Midnight at Number Twelve

Snow held the world in place. It blurred Pinebridge into soft shapes and muffled sounds until Willow Street felt a mile deep and centuries old. At Number Twelve, Maren Burke sat at her kitchen table with a candle burning low in a chipped saucer, its flame barely holding the room together. The rest of the house was quiet, the kind of winter quiet that felt like someone had taken a breath and forgotten to let it out.

A stack of sealed envelopes sat in front of her, tied with a blue ribbon. Her handwriting in the return corner. The recipient line blank. She had written them over years—whenever the guilt flared, or the grief soured, or the silence with her sister felt heavier than usual. She always sealed them so she couldn’t revise them to death. She always put them away. Never mailed a single one.

The clock read 11:37. Midnight was her rule. At midnight she stopped picking at old wounds and pretending it counted as progress. She blew out the candle and went to bed like a normal person. That was the deal.

Her phone buzzed. You still up?

Daniel, from across the street. His kitchen window was usually glowing when hers was. She liked knowing that, even on nights she wouldn’t admit it.

She typed a reply, deleted it, set the phone down.

The house clicked and settled. Outside, snow brushed the window in soft strokes.

Then footsteps crunched on her walkway. Maren froze. The sound was close and deliberate. Snow squeaked the way it does when it’s cold enough to bite. She stood, pulse rising, as the steps reached her porch.

Three knocks.

A pause.

Two more.

Her mother’s old knock. A rhythm she hadn’t heard since the winter everything fell apart. Maren swallowed, crossed the room, and opened the door. No one stood there. Just snow falling in the porch light. She started to close the door, then noticed the raven perched on the railing.

Large. Black. Feathers with a sheen like ink catching a lamp, though the porch light was too weak for true color. It stared at her with an expression she did not want to believe a bird could have.

“Uh,” she said.

The raven lifted one foot, shook snow from its talons, and said, “Took you long enough.”

Maren shut the door again. Her heart pounded. The candle flickered. The table and its stack of letters stayed where they were, very still.

“Rude,” the voice said through the door.

She opened it a few inches. The raven was still there, fluffed against the cold, looking offended.

“You’re talking,” she whispered.

“And you’re observing,” it said. “A good start.”

“Birds don’t talk.”

“You’re also not supposed to leave unsent letters in a drawer for four years,” it said. “Yet here we are.”

She blinked. “What… are you?”

“Corvin,” it said. “Auditor of Unspoken Things, Domestic Division, Pinebridge Region. May I come in? My feet are freezing.”

A sane person would have closed the door. Thanked the hallucination for its service. Gone to bed. Instead, she stepped aside.

Corvin hopped over the threshold. He left no discernible marks on the rug. His wings did not scatter snow. He moved like a suggestion of weight rather than weight itself.

“Congratulations,” he said. “You are now undergoing an unannounced winter audit.”

“That sounds fake.”

“Oh, it is absolutely real and extremely inconvenient,” he said, gliding up onto the back of her couch in a single motion she wasn’t sure she actually saw happen. “Now. Cocoa?”

She stared. “Did you come here… for cocoa?”

“And other things,” Corvin said. “But mainly cocoa.”

She made it without thinking, more muscle memory than decision. Heat, milk, powder. The smell filled the small kitchen. Her hands steadied in the rhythm. When she set two mugs on the table, Corvin hopped closer and dipped his beak toward his cup. She didn’t see him drink. She only saw the faint movement of reflection on the surface, like a ripple questioning whether it had been disturbed.

“Mmm,” he said. “Very good. You might be emotionally stalled, but you make a comforting beverage.”

“Thanks,” she said, unsure.

Corvin glanced at the stack of letters. “So. Shall we begin?”

“Begin what?”

“Your inventory,” he said. “Winter presses people inward. They hide things. They let them sour. It’s my job to make sure nothing ferments badly enough to blow out a window.”

“That’s not… a real thing.”

“Neither is ignoring someone for four years and telling yourself it will hurt less later,” he said.

Her throat tightened. “That’s none of your business.”

“It is literally my business,” Corvin said calmly. “Unspoken things. Unsent things. Things you rehearse at two in the morning, then fold into drawers.”

Maren stared at the letters. The ribbon looked tighter tonight, as if holding everything in place by force.

“We had a fight,” she said quietly. “My sister and I. About who was there enough, who wasn’t, who said what. It got ugly. I moved here. She stayed. I kept meaning to fix it, but every time I tried, I thought I’d make it worse.”

“So you wrote letters,” Corvin said.

“So I wrote letters.”

“And never mailed them.”

She wrapped her hands around her mug. “What if I send the wrong one? What if it isn’t enough? What if it is and she still doesn’t want to talk to me?”

Corvin tilted his head. His eyes were dark, but not unkind.

“You’re waiting for perfect conditions,” he said. “Perfect does not visit this street.”

The clock crept closer to midnight. The candle guttered.

Then someone knocked on the door.

Three knocks. A pause. Two more.

Maren’s blood went cold. She looked at Corvin.

He did not move. “Ah,” he said. “Right on schedule.”

“Schedule for what?”

“The moment you think this becomes a horror story.”

“But it doesn’t,” he added.

Another knock.

Her heart thudded painfully. “Is this you?” she whispered.

