Tethered

She used to hum when she cast spells. Soft little tunes that made the air shimmer and the walls sigh in relief. Now she mutters to ghosts only she can hear, and her magic leaks through the cracks—like rainwater through a roof that once kept us dry. I used to curl against her shoulder as the light bent for her. Now I watch the sparks slip away, useless and wild, while she forgets the words that once made them dance.

The smell of burnt lavender lingers in the air, sweet and wrong. Her hands tremble around a chipped teacup, her lips moving soundlessly. I think she’s trying to remember a charm, but the words have started slipping from her like loose threads.

The house feels heavier now. The corners hold their breath. The jars of herbs have gone gray with dust, and the familiar hum of magic—that gentle thrum I used to feel in my bones—is nothing but static.

She calls my name sometimes. Other times, she calls me something else—a name I don’t know. When that happens, just a flick of my tail lets her know I hear her. I watch her from the dark and wait until the spell of confusion passes.

Once, she could command the stars. Now she can barely light a flame without the shadows twitching. And still, I stay. Because if I leave, there will be nothing left to remember her as she was.

The first time her spell turns on her, I smell iron before I see the blood. Just a thin line across her palm, no deeper than a scratch, but the magic in it hisses. It doesn’t want her anymore. It used to sing for her—now it snarls.

She laughs it off, whispering something soft, and wipes her hand on a rag already stiff with failed blessings. Her laughter sounds wrong, brittle. I wind around her ankles, trying to remind her that I’m still here. She steps over me without seeing.

The next night, the wind in the chimney moans her name. She thinks it’s her mother. I know it isn’t. Her mother’s been gone longer than I’ve been alive, and I was born from her blood the way smoke is born from flame. When she answers the whisper, the room shifts—every shadow stretches toward her like a reaching hand. I bare my teeth and hiss, but she doesn’t stop.

The mirror cracks before the spell finishes. Her reflection lingers a second too long, staring at me instead of her.

Days blur. Sometimes she forgets to eat, then forgets to sleep. Her hair smells of burnt sage and moonlight, both faded and sour. When she does sleep, she mutters names that don’t belong in this house. I curl at her feet, keeping watch, purring low—not for her comfort, but for mine. The sound is the only steady thing left.

Once, I dreamed with her. I saw what she saw. Golden gardens. Rivers that ran backward. Whole nights where we hunted stars together. Now, I only dream of her falling.

Sometimes, when she forgets to open the curtains, I climb onto her desk and do it for her. My claws scrape the wood, and she scolds me softly—out of habit, not anger. That’s how I know she’s still in there somewhere.

This morning, she hums again. The sound startles me so much my fur bristles. It’s the same melody she used to sing when her magic was alive and bright—the one that made the dust lift and dance, the one that made the air smell like lilacs and lightning.

For a moment, I could almost believe nothing’s changed. The light slips across her cheek just right, catching the glint of her eyes the way it used to. My chest hums with an old instinct, the purr spilling out before I can stop it. She reaches for me absently, fingers brushing my head.

But her touch stops short. She frowns, just faintly, and looks down at her hands as if something burns there. The air trembles—her magic always did when she touched me—but this time it feels off, brittle. It snaps at the edges, recoiling like a frightened animal.

The humming stops.

It shouldn’t hurt, but it does. The ache is strange, deep—not in my body, but in that invisible tether that’s always connected us. I wonder if she can feel it too, that quiet rot spreading between us. Maybe she thinks it’s just her power slipping away. Maybe she doesn’t realize it’s me.

The air has gone cold in her house. The hearth refuses to catch no matter how many sparks she coaxes from her fingers. The candles sputter out before the wax can melt. I’ve started sleeping closer to her feet at night, hoping the warmth of me might fill the gaps where her magic once lived.

She barely eats now. Sometimes she sets a bowl of milk out for me and forgets it’s already there. I drink it anyway, even when it tastes wrong. Everything tastes dull lately, like my tongue’s forgotten the shape of flavor.

The dreams have changed again. I see flashes instead of worlds—her hands reaching for mine through smoke, her voice calling from somewhere I can’t reach. When I wake, my legs feel heavy, my breath short. I tell myself it’s just the cold.

She looks at me sometimes like she’s remembering something painful. I thought it was madness. Her eyes go glassy, unfocused, as if she’s hearing a melody she can’t place. Her fingers twitch toward me like they remember the motion of a spell. Then she blinks and looks away.

The garden outside is dying too. The herbs shrivel, the ivy browns, even the air seems thinner. She says the world’s just tired. I think maybe we are.

