“The basement.”

For a moment, there was actually silence.

We’d never been to the basement before.

Not really.

Mario, on the other hand, had been down there constantly over the past few weeks.

Time and again, we’d heard him down there.

Footsteps.

Shuffling.

Rumbling.

Occasionally a dull thud, followed by something that sounded suspiciously like a curse.

But most of all, that heavy breathing whenever he moved heavy things.

On top of that, several surprisingly large packages had been delivered lately.

Large boxes.

Long boxes.

Flat boxes.

Boxes that disappeared downstairs and never resurfaced.

Lisa had asked him once what was inside them.

His only reply had been:

“Stuff.”

Now she looked at him.

Then toward the basement door.

Then back again.

“Stuff.”

Mario blinked.

“What?”

“You said ‘stuff.’”

“Yeah.”

“You said that before Pentecost, too.”

I had to laugh.

I knew the story well enough by now.

The garden.

Bikinis.

Beatrice’s gift.

The cheerleader outfit.

And Lisa, who at some point that day had apparently decided that normal enthusiasm wasn’t enough anymore and that she had to completely lose it emotionally instead.

“Back then,” Lisa continued, “you just had ‘stuff’ too.”

Mario raised both hands.

“This time it’s different stuff.”

“That doesn’t reassure me at all.”

“You’ll survive.”

“I really hope so. After all, I still want to do the photo shoot.”

He helped us down one by one.

Lisa first.

Then Yasmin.

Amber.

Me last.

Every time he went back upstairs to get the next one, the speculation outside the locked door grew a little more absurd.

“Maybe he bought a coffin,” Lisa said.

“Why would he buy a coffin?” Amber asked.

“Halloween.”

“That doesn’t explain the coffin.”

“Yes, it does.”

Yasmin shook her head, amused.

“Maybe he just has more space down here.”

Lisa looked at her.

“Yasmin.”

“Hm?”

“Boring.”

“Plausible.”

“Even worse.”

When Mario finally dropped me off downstairs too, he stood in front of the door.

“Ready?”

“No,” said Lisa.

A brief pause.

“Open up!”

He opened the door.

And no one said a word.

Just for a few seconds.

But with Lisa, a few seconds of silence are about as noticeable as a power outage in Las Vegas.

The room behind the door wasn’t a basement anymore.

Of course it was.

The walls were the same.

The floor was the same.

But spaces can sometimes be just as easy to deceive as people. Give them light, fabric, and a different perspective, and suddenly they tell a new story.

Several large studio lights stood on tripods.

Two huge white light modifiers looked almost like sails.

Next to them were narrow, tall lights.

Tripods.

Cables.

Mounts.

On one side stood a tall desk with Mario’s laptop on it. Next to it was his camera—connected to the laptop via a long cable.

At the other end of the room, a large screen took up almost the entire width.

A cemetery.

Not really gloomy.

Not in that heavy, Gothic way.

More like a slightly exaggerated illustration from a Halloween book.

A huge full moon hung behind bare branches. Crooked gravestones jutted out of the dark earth. Orange pumpkins lay scattered among them, and somewhere a ghost floated, one that was probably meant to look scarier than it actually did.

In front of the screen, black fabric lay on the floor.

Real pumpkins sat on top of it.

Our little bench from the dressing room was here, too.

And on it lay a dress.

Black.

Long.

Next to it, a cape.

Black jewelry—old-looking, heavy, a little over-the-top.

A witch’s hat.

And what a hat it was.

Wide brim.

Tall point.

A large black spider was dangling from the tip.

I loved it immediately.

An old, open book hung from the ceiling.

It was floating.

At least that’s what it looked like, until you spotted the nearly invisible thread.

Next to it hung a strange sphere made of transparent foil.

No idea what it was supposed to be.

Not yet.

A gnarled pole, almost shoulder-high, leaned against the wall, with a sphere at its top.

Lisa took a deep breath.

Then she squealed.

“YOU HAVE A PHOTO STUDIO!”

Mario flinched.

“Yeah.”

“In the basement!”

“Obviously.”

“A real one!”

“Lisa.”

She looked at the lights.

At the backdrop.

At the laptop.

Back at the lights.

“We can take photos every weekend now!”

Mario fell very quiet.

“Every weekend?”

