I shift another stack of brittle papers and my fingers brush against something heavy and old. There, tucked away in the shadows of forgotten things, I uncover a wooden box. My heart quickens. At last, I’ve found it.

With a slow, deliberate motion, I lift the lid, but as I do, a whisper of something distant—something like a warning—crawls into my mind. I dismiss it as a childish portend. Among the crumbling photographs and letters tied with fraying silk ribbons, I spot a small blue felt pouch. A shiver runs down my spine. I hesitate.

My grandmother had shown me the soil many times before, always with a caution that clung to her words like a curse. “Do not touch it,” she’d warn, her voice low, almost reverent. She claimed the soil was enchanted—alive with a dark, hidden power. “Baba Yaga’s soil,” she would whisper, her eyes darting nervously. “Stolen from beneath the hut that walks on chicken legs.”

……………………………………………..

I hear the creak of her step echo against the wooden floor and catch a faint smell of burnt herbs clinging to her presence. I can see her now. Her hair, wild and uneven from years of haphazard dyes—reds, whites, and blacks—shifts with the shadows, restless as she is. The light of the fire etches deep lines into her face, like folds of ancient, worn fabric, each crease a story I dare not ask her to tell.

……………………………………………………

Her eyes gleam, a spark of something ancient, something untamed. It is the look of someone who has bargained with storms and walked among shadows, and yet, here she is, claiming her place in the story I haven’t even begun to tell. As if reading my thoughts and with eyes defiant she shakes her head slowly from side to side and breaths, ‘You can’t do it without me’.

.