Chapter 1 #2
At the counter, dough slapped against wood, spinning under calloused hands before being tossed high into the air.
One of the younger Costa brothers—she could never tell them apart beyond the eldest—spooned sauce in perfect spirals while another worked the register with efficiency.
The eldest Costa, the one who’d been here the longest, who probably had flour in the lines of his palms no matter how much he washed them, slid a paper plate across the counter toward her.
“Enjoy, hun,” he said.
She usually bristled at the childhood endearment, and the way it clung to her like an old, ill-fitting sweater, but from him, it meant nothing. She was just another face in the rush, another nameless customer cycling through the doors of his family’s institution.
She liked that.
“Thank you,” she said, but he had already turned to serve the next customer.
The plate bent under the weight of her slice, and the grease pooled toward the tip.
She folded it instinctively, lifting it to her mouth as she stepped out of the flow of movement.
The first bite was molten-hot, the cheese stretching in a single strand, and the crust was crisp beneath her teeth.
It burned the roof of her mouth, but she didn’t care.
She slid onto a miraculously empty barstool at the window and watched one of the interns at the bureau haul away her container of denied wishes.
It was rather difficult to shake off the disappointment from her encounter with the man.
She was happy with her life in the city, but there were days she’d sit alone at her little dining room table, sipping tea while muffled laughter and conversation drifted in from the hallway of her apartment building.
On those days, a small pinch of loneliness settled in her chest.
So yes, she understood the temptation to wish for more. But wishes and hopes meant nothing without a plan or action. And as much as she empathized, she couldn’t let that understanding sway her. She couldn’t grant a wish just because she knew what it felt like to be lonely.
As Honey sprinkled red pepper flakes onto the remaining half of her slice, she forced her thoughts to turn from the lonely man to her upcoming performance review.
She had no cause for concern, of course.
For the last ten years, she’d gotten perfect marks every time, and she relished the tidy way Mr. Aldridge printed a neat line of fives across her employee file.
But this year would mark her tenth review.
It would be the year she was finally eligible for promotion to Assistant to the Director of Arcane Relations, a title reserved for those entrusted with overseeing not just wells, but entire magic systems of the region.
The Assistant to the Director didn’t just check wishing wells for compliance; they set the tone for how magic was regulated in their territories.
They designed new protocols, advised on policy, and—if she earned enough favor—could even become Director in another ten years.
Getting the promotion of her dreams would be a bittersweet development.
It meant giving up the day-to-day maintenance and review of her beloved wishing well.
But the opportunity to shape magical regulation on a larger scale—to ensure that every policy upheld the bureau’s guiding principles of spreading joy, promoting unity, and keeping the magical world safe and harmonious—well, that was worth the sacrifice of changing her routine.
So, when she finished up her lunch and walked across the courtyard, up to the fourth floor, and into Mr. Aldridge’s office exactly two minutes early to their scheduled meeting, she was ready.
She would smile politely, sit up straight, and ask with confidence.
Mr. Aldridge was the type of man who respected a solid, well-reasoned request.
Despite her intention, Honey didn’t get any farther than the doorway before Mr. Aldridge interrupted her plan. “Instead of conducting your review today, there’s something else I would like to discuss with you.”
“Oh?” Surprised by this deviation from her plan, the single syllable was all Honey could manage.
Mr. Aldridge had never, not once, deviated from protocol in the entire decade she had served under him.
He was a man of measured words, clockwork expectations, and an almost religious devotion to routine.
Mr. Aldridge slapped a file folder on the table. “I would like to send you to Brim's Hollow.”
The way he said it sounded like Honey was about to be sentenced to drive through Times Square on a Friday night in December during a blackout.
“And what,” she asked, pulling herself back into the moment, “is particularly special about this well?”
Mr. Aldridge flipped open the folder with a brisk flick. “It’s out of the city.”
Honey blinked. She hadn't taken a vacation—or really left the city’s humming, carefully gridded streets—in, well, ever.
But she was not one to complain to a superior. “I’m sure I can manage. A change of scenery might even be…restorative.”
“It’s on a farm.”
“Oh.” Honey’s voice rose an octave.
Other than having read Charlotte’s Web in grammar school, Honey didn’t have any experience with that sort of thing. She straightened her shoulders anyway. She could handle this. It was an opportunity, an assignment chosen by Mr. Aldridge himself.
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” she said brightly, and was rewarded by a small dip of his chin and, miracle of miracles, the faintest lift at the corner of his mouth.
“Very well,” he said.
Honey swelled with pride. She had worked under Mr. Aldridge for the entirety of her career at the bureau, and she liked to think of him as a mentor of sorts.
It was Mr. Aldridge who had taught her the beauty of precision and the art of efficiency.
He had never been a man for grand gestures—no pep talks or friendly shoulder-claps—but his mentorship lived in the smallest things: a carefully placed report returned with a quiet "Good work," a nod of approval after a particularly complex audit, a comment in the margin of an evaluation.
Honey treasured those moments.
She had built herself around them.
“As for the matter of your review,” he said, steepling his fingers atop the desk, “should this assignment have a favorable outcome, you may have the position of your choice.”
For a heartbeat, Honey could only stare at him. The position of her choice. The culmination of ten years of meticulous effort.
A giddy thrill sparked low in her chest, quickly followed by a flutter of nerves. She hadn't anticipated a test. She had imagined a smooth transition into the next chapter of her career, not a last-minute venture to farmland.
She smoothed her skirt. No matter.
It’d been so long since she had created a new system from scratch, she realized.
That was probably the reason for her bout of melancholy earlier.
She missed the rush of bringing order to a mess.
It was a rare feeling, like snapping the final piece of a puzzle into place after hours of work: that humming, full-body click of rightness.
And maybe this was her chance to feel it again. To prove herself before stepping into the future she had so carefully planned.
“It would be my pleasure, sir.”