Shadow's Edge (Shadows Saga bk1)

Chapter 3- The Right Decision

The bright glow of morning pierced through Mara’s eyelids bringing her into consciousness. She stretched away the sleepy feeling in her body and rolled onto her side to face the clock that sat on the table next to her bed. Groggily, Mara rubbed her eyes trying to make them focus on the red numbers staring back at her.

“Eleven thirty,” Mara’s voice croaked still raspy from sleep. When the time finally sank in to her fog-filled brain her eyes shot open and she nearly tumbled onto the floor.

“Eleven thirty? How can it be eleven thirty? I’m beyond late for school!” Mara ran to her closet grabbing the first thing her hands touched and ran around her room like a mad woman. She tugged the t-shirt trying to get it to cooperate as she ran to her dresser.

“I can’t believe I overslept, I even had an alarm set. How could this possibly happen?” Mara yelled mostly to herself. She tried to fight with her hair until she decided yesterday’s ponytail was good enough.

Mara quickly swept eyeliner on her lower lid to hide the dark smears around her eyes from the black river that had been her makeup the day before. She then ran over to her bed and picked up her jeans as she tried to tug them on.

She hopped across the floor on one foot as she battled with her jeans before running down the stairs to see her aunt sitting in the kitchen; her cat perched on a stool next to Natalie.

Natalie regarded Mara with a tense smile. “There you are. How are you feeling?”

“Not so good. I’m late for school,” Mara replied obviously perplexed. “It’s eleven thirty. Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“I called you in today, you didn’t seem that well last night,” Natalie said as she tiptoed around the real reason. She had already revealed the magical world to Mara; it was now Mara’s turn to accept it on her own. “Are you feeling better?”

Mara sighed with relief and took up a spot on the last vacant stool at the counter. “Yeah, I’m fine. But I had a weird dream last night,” Mara said as she twirled a glass of orange juice that had been waiting for her on the counter. She watched the liquid slosh around and up the walls of the glass.

“What do you mean you had a weird dream?” Natalie asked, and Sasha’s head tilted to the side as if she were wondering the same thing.

Mara looked at her cat oddly before shaking her head. “Well, you were tying to tell me that I was a witch and that there’s this Magical Realm or something. You said instead of living in Europe, you had actually been there the whole time.” Mara smiled as she thought about how ridiculous all of it was sounding to her own ears.

“You said you came back when you heard about all of the accidents that happened around me, you even said I was the one who caused them with my powers. Oh, and this all happened after I apparently started a fire down here at the stove.”

Mara’s words died off as she turned towards the stove to her right. Her mouth hung wide open as she noticed the scorch marks that matched the ones she had believed were in her dream.

“And Sasha… Talked-“ Mara’s voice trailed off as she turned back toward her aunt again.

Sasha’s tail twitched and she saw the cat’s mouth begin to move as if they were trying to form words.

“Well dear, that wasn’t a dream at all, in fact, everything you said actually did happen yesterday.”

Mara stared blankly at her cat. There was no way her cat could have just talked to her again, that couldn’t be possible. That dream couldn’t have been real; she must still be in the dream. That had to be it, she was still asleep and still dreaming because there was no way magic and talking cats could exist.