Chapter 3

3

FELICITY

N ot knowing what else to do, Felicity went through the motions of getting ready to face a day in the life of her character. A knot of anxiety tightened in her chest as the events of the previous day came rushing back—she wasn’t in her apartment in New York. She was here—in the world she had written but never finished.

Throwing back the covers, Felicity swung her feet onto the hardwood floor, biting back a gasp at the chilly wood against her skin. Her gaze roamed the room, taking in every detail with a mix of fear and awe. The oversized cream-colored sweater she’d imagined lay draped across a chair by the window, exactly where she had described her heroine tossing it. Beside it was a pair of wool socks with little snowflakes stitched along the cuffs—items she’d only written about in passing but now existed in startling reality.

She shivered, more from nerves than the cold. This wasn’t a dream. It was too vivid, too textured, too full of all the little things she had obsessed over while creating her story. Besides, pinching herself had done nothing but make her wince from the pain. She reached for the sweater, slipping it over her head, and sighed as the soft, oversized knit settled over her. It smelled faintly of lavender—just like her character had preferred. How is this possible? she thought, tugging the sleeves over her hands.

Felicity padded barefoot toward the small kitchen at the back of the flat over her bakery, Cozy Cravings. The fridge door opened with a soft hiss, revealing a perfectly organized interior stocked with exactly what she had described: farm-fresh eggs, thick slabs of butter, a jug of cold brew coffee, and a loaf of artisan bread wrapped in brown paper. The sight filled her with a strange mix of triumph and unease. She had created this world from scratch, every detail, every item meticulously chosen—and now she was living it.

Grabbing a carton of eggs, she began preparing breakfast, the movements of cooking grounding her in some semblance of normalcy. She cracked eggs into a bowl, whisking them with a fork, watching as the yolks swirled into golden ribbons. The act soothed her frayed nerves—something tangible to focus on. But as she spread butter on toast and poured herself a glass of orange juice, a sliver of fear still lingered beneath her delight. How long will I be here?

Once she finished eating, Felicity rinsed the dishes and wiped down the counter, still half-expecting to wake up back in her cramped New York apartment. Maybe when she opened the doors to go down the stairs, she would step back into her own reality. But the room remained stubbornly real. She pressed her palms to the cold surface of the counter and let out a slow, steadying breath. If this was her reality now, she needed to embrace it. At least, for the moment.

She trotted down the stairs and opened up the bakery she had written into existence. Felicity stared in amazement. It was exactly how she had written it. Every shelf, every detail, every perfectly placed jar of jam and honey. Even the chalkboard menu on the wall listed the same special she had invented—hazelnut lattes and apple scones. She pressed her hands to her cheeks, her heart pounding with a mix of disbelief and giddy excitement.

Yet, beneath her wonder, the fear remained, coiled tightly at the base of her spine. What if she couldn’t get back? What if she was trapped here forever? Would she be able to live this character’s life—her own life now? She exhaled slowly, brushing her curls out of her face, and steeled herself.

One thing was certain—this was no time to panic. If she had to play the part, she would do it to the best of her ability. After all, she knew this world inside and out. She had created it.

Donning an apron from a hook near the register, Felicity tied it around her waist and moved behind the counter, going through the motions she had written for her heroine a hundred times before. She flipped open the cash register, checked the display cases, and turned the sign on the door to "Open." The bell above the door jingled softly, just as she’d described it would.

A wave of calm washed over her. Somehow, impossibly, she belonged here. In this little bakery, among the aromas of cinnamon and vanilla, she felt a strange sort of peace settle in her chest. Maybe she didn’t have all the answers—maybe she didn’t know how or why this had happened—but for now, she could live this day. She could be the woman she had written herself to be.

At the end of the day, Felicity closed down the bakery and headed back to her flat. Her heart thumped against her ribcage like a mechanical drum beating out of control as she stood at the window, peering out into the darkness. The room around her was vast and shadowy, filled with a sense of foreboding that sent shivers down her spine. The stillness was broken only by the sound of her own breath, visible in the cold air like ghostly whispers. She tried to calm herself with rational thoughts—it's just a dream, this can't be real. But the eerie feeling of being watched would not dissipate.

