There are times when you have a dream so good you don’t want to wake up.

  I had one of those today.

  It wasn’t a dream of flying or fighting dragons. It was a summer night. Smoke curled into the air, carrying the scent of charcoal and searing meat. We were having a barbecue. Jujeh kabab.

  I could almost taste it, the saffron infused chicken, the charred tomatoes, the chili peppers skewered and blistering over the fire. I was arguing with my younger brother over who got the skewer with the most chicken, shoving him playfully. My parents were laughing at us, their faces illuminated by the glow of the embers.

  My dad took his phone out, the screen glowing in the twilight.

  he chuckled. "This will be funny in a few years."

  I reached out to block the camera, embarrassed but happy.

  "Vivian?"

  The voice shattered the summer night.

  I blinked, and the scent of charcoal vanished, replaced by the smell of woodsmoke. I looked up. Nora was leaning over me, her face etched with concern.

  I looked at her beautiful face, and for a split second, I felt pure, irrational anger. I hated her for waking me. I hated this world for being real.

  Before I could say anything, she pulled me into a hug. She wiped my cheeks.

  I touched my face. Wet. I had been crying in my sleep.

  "It's okay," she whispered. "Bad dream?"

  "Good dream," I corrected, my voice raspy. "Just... gone now."

  I hadn't forgotten their faces. I thought I had, buried under years of new memories, but the dream had brought them back with painful clarity. I would have given anything, my magic, my stylus, just to have my father's phone with those videos on it.

  But that wasn't an option. The graves of that family were a world away.

  Breakfast was the usual winter fare, preserved meats and hard bread. It tasted like cardboard compared to the phantom taste of jujeh kabab lingering on my tongue.

  "I'm going to the Hut," I announced, grabbing my coat.

  "Wait for me," Nora said.

  I waited, tapping my foot. I had stopped the baby talk a while ago. It was exhausting trying to butcher my syntax to match a toddler's brain capacity. So, I just... stopped. I deleted the wrong words, fixed the grammar, and spoke normally. It was a bit early for a two year old, sure, but after the bandit attack, Nora and Oliver didn't seem to mind. They treated me like a tiny adult anyway.

  The walk to the Hut was cold and quiet. The village was buried in snow, but the silence wasn't just from the season.

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  The Hut was empty.

  It had been this way since the attack. The villagers avoided the place like it was cursed. They knew Alicia was a good person, she had saved them, after all, but fear is a powerful inhibitor.

  And Elder Harlan didn't help. He badmouthed her at every opportunity, It was like he had decided that Alicia killed Mira and not the bandits.

  Alicia was sitting at her desk, looking bored.

  "Morning, sunshine," she drawled, not looking up.

  "Morning," I replied, heading straight for the preservation box.

  I needed fruit. Specifically, I needed acid.

  I rummaged through the cold box until I found it. A fruit I hadn't noticed before. It looked like a lemon, but with an orange tint at the top.

  "Can I have this?" I asked, holding it up.

  Alicia glanced at it. "The sour orange? Sure. If you earn it."

  "Earn it how?"

  "Play the flute," she said. "If you impress me enough that I think you need a prize, you get the fruit."

  I pulled out my flute. I didn't hold back. I poured my melancholy, my dream, and my hunger into the melody.

  When I finished, Alicia actually put down her book.

  "Not bad," she admitted. "In fact... you're ready for strings. We start violin tomorrow."

  She tossed me the fruit.

  I bit into it. It wasn't a lemon, but it was sharp and acidic.

  Perfect.

  "Can I have more?" I asked.

  "Take them all," Alicia waved a hand. "I hate them."

  I gathered the fruits and took them to Nora. "Juice these, please."

  Nora frowned. "Vivian, those are incredibly sour. You won't like the juice."

  "Cooking," I said. "Not drinking."

  She gave me a look that said 'what are you plotting?' but she did it.

  I took the jar of juice home with us.

  If I couldn't have my family, I would have their food. Or the closest approximation this world could offer.

  We had no chicken, but Oliver had caught some wild birds. We had no lemons, but I had the sour orange. We had onions. And, thanks to Kael, I had saffron.

  I went to my room, my sanctuary.

  I pulled a wooden box from under my bed. I opened the lid, and a wave of cold air hit my face.

  My fridge.

  It was my proudest engineering achievement to date.

  After copying the temperature enchantment from the Hut's wall, I had spent weeks decoding the variables. I realized the enchantment worked on a threshold system. Above 27 degrees Celsius , it absorbed heat from the environment, storing it in the material. That was why my paper had burned that first time, it absorbed the room's heat but had nowhere to put it. Below 20 degrees, it released the stored heat.

  It was a simple, binary loop. Absorb. Release.

  The problem was the numbers. Why 27? Why 20?

  I had spent nights using my stylus to suck the magic back out of the runes making them transparent again, rewriting the numerical variables until I understood the syntax.

  I had asked Oliver to build me two sturdy wooden boxes.

  On the inside of the first box, I inscribed the heat absorption array, setting the trigger to -4 degrees. On the outside of the box, I wrote the heat release array.

  The result? The inside of the box constantly sucked heat until it reached freezing, dumping that heat into the room outside.

  I had a freezer.

  The second box was set to 6 degrees. A refrigerator.

  I placed the jar of sour juice into the fridge box. Then, I went to the kitchen.

  "I need the bird meat," I told Nora. "And a knife."

  She handed them over. She was used to me handling blades now, though she still watched with a hawk's eye.

  I chopped the onions. I cut the bird meat into bite sized chunks.

  I mixed them in a bowl. I added the salt. Then, the pièce de résistance, the saffron, dissolved in a little hot water, turning the mix a vibrant gold. Finally, the sour fruit juice.

  I covered the bowl and carried it back to my room, placing it in the fridge to marinate overnight.

  The next morning, the smell hitting me when I opened the box was divine. It wasn't exactly Jujeh, but it was close enough to make my heart ache.

  "We're going to the Hut," I told Nora, carrying the bowl like a holy relic.

  We walked through the snow. I expected the usual empty room. I expected a bored Alicia.

  But when Nora opened the door, I stopped dead.

  The Hut was crowded.

  There were at least six people huddled on the benches. They looked terrible, pale, sweating, shivering despite the warmth of the room.

  And around them, hovering with a look of intense concentration, was Alicia.

  Should I add more cooking time for Vivian?