“Yes!”

“I see.”

“Or even during the week sometimes.”

“Lisa.”

“What?”

Yasmin grinned.

Amber did too.

Meanwhile, I was still looking at the dress.

Mario noticed.

He walked over to the bench.

“Well then.”

He picked it up.

“Let’s get you dressed.”

It took a while.

Of course it did.

The dress had to fit just right.

The cape had to drape without ruining the silhouette.

The jewelry couldn’t get lost in the fabric.

The hat had to stay on my head while still looking as though the big spider hadn’t landed there by accident, but had been living there for at least three centuries.

But when Mario was done and I looked at myself in the dark mirror of a turned-off monitor, I had to smile.

Clothes don’t change a person.

At least not in the literal sense.

And yet, sometimes they change the story that one’s own body tells.

Black fabric suddenly turned my movements into lines.

The cape broadened my silhouette and, at the same time, made it appear heavier.

The jewelry drew the eye upward.

The hat took it all to the next level.

It turned a woman in a black dress into a statement.

Here stands a witch.

Not a particularly subtle one.

But one with style.

“Wow!” I heard Lisa whisper in amazement.

“You bet,” Yasmin agreed.

Mario led me in front of the backdrop.

At that point, the room was still bright.

Almost disappointingly bright.

You could see cables.

You could see the edges of the fabric.

You could see where the screen ended.

You could see the equipment.

And then Mario began to make it all disappear.

He darkened the small basement window.

The daylight vanished.

Then he turned off the ceiling lights.

Suddenly, only the studio lights remained.

But even those were still too bright.

He walked from one to the other, turned down the knobs, stepped back, looked at me, looked at the backdrop, and adjusted something again.

It reminded me of restoration work.

Not because he was restoring anything.

But because it involved the same kind of patient observation.

Not: Is there light?

But:

What kind of light?

Where?

How much?

What does it reveal?

What can be left out?

What should only become visible if you look a little longer?

Then he walked over to a small, unassuming black device on the floor just in front of the screen. It clicked—and suddenly a thin layer of fog began to creep across the floor, between the pumpkins, around my feet, over the black fabric.

A lamp turned green.

And suddenly the fog changed.

In normal light, it had been fog.

Now it became something else.

The green light seeped into it, not evenly everywhere, but in small currents, as if the light itself were drifting within it.

Mario stepped back.

“Yes.”

Just that one word.

Then he came over to me.

“The wand.”

He took it off the wall and placed it in my hand.

“Press the top.”

I did.

The orb in the rod began to glow.

That green again.

A little more milky this time.

A light that didn’t need to be bright, because the darkness all around it already gave it enough space.

“Oh.”

I heard Lisa behind me.

“Oooooh.”

Yasmin made a soft:

“Shh.”

“What?”

“He’s not even taking a picture yet.”

“But it already looks awesome.”

“Shh.”

Mario laughed and turned around. “Stand by the laptop,” he told them. “Then you can see the pictures right away.”

Then he walked over to that foil sphere.

I still had no idea what it was for.

He fiddled with it.

A little.

Again.

Then a small green dot appeared in the center of it.

And suddenly I understood.

The foil refracted the light.

It captured it.

It pulled it apart.

Reflected it in countless tiny surfaces.

What had just moments ago looked like a cheap ball of packing material turned into a green, flickering shape.

Not really fire.

Not really energy.

But close enough to both to create something of its own in the semi-darkness.

It hung directly over the open book.

Mario came back to me.

“Put your hand over it.”

“Like this?”

“A little higher.”

He gently took my wrist and guided my arm into position.

“Spread your fingers a little.”

He adjusted them.

Then he stepped back.

I looked at my hand.

Beneath it, the green orb.

Beneath that, the book.

The light cast a faint glow on my skin.

Of course, I knew there was plastic wrap there.

I knew the book was attached to a string.

I knew there was a basement wall behind the cemetery and a fog machine running on the floor.

But knowing isn’t the same as seeing.

And seeing isn’t the same as feeling.

Mario raised the camera.

“Laura, look at the book.”

I did.

Click.

Complete silence behind me.

Then:

“Damn, that looks awesome!”

Lisa.

Of course.

Not whispered.

Not even close.

“Shh!” Yasmin said.