“I don’t do dramatic entrances,” Corvin said. “That’s Outreach and Manifestation. This is someone real.”

She hesitated. Fear and curiosity wrestled in her chest. Curiosity won by a single breath.

She opened the door.

Daniel stood on her porch, snow in his hair, holding a foil-covered tray. His expression flickered from surprise to concern to something softer.

“Hey,” he said. “Sorry. I know it’s late. I saw your light and thought you might be awake. And then I knocked like some kind of Victorian ghost. Sorry. I don’t know why I did that.”

Maren let out a shaky laugh. “You’re fine.”

“I made cinnamon rolls,” he said. “The kind with the orange zest.”

She blinked. “Orange zest?”

“It’s my thing,” he said, embarrassed. “Snow makes me bake. Please take some before I eat all of them and die.”

She stepped aside. “Come in.”

He entered, stamping snow from his boots. The house warmed around him instantly. He set the tray down and peeled back the foil. Steam curled up in delicate spirals.

“That smells incredible,” she said.

“I cope with weather by weaponizing sugar.”

He smiled, but there was tension in his shoulders, the echo of something unsaid.

“Cocoa?” she asked.

He brightened. “Cocoa sounds amazing.”

She poured. They stood close in the small kitchen, and for a moment the world shrank to two mugs and warm hands.

“You okay?” he asked softly. “Your light’s been on a lot lately.”

She hesitated. “It’s just winter. And… stuff.”

“Stuff,” he repeated. “Vague. Respectable.”

His eyes drifted to the ribbon-tied stack on the table.

“Those Christmas cards?” he asked.

“Something like that,” she said.

He didn’t push.

They sat. The cinnamon rolls steamed between them. Outside, the snowfall thickened, then softened, then drifted. Time blurred.

At some point, Maren found herself saying, “I wrote letters to my sister. I never sent them.”

Daniel didn’t try to fix it. He didn’t offer advice. He only nodded.

“I have some of those too,” he said. “Not to your sister. To mine.”

Maren looked up. He looked strangely relieved to have said it.

“It felt easier not to finish the conversation,” he said. “But the silence started feeling like its own kind of argument.”

She nodded. The room felt smaller and safer at the same time.

Corvin sat silently on the back of the couch, watching them. Or maybe she only imagined he was watching. When she blinked, he seemed further back in the shadows than she remembered.

When Daniel finally stood to leave, it was past one.

“Thank you for letting me stop by,” he said, pulling on his coat. “If you ever want someone to walk with you to the mailbox…” He gestured toward the letters. “You know. If mailing one feels like too much to do alone.”

Her voice caught in her throat. “I might take you up on that.”

He smiled, soft and real. “Good. I’ll make muffins.”

He stepped out into the snow, then paused.

“Oh,” he added, “your kitchen light looks nice from across the street. Makes the block feel less empty.”

And he walked away.

When the door clicked shut, the house exhaled.

Corvin cleared his throat. “Well,” he said. “That went better than projected.”

Maren laughed quietly. “You knew it was him.”

“Of course. Winter specializes in timing. You just needed someone to knock.”

She looked at the letters. They hadn’t changed. She had.

“Do I have to mail anything tonight?” she asked.

“No,” Corvin said. “You only have to stop pretending you don’t want to.”

She sat. The candle had burned out completely. Only the soft yellow of the overhead light remained.

“I don’t know what to say to her,” Maren whispered.

“Start with the truth,” Corvin said. “Dear sister, I’m still here. I don’t know how to fix us, but I’m willing to try.”

“That feels too simple.”

“Secrets get heavy when you decorate them,” he said.

She picked up the top envelope. The blank space waited. She wrote her sister’s name slowly, carefully, like relearning a forgotten word.

Outside, the sky was shifting—still dark, but different. A hint of pale blue in the black.

Corvin hopped onto the windowsill. His reflection in the glass was faint, as if he occupied a slightly different layer of the room.

“Do you really only come in winter?” she asked.

“Mostly. That’s when people forget how to say small things before they become large things.”

“What happens in spring?”

“Growth. Terribly earnest department. I avoid them.”

She smiled, small and tired and warm.

Corvin spread his wings, or she thought he did; the motion blurred in the corner of her eye like a trick of candlelight.

“Not all knocks are danger,” he said. “Some are invitations.”

She looked at the envelope. Looked at the cinnamon rolls. Looked at the door that still held the shape of Daniel’s last smile.

“Tonight felt like both,” she said.

“That’s winter,” Corvin answered. “Sharp at first. Soft in the middle.”

He stepped onto the edge of the open window, snow drifting in around him.

“For what it’s worth,” he added, “your house no longer feels like a held breath.”

She let out a slow exhale she hadn’t realized she was holding.

“Good,” she said.

Corvin gave what might have been a nod, then slipped into the white hush outside. One blink and he was gone.

Maren closed the window gently. The latch clicked into place. She stood there, forehead against the cold glass, watching the faint shapes of houses and trees emerge in the early light.

The world outside was still cold and uncertain. The world inside was small, imperfect, and hers. She picked up the envelope with her sister’s name and set it by the door, leaning it against her boots so she would have to step over it in the morning. Snow fell quietly over Pinebridge. Inside Number Twelve, the quiet no longer felt empty. It felt like possibility.