With great effort, she moved away from the window to stand in the center of the expansive room, surrounded by towering shadows that seemed to reach out towards her with icy fingers. The eerie stillness was broken only by the sound of her own ragged breath, each one a visible cloud in the cold air that seemed to whisper with secrets. She tried to calm herself with rational thoughts—this isn't real, it couldn’t be real, it's just a dream. But even as she repeated the mantra in her head, she couldn't shake the unsettling feeling that something had gone very wrong, and someone was watching her from the darkness.

With a resolve that felt like wading through molasses, she returned to a bed she knew wasn’t hers. Oh, she’d seen it—in an antique store in a trendy neighborhood in the city—but it had been too big and too expensive for her to ever own. She peeled back the layers of uncertainty that clung to her skin as she returned to that bed, crawled up onto it and forced her legs to fold beneath the duvet. The bed was an island of comfort amidst this sea of strangeness, an anchor in the fluid unreality of her situation. The mattress was generous, swallowing her curvy frame, making her feel small and delicate. Felicity snorted. She’d never felt small and delicate in her whole life. The large, comfy bed was a stark contrast to the modest double bed that was molded to her form back in her apartment. As she laid down, the plush pillows cradled her head with a luxury she’d never felt before, coaxing her back into the embrace of sleep.

"Close your eyes," she whispered to herself, "and when they open next, everything will be familiar once more." She curled into the warmth, letting the exhaustion of disbelief pull her under the currents of slumber. She reassured herself that come morning, everything would be all right.

Hours later, morning light teased the edges of her consciousness, prying her from the depths of dreams that had been far too tangible. Felicity's eyelids fluttered open, her senses immediately assaulted by the unfamiliar as she realized she still wasn’t back in her own bed in her own apartment. She couldn’t say her surroundings were unfamiliar, as they matched exactly her description of her heroine’s charming flat over her bakery, Cozy Cravings. The crisp yet soft sheets were unlike anything she had ever felt before. These sheets kissed her skin with a cool softness that was foreign. Her hand brushed over the textured fabric, noting how it exuded the well-worn feel that was so lacking in her own bedding, a sharp contrast to the scratchy rustling that usually accompanied her every slight movement like a sonata of fallen leaves.

As awareness percolated through the fading remnants of sleep, the distant murmur of voices drifted up to her ears. They were infused with a cheerfulness that felt out of place—too bright, too merry for the early hour. It wasn't the usual drone of city traffic or the neighbor's television that served as her daily overture. No, these were lively exchanges, punctuated by laughter, and they seemed to come from far away, yet were close enough to be heard.

Her mind struggled to make sense of it all—was this some kind of adventure or a twisted nightmare? For now, she lay still and listened to the lively exchanges and laughter coming from outside her door, lost between reality and a dream-like state.

Her mind grappled with the dissonance, trying to reconcile the incongruities of this awakening. The part of her that crafted stories for a living toyed with the notion of adventure and mystery, but the rational side clung to the hope of and belief in normalcy. Soon, the puzzle of her whereabouts would demand to be solved, but for now, she lay still, ensnared between the realms of fantasy and reality, listening to the cadence of unknown lives as they unknowingly serenaded her into the day.

Felicity's feet met the icy floor with a hesitant touch, as if testing the reality of the surface beneath her. Her movements were sluggish, weighed down by a mixture of disbelief and drowsiness. She shuffled across the room, the soft whisper of the unfamiliar fabric of her nightgown grazing her legs. Each step seemed to echo in the stillness of the quaint bedroom, a stark contrast to the muted noises that now filled her consciousness.

Her hand reached for the heavy drapes, fingers trembling slightly with trepidation. With a swift movement, she pulled them aside and gasped. The sight that greeted her was one torn from the pages of a storybook—a picturesque village nestled amidst rolling hills, gingerbread-style storefronts dotted with twinkling lights, and a grand Christmas tree towering over a central square adorned with festive decorations. The snow-dusted roofs and smoking chimneys completed the image of Christmas Valley, a setting so idyllic it bordered on the fantastical.