Tonight, she’s been whispering for hours. I can’t make out the words, but her voice trembles like she’s holding something fragile in her mouth. When I pad closer, she stops and looks at me. Her lips part—a soft intake of breath—and I feel the faintest pull, like the tether between us is tightening again, remembering itself.

For a heartbeat, I almost feel whole. Then it’s gone. The weakness floods back in, quiet and familiar.

She exhales, long and shaky, and the moment slips through us like smoke.

She doesn’t speak to me for three days. She moves through the house like smoke, silent and drifting, her eyes rimmed red from lack of sleep. I try to follow her, but she startles when she hears my steps now—like the sound doesn’t belong to something real.

On the fourth night, I wake to the smell of salt and ash. She’s drawn a circle on the floor, careful and trembling, the chalk smudged where her tears have fallen. Candles surround her, flickering with that frantic blue that means the magic’s hungry.

“Don’t do this,” I try to say, but all that comes out is a rasp of breath, a weak sound. She looks up at me, and for a heartbeat, I think she hears it anyway.

“You’ve been fading,” she whispers, voice cracking. “I can feel it. I thought it was me, but it’s not, is it?” Her hand reaches out, stops halfway. “You’re sick, aren’t you?”

The word feels strange—sick—like it doesn’t belong to something made from her magic. I want to deny it, but my body betrays me: my legs tremble, my lungs pull shallow. I didn’t notice it creeping in, how each day it took more effort to move, to breathe, to stay warm. I thought I was just tired from guarding her. I thought she was the one slipping away.

Her tears fall faster now. “You should have told me,” she says. “I could have—” But she can’t finish it, because she knows she couldn’t.

She kneels in the circle, blood on her palm again, muttering a spell I half remember. Her voice wavers, but the air thickens, trembling between us. I try to crawl toward her, to stop her, but the pull of her power is too strong. The world hums, heavy and bright. The bond between us snaps taut, glowing like a wire about to break.

My heart stutters. Every breath feels stolen.

She’s trying to give it back to me—what little she has left. I feel it flood my veins, burning, wild, wrong. It’s too much. The room blurs, her shape flickering in and out of focus.

“Stop,” I want to say. “You’ll burn yourself out.” But the words don’t come. Only a sound—a soft, broken rumble where a purr used to be.

Her hand finds my fur, fingers trembling. “Please,” she whispers. “Stay.”

For the first time in days, she sees me clearly. I feel her magic surge one last time, desperate and beautiful, and I realize what she’s doing isn’t to save me—it’s to save us.

I push my head into her palm, just once. The warmth of her skin floods through me, through that fraying tether that’s held us all this time. For a second, I think it’s working—the ache fades, the cold lifts.

Then the light snaps.

The circle shatters, the candles die, and she collapses forward, breathless and still. I drag myself toward her, each movement heavier than the last, and rest my head against her arm. Her heartbeat’s there—faint, steady. Alive.

Mine isn’t. Not really.

As the dark edges in, I finally understand the look in her eyes, all those moments she watched me with quiet sorrow.

I didn’t realize she was mourning me before I was gone.

The spell breaks with a sound like glass sighing. Then there is only silence—thick, absolute, the kind that settles in your chest and stays there.

She’s still kneeling in the wreck of her circle, the chalk smeared, her blood drying dark across the floor. The blue light fades from the room, and I can finally breathe again, though each breath feels smaller than the last.

She blinks at the ruin around her, dazed. “What have I done?” she whispers. Her gaze finds me, and for the first time in weeks, she sees me—really sees. Her eyes widen, and a sob catches in her throat.

“Don’t,” I want to tell her. “It’s all right. You fixed it.”

But when I try to stand, my legs fold beneath me. The cold rushes in fast now, curling through my ribs, pooling behind my eyes. She’s beside me before I hit the floor, gathering me up with shaking hands.

“Stay with me,” she breathes, voice breaking. Her tears fall hot against my fur. “Please, stay.”

I want to. Every part of me strains toward her warmth. But the tether is unraveling, thread by shining thread.

Her magic flares once, instinctive—a pulse of gold beneath her skin, as if her body is trying to knit me back together. It hurts and heals at the same time. The air around us shivers; the candlelight bends.

I press my head against her chest, listening. Her heart is wild thunder. Mine is rain fading on stone.

If I had known sooner—if I had understood that her power dimmed because my light was going out—I still wouldn’t have left. She needed someone to stay until the end. That’s all I ever was.

Her hands cradle me tighter as my breathing stutters. “It’s all right,” she whispers, the same way she used to calm storms. “You can rest now.”

The sound of her voice is the last thing I hear. The warmth of her arms, the last thing I feel.

Somewhere deep in the quiet, the house exhales. The candles steady. The world remembers how to hum.