The Storm Beneath the Skin
The bakery smelled of yeast and woodsmoke long before the sun cracked the horizon, and Gessica Moreira had come to love that hour above all others — the hush before Thornhollow woke, when the only sounds were the crackle of the oven and her aunt's quiet humming. She stood at the worn wooden table, sleeves pushed to her elbows, her hands buried in a mound of dough that felt, as it always did, like something alive beneath her fingers.
"You're folding it wrong again," Mirela said without turning from the oven, though how the woman managed to see through the back of her head remained one of Thornhollow's small, unsolved mysteries. "Press and turn, Gessica. Not press and *wrestle*. It isn't an argument you're having."
"Maybe I like arguing with my breakfast," Gessica said, but she adjusted her grip anyway, folding the dough over itself in the slow rhythm her aunt had taught her since she was barely tall enough to see over the table's edge.
Mirela chuckled — a low, warm sound, like a kettle just beginning to sing — and swept a tray of cooling rolls toward the window ledge. Outside, the sky over the Hollow had barely begun to soften from black to the deep bruised blue that came just…