I heard her laughing as she said it.

“But look!”

“I’m looking.”

“Then tell me it doesn’t look awesome.”

“It looks really good.”

“Really good?”

Amber laughed softly.

“Lisa.”

“Yeah, okay.”

After that, they actually whispered.

Most of the time.

I only caught bits and pieces.

“The lighting…”

“The hat…”

“The next one’s even better.”

“Oh wow.”

“Shh.”

“I was whispering!”

“That wasn’t a whisper.”

Soon I was only catching snippets of their conversation.

Because I was busy.

Not with posing.

Maybe at the beginning.

Mario said:

“Chin down a little.”

Or:

“Look more to the side.”

He adjusted the angle of the staff.

Straightened the cloak.

Moved a hand.

Stepped back.

Looked.

Came back.

But at some point, I stopped thinking about how I was supposed to look.

I started thinking about who this woman was.

This witch.

What was written in her book.

Why she was in this cemetery.

Whether she’d called out to someone.

Or something.

Whether she knew what she was doing.

Or was just pretending.

I looked back at the book.

The orb hung over it.

My hand was over it.

And suddenly, a thought occurred to me.

“Abracadabra,” I muttered.

A soft giggle behind me.

I ignored it.

“Pasta Pomodoro.”

Another giggle.

I kept a straight face.

“Mozzarella Octopus.”

Then I waited.

Nothing happened.

Of course.

I looked at the green orb.

A little longer.

Then I furrowed my brow slightly.

“Hmm.”

Mario lowered the camera.

“What?”

“Nothing’s happening at all.”

Behind me, I could already hear Lisa laughing.

I sighed.

“Okay.”

I straightened up a little.

“One more time.”

Now I wanted to do it right.

Mario apparently realized what I was up to and raised the camera again.

I took the wand.

Raised my arm.

Slowly.

Higher.

Even higher.

My gaze followed it.

For a moment, I no longer saw myself in the basement.

I was standing on a tower.

Mountains below me.

A storm.

Darkness.

If Saruman had ever conjured up pasta on Orthanc, it would probably have been exactly like this.

I took a deep breath.

“ABRACADABRA!”

The first bursts of laughter were already breaking out behind me.

I continued.

“PASTA POMODORO!”

Yasmin audibly gave up.

“MOZZARELLA OCTOPUS!”

After that, there was no saving it.

Lisa laughed so hard that even Mario lowered the camera.

Amber laughed.

Yasmin laughed.

I held my pose for another moment.

Dignity.

You had to maintain your dignity.

Even as a witch.

Especially then.

Lisa could barely catch her breath.

“Oh my God.”

I gave the book a stern look.

“Quiet.”

That just made it worse.

“I think…”

She gasped.

“I think a ravioli just plopped out!”

I looked at her.

Then at the ball.

Then at the book.

“Where?”

“There!”

“Where there?”

“Out of the dimension!”

“Which dimension?”

She looked at me as if I were the one talking nonsense.

“Well, the ravioli dimension!”

Of course.

From that moment on, it existed.

That’s how things work with Lisa.

You don’t have to prove them.

You just have to assert them with enough conviction.

Mario raised the camera again.

“Stay like that.”

I turned back to the book.

Click.

“Very good.”

One more.

I raised my hand a little differently.

Click.

Soft whispering behind me again.

Then Yasmin.

“Here comes another one.”

I had to laugh.

“What?”

“Ravioli.”

“Again?”

“To the left of the book.”

She sounded completely serious.

I turned my head a little.

“So?”

Yasmin was apparently looking at the picture on the laptop.

“Spinach filling.”

Now Amber laughed.

So did I.

It took Lisa about a second.

“Hopefully there’ll be one with pineapple filling later, too.”

I froze.

Slowly.

Very slowly.

I turned my head toward her.

Lisa grinned.

She knew exactly what she’d done.

I lowered my wand a little.

“Kid…”

She bit her lip.

“…you shouldn’t mess around with such dark forces.”

Lisa burst out laughing a second time.

“It was just an idea!”

“A dangerous one.”

“Maybe it’ll taste good.”

“No.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do.”

“How?”

“Italy.”

Yasmin laughed.

“Solid argument.”

“Thanks.”

Mario kept taking pictures.