A cold breeze slipped through the edges of the window frame, carrying with it the undeniable scents of cinnamon and vanilla. Felicity's senses reeled as she breathed in deeply, the aromas wrapping around her like an unwanted embrace. It was absurd, impossible, yet the evidence assailed her with unyielding certainty. She was not dreaming; this was not her apartment, her city, her reality.

With a shaky hand, she pinched the skin of her forearm, wincing at the sharp sting of pain. The scent grew stronger, a sensory affirmation of her physical presence in this strange bedroom. This room should have been alien to her, filled with unknown smells and sights—yet every detail felt meticulously crafted to comfort and allure. The cinnamon and vanilla—it was as if they had seeped into the very walls, a sweet conspiracy to keep her grounded in this unbelievable place.

Felicity stepped back from the window, her mind reeling with questions. How? Why? And what did this mean for her, for the life she knew, for the stories she crafted from imagination alone? She couldn't fathom the answers, but the view outside the frosted glass and the smells that seemed to claim her as their own refused to let her turn away from the truth she was only beginning to grasp. The sun had barely risen over the horizon, casting a warm glow over the quaint village and making the snow sparkle like diamonds. It was a scene straight out of a fairy tale, and Felicity couldn't help but wonder if she had somehow stumbled into one.

Felicity's slender fingers glided over the smooth, worn grooves of the aged wood. With each touch, she could sense the stories and memories embedded within its grain, a testament to years gone by. The furniture exuded a sturdy solidity under her grasp, its varnish faded from decades of use. Her gaze drifted to the window, where she paused to take in the sight outside again. It remained as it had been since the night before—Christmas Valley, not New York City.

The village below was transformed into a winter wonderland, blanketed in a thick layer of snow that glistened under the soft glow of twinkling lights and festive wreaths. Smoke trailed out of chimneys from the houses that lay just beyond Main Street added to the picturesque scene, as if it had been plucked straight out of what was to be her debut novel. A sense of wonder and enchantment tingled through her veins, battling against the pounding beat of her heart. She leaned her forehead against the window, hoping in vain that contact with the cold window would restore her to sanity. When it didn’t, she ghosted her palm across the chilled glass as if testing its reality.

Despite her expectations, the scene remained unchanged, as real as the draft that tickled her skin through the edges of the window frame. She watched her breath fog up the glass before turning back to survey the room once more. Every step she took was cautious and deliberate, her senses heightened as she took in every detail— from the soft light filtering through the curtains, to the quilted bedspread and the rustic charm of dried herbs hanging from exposed wooden beams, and even the faint crackle of a fire burning somewhere downstairs.

And then with a blinding certainty, it hit her: somehow, she had stumbled into a world of her own creation. The world of her heroine who had an insatiable thirst for adventure and knack for stumbling into fantastical escapades across time and space. This was her bedroom in Christmas Valley, a place born from her own imagination yet now tangibly real.

She was Felicity, and her heroine Felicity was her; for now seemingly intertwined in this bizarre twist of fate. Her own name, shared with that of her heroine, was both an anchor and a lifeline and might hopefully keep her grounded in this strange new reality. No longer did she need to worry about awkwardly fumbling about, searching for an identity or stumbling over a different name.

A short burst of laughter bubbled up from her throat, tinged with equal parts excitement and disbelief. In a sudden moment of fear, she clamped her hand over her mouth, afraid that even the slightest acknowledgment of the absurdity would shatter the magic or jolt her awake from this dreamlike state.

She’d told Hattie many times that she wished she had her heroine’s fearlessness and sense of adventure. "Okay, Felicity," she whispered to herself, grounding her presence in the room. "It's time to figure out what comes next." For the first time since making the decision to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming a writer, she wished she was one of those authors who plotted every scene. But she wasn’t, which meant that writing and/or living by the seat of her pants had just taken on a whole new meaning.