Girl Who Spoke to Shadows

It started on the third day of winter.
Mira always thought shadows were silent.
Until one whispered back.

“You're late,” it said.

She dropped her bag and froze at the threshold of her bedroom. The sun was setting, and her room was painted gold, except for the corner by the mirror, where the shadow hunched, breathing.

“I don't talk to things that don’t exist,” Mira said stiffly.

The shadow chuckled, low and crackling, like an old record player.
“You will.”

Mira had grown up alone.
Not lonely — just... surrounded by things she couldn't explain.

Aunt Savi used to say, “You're touched by the dusk, girl. Some blessings look like curses.”
Mira thought it was just nonsense.

But standing there, hearing the dark speak, she wasn't so sure anymore.

“What do you want from me?” Mira whispered.

The shadow’s shape shifted. Taller. Meaner.
Or maybe it was Mira’s fear that changed it.

“We want you to remember.”

**Two weeks later**

She was running out of excuses.
The things that followed her — reflections glitching, whispers in the corners of crowded buses, lights flickering whenever she entered a room — it was all getting worse.

“You have to stop ignoring us,” the mirror said one night, its voice layered like a chorus of broken glass.

Mira threw a book at it. The mirror didn't shatter.

It *laughed*.

One month later

There was a girl in her dreams now.
Thin, barefoot, dragging a string of black pearls across a dusty floor.

The girl never spoke. But her mouth was sewn shut, so Mira figured that was fair.

Every morning, Mira woke up with the taste of salt and ash on her tongue.

“Remember.”
“Remember what they took.”
“Remember who you were before the silence.”

**The end came on the fifty-third night.**

Mira stood in front of the mirror, trembling.

"I remember," she said.

The mirror cracked.

The shadow behind her smiled.

And somewhere deep inside, something Mira had locked away — something older, darker, *hungrier* — smiled back.

**She was never alone again.**