And the ravioli dimension remained.

Not all the time.

That would have gotten exhausting eventually.

But it was there.

Occasionally, something supposedly fell out again.

Once, Amber said she’d only seen a shadow.

Lisa claimed it was probably tortellini.

Yasmin theorized that smaller pasta shapes could pass more easily through unstable dimensional rifts.

I finally demanded that someone please let me know if lasagna sheets showed up, because then the situation would clearly be out of control.

At some point, we’d all gotten so deeply into this nonsense that it no longer needed explaining.

And at the same time, pictures were being taken.

Lots of them.

With the wand.

Without it.

With a hand over the book.

Looking to the side.

With the cloak.

Sitting.

Standing.

Sometimes mysterious, eerie, theatrical.

Sometimes almost elegant.

Sometimes with a little smile that broke character—and worked precisely because of that.

Every now and then, Mario briefly turned the laptop toward me, and I saw the pictures.

And every time, I was surprised at how different the finished image looked from the situation in which it was taken.

That’s photography.

It doesn’t necessarily lie.

But it chooses.

It cuts out the basement.

The cables.

Mario’s focused gaze.

Lisa, who’s almost choking behind me because an imaginary ravioli has fallen out of a portal somewhere.

It captures a fraction of a second and claims:

This was the whole moment.

Maybe that’s exactly where its magic lies.

At some point, Mario lowered the camera.

He looked at the display.

Then at the laptop.

Back at the set.

“Okay.”

He exhaled.

“I think that was a hell of a lot of cool shots.”

That sounded final.

He walked over to a lamp.

Turned it up.

Then to the next one.

The room grew brighter.

With every light, the cemetery lost a little of its power.

The green fog turned back into white fog.

The shadows vanished.

Suddenly, you could see the edges of the screen again.

The cables.

Tripods.

The black fabric.

The machine on the floor.

Mario turned it off.

Only the lingering fog remained.

Flat.

Slowly thinning out.

The book was once again a book hanging from a string.

The energy sphere was foil again.

The wand was once again a piece of wood with a light.

The stage was taken down before anyone actually had to take anything down.

I looked around.

And suddenly found it a shame.

Not sad.

Just…

Back to normal too quickly.

Music was still playing from a speaker somewhere.

I’d barely noticed it during the shoot.

Now I heard it again.

And it was too boring for me.

Way too boring.

Mario had already turned his attention to a cable.

I lifted my head.

“Alexa!”

He looked at me.

“Play ‘Abracadabra’ by Lady Gaga.”

A moment later, the first notes began.

I grinned.

That was better.

Much better.

“Alexa!”

Mario was already starting to laugh.

“LOUDER!”

Boom.

The bass filled the basement.

Not subtle.

Not just background noise.

It was there.

I immediately started moving to the beat, still positioned where Mario had placed me on set—in a black dress, a cape, and that absurdly huge witch’s hat—and suddenly the fact that the shoot was supposed to be officially over became completely irrelevant.

Lisa didn’t need an invitation.

Not for a second.

“YES!”

She grabbed one of the witch hats lying around.

Mario helped her with it.

Then she took a second one.

“Yasmin.”

Yasmin looked at the hat.

Then at Lisa.

“No.”

Lisa put it on her head. “I don’t know that word. Too bad!”

Yasmin looked at her again.

A brief pause.

Then she shrugged.

“All right.”

And that was it.

No long discussion.

No feigned dignity.

She just went along with it.

Amber, of course, got a hat too.

And before we knew it, the four of us were standing there.

Witches.

Or at least four women in black hats in a basement filled with lingering fog.

The music was loud.

Lisa was Lisa.

In other words, completely and unreservedly enthusiastic.

It took Yasmin about two seconds, and then she was fully into it, too.

Amber laughed.

I laughed.

Mario was still holding a cable.

He obviously wanted to keep tidying up.

But he didn’t.

At some point, he just put it down.

And looked at us.

Not through the camera.

Just like that.

I liked that.

Maybe even more than the photos.

Lisa moved closer to me, still laughing under that much-too-big witch’s hat, simply reached for my hand, and pulled me a little further into her completely crazy dance.

We kept moving to the music.

Not elegantly.

Not in sync.

Not choreographed.

Thankfully.

