The Girl Who Drew Doors.

In the quiet town of Elmbrook, where the fog rolled in thick every morning and the rain tapped gentle lullabies against windowpanes, lived a girl named Mira. She was an oddity by the town’s standards—not because she wore mismatched socks or talked to the crows, but because she carried a piece of chalk wherever she went. Bright blue, always sharpened to a perfect point.

Mira wasn’t like other children. While they played hide-and-seek or kicked footballs across the muddy park, Mira crouched by the walls of old buildings, sketching doors. Not ordinary doors, either—hers had twisted handles, vines growing out of the frames, and symbols no one could read. Sometimes they glowed faintly under moonlight.

People whispered. “That Mira’s not right,” they’d say, peeking through lace curtains. “Drawing doors on things like she’s trying to leave.”

But Mira wasn’t trying to leave.

She was trying to return.

It all began when Mira was five. Her parents took her on a walk through Elmbrook’s outer woods. They told her stories about faerie circles and owl spirits, trying to make her giggle. At one point, they sat by an old stone well to rest. Mira wandered, drawn to a moss-covered boulder. Upon its face, someone had drawn a door—curved at the top, etched with stars.

Curious, Mira reached out and touched it.

And it opened.

The world behind that door was unlike anything she knew—sky split into ribbons of lavender and gold, trees that whispered secrets, and flowers that blinked like sleepy animals. She met a woman there, tall and pale-skinned, with silver eyes and hair like fireflies. The woman called herself Liora and spoke in riddles.

“You have the Sight,” Liora had said. “You can draw paths where none exist. You can open what’s closed.”

Mira spent hours there, or maybe days—it was hard to tell. When she finally returned, staggering back to the mossy boulder, her parents were gone. The well was gone. The trees were different. And the town… had changed.

She was still in Elmbrook. But everything felt slightly… off. Her home looked the same, but a different family lived there. The bakery was on the wrong side of the street. Her name was no longer on the school’s registry. It was like she had slipped into a different version of the world.

No one remembered her.

Except the crows.

That’s when she began drawing. She stole a stick of blue chalk from a schoolyard box and began sketching doors—trying to find her way back to the door that had first opened. Trying to find Liora, or at least someone who remembered the world behind the veil.

For years, Mira searched. Sometimes the doors she drew would open. Sometimes they would hiss and vanish into smoke. Once, a door led her to a desert with two moons and a city made of glass. Another took her into a library suspended over a void, where books fluttered like birds and spoke aloud in a dozen voices.

Each time, she asked, “Do you know how I can get back?”

Each time, the answer was either silence or more riddles.

One day, at sixteen, Mira found herself sketching a door on the stone wall behind the old bakery—an ornate arch with spirals like flames. She hadn’t meant to draw it; her hand had moved of its own accord. When she stepped back, the air shimmered, and the door opened soundlessly.

Liora stood on the other side, older now, sadness etched around her eyes.

“You’ve been searching long,” Liora said softly. “The threads between worlds are thinning.”

“Why can’t I go back?” Mira asked, heart aching.

“Because your world has already moved forward. And so have you.”

Mira lowered her gaze. “Then what am I?”

Liora smiled, brushing a curl from Mira’s face. “You are a Walker now. A Doorweaver. The girl who drew doors because she could never stop seeking… and who helped others find their way.”

Mira turned. Behind her stood a child, lost, frightened, clutching a stuffed bear. The girl’s eyes wide with wonder.

“She’s like you once were,” said Liora. “She needs a path.”

Mira took the child’s hand.

Then she knelt, and with her blue chalk, she began to draw.

A door bloomed on the stone wall, warm and golden. It pulsed like a heartbeat.

And together, they stepped through.

Mira had finally found her purpose—not to return to where she came from, but to help others find their way home.

She would always be the girl who drew doors.

But now, she was also the one who held them open