Needle in a Haystack

Out of the Looking Glass

"I found my destined mate," Emily blurted out on impulse, still holding the box with the tennis bracelet. Anna's beaming smile froze for a moment and her eyebrow twitched in confusion.

"What?" Anna giggled the word and cleared her throat. "What do you mean, sweetie?"

"I mean I found him. He's going to night classes too. I think he's in the GED program," Emily rushed through explaining, and had only taken a breath to get to the good parts when her mom cut her off.

"He's not the one," she scoffed.

"No, I'm serious. He felt it too," Emily insisted, closing the box and setting it on the table between her cake and the gift bag.

"You guys are young," her mother drew out the word young, waving her fork dismissively. "It's probably the first time either of you have smelled someone you're compatible with."

"But Ember confirmed it," she pressed, starting to get irritated with her mother's instant dismissal. "I could smell him before I saw him. And Ember's the one who said Mate first, or I wouldn't have even thought about it."

Anna scoffed, "The voice in your head and your wolf are not the same thing. You just want him to be the one, sweetie. When they're so sweet and lavish you with gifts, it's easy to convince yourself that those feelings are from your wolf too."

"He didn't lavish me with gifts," Emily mocked, "like your boy toys do."

"Is that some kind of joke?" she shouted across the table, her face going from pink to red. "Have you been spying on me, and this is some kind of sick joke?" Anna seethed and slowly stood up from the table gripping her napkin with white knuckles.

"Mom, no. It's not like that," Emily said firmly.

"I've been searching for my destined mate for almost twenty years, and you... you... think you've found the one on your first fling? You think your first crush is anything special?," she screamed, and stormed off to her bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

'Well, that went great,' Ember chimed in finally.

"Lotta help you were," Emily grumbled aloud.

'I was helping by staying silent,' her wolf replied through her nose, which was impressive as she didn't currently control one.

Emily sighed heavily and began clearing up dinner. She put the bracelet back in the bag and left it on the breakfast bar, put the spaghetti and salad in the fridge with the last piece of garlic toast from her clean napkin, and put the clamshell back on her cake, licking the icing off the candle. She threw the candle in an empty drawer along with the box of matches and went back for the plates.

Her mother stormed out of her bedroom and scanned the empty table, then the room until her eyes landed on the gift bag. She snatched it from the breakfast bar and stormed back to her room, slamming the door again. Emily rolled her eyes at her mother's antics. While the subject matter might be new, her behavior wasn't. By tomorrow, the bracelet would be sitting on her vanity in its box, and her mother would apologize before Saturday so she could spend time with her and Amy for their girls night.

After finishing with the dishes and loading the dishwasher, Emily wandered back to her room and gently shut the door. She sat on her floor and pulled out her homework. It was the last thing she wanted to do, but a little routine would help settle her volatile emotions.

As she settled in to her calculus, trying to make sense of the idea of limits in math, the contract sitting on her books box caught her eye. She reached over and picked it up, scanning the first page again, and she came upon an idea. She pulled out a fresh sheet of notebook paper and started trying to translate it into plain English. About halfway down the page, she hit her first snag. She didn't know which way to take a sentence that seemed particularly ambiguous. Ember would be of no help, as wolves spoke in ideas more than words, so all of their communication was straightforward and not open to any interpretation. Her mother was still mad and would be for several days. She checked the time. It was well after one in the morning and far too late to call her friend Amy. In disgust, she set the contract and translation aside and picked up her calculus book again. Twenty minutes later, she caught herself staring at the contract, and hadn't done a single homework problem. Emily grabbed the contract, hastily shoving it into the air vent above her bedroom door. Standing on her tip toes, she managed to wedge it into the slots before realizing she was too short to get it all the way in. She went to her closet and grabbed a hanger to shove it the rest of the way in. Her mother always gave her the cheap plastic hangars, saving the velvet-coated ones for herself, but this time, Emily was grateful for it. The thick plastic was rounded enough not to tear the paper. She wished she had been able to keep the thin tube Pippin had brought it in, but this would have to do for now. She'd figure out how to get it back later when she had the time and help to do anything about interpreting it.

'For now, I just need to focus on my homework,' she thought, dusting off her hands, pleased with her solution, and sat back down on her floor. Idly, she thought about how to retrieve the contract when the time came. 'I wonder if Pippin-,' and as she thought his name she heard a pop and Pippin came tumbling out of her mirror. She blinked in surprise, frozen in place as he uncontrollably somersaulted down her sink into a heap on the floor, dragonfly wings sticking up at odd angles from a tangle of limbs.