"I get it now," I say, watching incense smoke spiral up from nearby offerings, "Why you and Dad keep moving, seeking these places."
Mom wrings water from my hair. "What do you understand?"
"Sometimes you need to leave everything familiar to find yourself again." I watch a young girl place her offering by the spring source. "But I also know that's not my path. My magic belongs in Hallow's End. In my shop and with my community."
"That's wisdom too," Mom says. "Knowing where you belong."
Two weeks ago, I fled to Bali with a broken heart and tangled thoughts. Tomorrow I'll board my flight home, returning to customers seeking love spells, and friends requesting tarot readings. To my little cottage and garden, to the rhythm of morning rituals and evening inventory counts.
But I'm bringing something with me. Not just temple blessings and market treasures, but the reminder that sometimes, strength means letting others hold you up. That wisdom isn't about having all the answers, but about being brave enough to stay open to the questions.
The rubber ducks linedup on my desk judge me silently as I nail another perfect arc with my stress ball. Four months at Pixel Dreams, and I've mastered exactly one skill: how to look busy while having an existential crisis before a meeting.
The office hums with its usual chaos—a mix of keyboard clicking, cursing at code, and whatever unholy K-pop playlist Jules queued up for her debugging session. Some tech startups have zen gardens and meditation pods. We have three coffee makers, a wall of energy drinks, and a collection of Nerf guns that would make a ten-year-old weep with envy.
"If you break another ceiling tile, HR's going to write a strongly worded Post-it note," Jules calls from the next cube. Her purple hair appears over the divider, followed by the rest of her face.
"That was one time." I catch the ball mid-bounce, spinning in my chair. "And technically, it wasn't broken. Just . . . strategically ventilated."
"You threw a rubber duck at it."
"I was testing physics for the updated mechanics."
"You were showing off for the intern."
"She appreciated my trajectory calculations."
"She appreciated your arms in that T-shirt." Jules tosses a wadded-up sticky note at my head. "But sure, keep pretending it was your math skills."
My monitor pings with a calendar reminder, and my stomach does that thing where it tries to escape through my throat.
Meeting with Xander in five.
Even after months of working here, part of me keeps waiting for someone to realize they hired the wrong guy. But they haven't fired me yet. In fact, last month Xander ran with my idea for the haunted bookshop murder mystery game we're developing.
I grab my laptop, navigating through what appears to be an intense Nerf battle between the UI team and the backend developers. Someone's using a rolling chair as a shield. Another's constructed a fort out of Monster Energy boxes. Just another Friday afternoon at the office.
The best part about Pixel Dreams—besides the fact that they pay me to think up ways to torment digital characters—is that no one gives a shit what you wear. Half the dev team looks like they got dressed in the dark. The other half probably did. Pretty sure Dave from marketing has been wearing the same Star Wars shirt for three days straight.
The meeting room is all glass walls and questionable ergonomic chairs, but Xander's made it his own brand of chaos. Our CEO looks more like a cool philosophy professor than a tech boss. Today it's a faded, "I Debug Like a Boss" shirt, and his signature cargo shorts. In November, because cold doesn't exist when you're successful. His dark curls are doing their usual Einstein impression, and he's typing furiously onhis laptop.
"Ready for our check-in?" He doesn't look up from his screen, but his mouth curves into a smirk that always makes me feel like I'm about to get caught doing something stupid.
"Yeah, ready as I'll ever be." I drop into the chair across from him.
"I just wanted to talk to you about your time here and how you have been getting on." Xander closes his laptop and meets my gaze.
Shit. This is it. I'm going to end up crawling back to Cheesy Delights, begging Martin to rehire me. I'll never live it down—
"You're killing it, Caleb."
I blink. "What?"
"The learning curve for this job is brutal," Xander continues, either not noticing, or kindly ignoring my goldfish impression. "But you've picked up everything we've thrown at you. Your code is clean, your design instincts are solid, and that demon cat familiar idea? Genius. Though I have questions why it only attacks male characters."
I cough, trying not to think about Salem's vendetta against me. "Just adding depth to the behavior patterns."
"Right." His knowing smile suggests he's not buying it. "The point is, you've exceeded all our expectations. Remember your first week when you called texture files 'shiny bits', and had a meltdown over accidentally deleting the debug server?"