Some things get worse when you try to perfect them.

I held her hand.

Lady Gaga was singing.

The last of the fog lay over the ground.

Yasmin was wearing that completely ridiculous hat.

Amber, too.

Lisa laughed.

And then she turned her head.

Toward Mario.

Just for a moment.

She didn’t say anything.

Neither did he.

But her expression changed.

Not drastically.

Maybe someone who didn’t know her wouldn’t even have noticed.

I noticed it.

Because there was love in her gaze.

So much love that, for a moment, a completely absurd question crossed my mind:

“How much love can you actually put into a single glance?”

Lisa would probably have answered that question simply:

Yes.

Just yes.

It wasn’t a romantic glance in the strict sense.

Not only that.

It was bigger.

Softer.

There was a “thank you” in it.

For this day.

For this house.

For Yasmin.

For Amber.

For all the things that had come before and were yet to come.

For that completely absurd image of four witch’s hats, lingering fog, and a dimensional portal full of Italian pasta.

For this family.

For what they could be together.

And as she looked at Mario, she was still holding my hand—as part of “we” and “us.”

I looked at our hands.

Just for a moment.

Then back at Lisa.

And I understood.

Not suddenly.

Not like a realization that had been missing before.

More like a painting you’ve known for a long time, in which one day you discover a small connection between two colors that had always been there.

I hadn’t just entered into this “we.”

Not just now.

Not through her hand.

I’d been part of it for a long time.

Her hand just made it visible for a moment.

Maybe I’d used to believe that family was something you could experience.

Like a place.

An event.

A particularly lovely evening.

Something you look back on later and say:

That was family.

But maybe it doesn’t work that way.

Maybe at some point you stop experiencing it.

Maybe you stop looking at it all the time.

Examining it.

Naming it.

Maybe it becomes as natural as the light in a room, which you only consciously notice when someone turns it off.

I thought of my suitcases.

Briefly.

Just briefly.

To the attic.

To a trip we took together.

Then that thought faded away, too.

Lisa squeezed my hand.

Or maybe I just imagined it.

It didn’t matter.

We kept dancing.

When we were back upstairs later, I hadn’t been wearing the witch’s dress for a long time.

The hat was downstairs.

The cape, too.

As far as we knew, the Ravioli Dimension was closed.

At least for now.

Lisa insisted we had to check on it regularly.

Yasmin said the risk of another spinach outbreak was manageable.

Amber demanded that we eat something before any further conjuring.

She had a good point there.

Mario had retreated to the kitchen area and started cooking.

I was sitting in the living room and could hear him working there.

Cabinet doors.

A pot.

The sound of a knife on a cutting board.

Water.

Something sizzling in a pan.

It was one of those soundscapes you never really notice as long as they’re there.

I was talking to Yasmin when I paused mid-sentence.

There was something in the air.

Warm.

Slightly sweet.

Earthy.

Spicy.

Not an immediately distinct smell, but rather a shift in the atmosphere, as if someone had suddenly added a golden undertone to a neutral space.

I sniffed.

Sniffed.

Again.

“Is that… pumpkin?”

At first, there was no answer.

Then Mario, at the other end of the room, looked up at me, the wooden spoon still in his hand, and winked.

“It fits, doesn’t it?”

I had to laugh.

Of course it fit.

After an afternoon at a cemetery, a green dimensional portal, four witch hats, and at least three suspected ravioli, any other dinner would have been almost inconsistent.

“Very subtle,” Yasmin said.

Mario pointed at her with the wooden spoon.

“Don’t complain.”

“I’m not complaining at all.”

“Okay.”

Lisa looked up.

“Are there ravioli in it?”

“No.”

“Too bad.”

“No,” I said.

She grinned.

“What do you mean?”

“No more experiments today.”

“I was just asking.”

Mario was already about to disappear behind the stove again.

Then he turned around.

“Of course, I could also order pizza.”

Lisa immediately perked up.

I looked at her.

She looked at me.

Slowly, that grin appeared.

“With Ana—”

I just raised an eyebrow.

She stopped.

“Never mind.”

Yasmin laughed.

“You’re a quick learner.”

“I’m an extremely quick learner.”

“Selectively.”

“That, too.”

Mario disappeared again.

I stood still for a moment.

That was perhaps the strangest thing about that day.

Not the witch.

Not the studio.

Not even that exchange of glances between Lisa and Mario.

There was no point at which anything really ended.

The shoot hadn’t been wrapped up, and afterward, normal life began again.

It was all the same life.

The basement had come upstairs with us.

In our conversations.

In Lisa’s jokes.

In my hair, which was still slightly tousled.

In the song that I hadn’t been able to get out of my head for the past hour.

In the pumpkin on the stove.

Maybe beautiful days aren’t made up of individual beautiful moments at all.

Maybe we only see them that way later on because memory likes to draw boundaries where none existed while we were living them.

Here, the photo shoot.

There, the meal.

Then the movie.

As if they were separate panels of a triptych.

But it was one picture.

A long, warm brushstroke.

One that had begun that morning with a pair of pants that were way too small and now smelled of pumpkin.

Mario was cooking.

Lisa was talking.

Yasmin was contradicting her.

Amber was listening.

I was sitting right in the middle of it all.

And nobody was thinking about it.

Least of all me.

The food was good.

Very good.

Pumpkin can do amazing things if you give it a little help.

Lisa, however, thought that an orange meal after a Halloween photoshoot was almost too much thematic consistency.

“You could at least have made green pasta to go with it.”

Mario looked at her.

“So you can start going on about your ‘ravioli dimension’ again?”

“Oh!”

She pointed at him.

“So you actually believe in it now.”

“No.”

“Yes, you do.”

“I’ve just realized that resistance is futile.”

Yasmin nodded.

“That’s different.”

I looked at her.

“Spinach filling?”

She raised her glass.

“Definitely.”

We laughed again.

And eventually, things quieted down.

Not silent.

Just slower.

The kind of tiredness that comes after a long, beautiful day is different from exhaustion.

It doesn’t drag you down.

It’s more like a blanket draped over everything.

Warm.

Heavy enough that you want to stay lying down.

Later, we ended up on the couch.

Of course.

Mario had asked what we wanted to watch.

Lisa had shouted, “A Halloween movie!”

Amber was in the mood for something a little less scary.

I don’t remember who said “Harry Potter” first.

Maybe Yasmin.

Maybe me.

It didn’t matter.

It fit.

Of course it fit.

So, Harry Potter.

The living room grew darker.

Not completely.

Just cozy.

The TV cast shifting colors over us.

Lisa sat next to Yasmin.

Amber was nearby.

Me, too.

Mario was somewhere in between.

Magic was happening on the screen.

Real spells.

At least that’s what the movie claimed.

By then, I was skeptical.

“That’s surprisingly little pasta,” I muttered at some point.

Lisa giggled.

“They’re just beginners.”

Yasmin looked at the screen.

“At least there’s no pineapple.”

I turned my head toward her.

She grinned.

“You, too.”

“I adapt to my surroundings.”

“That’s unsettling.”

“Thanks.”

Later, things got quieter.

Lisa stopped commenting on every other scene.

Which, for her, is roughly equivalent to entering the deep sleep phase for normal people.

Amber was quiet.

Yasmin, too.

Mario sat there, relaxed.

And at some point, I was only half-watching the movie.

The images kept rolling by.

Stairs.

Candles.

Stone.

Wands.

Black cloaks.

I found myself thinking about the basement again.

About green light.

About the wand in my hand.

About the book.

About my completely ridiculous, dead-serious “Mozzarella Octopus.”

About Lisa’s laughter.

About Yasmin’s spinach ravioli.

About Lady Gaga.

About Lisa’s hand.

Most of all, about her hand.

It was strange.

If someone had asked me that morning whether I felt at home here, I probably would have said yes.

If someone had asked me whether these people were my family, I would have said yes as well.

But those were questions.

And questions demand answers.

This day hadn’t demanded any.

I hadn’t needed any.

I’d woken up that morning.

I’d accidentally put on Amber’s pants.

My suitcases were supposed to go up to the attic.

Mario had built a photo studio.

We had caused an interdimensional pasta problem.

Later, he had cooked some pumpkin.

Now we were sitting together watching Harry Potter.

That was all.

And that was everything.

On the screen, someone raised a wand.

By now, the light in the living room had almost completely faded.

I smiled.

“Nox.”