I watched as Madeleine and Vin’s figures formed at the entrance to our estate. “Hello,” I greeted once they fully appeared.

Madeleine seemed to be in a bad mood. “What’s wrong?” I asked her. “You look upset.”

“I just got out of a stressful situation to meet with another stressful situation,” she muttered. “I deserve to be mad.” Vincent didn’t seem to know what she was talking about, either.

“Well, this is a little embarrassing to say, but it’s not that serious,” I admitted, causing Vin’s eyes to widen.

“You messaged me all day on EmWith!” he exclaimed. “You sent me so many Ems that it overrode DND and Erwin got pissed. I won’t be getting any more off-days any time soon.”

“I know, I’m sorry!” I apologized, putting up my hands in pseudo-self-defense. “I just thought it was super cool when I saw it!”

“So can we see it?” Madeleine asked. “Actually, where’s Mom and Dad? Is this something they shouldn’t know about?” 

“Mom and Dad are out on an errand. They’ll be back soon, though, so we have to come back quickly.”

“This seems like something that we shouldn’t know about," Vincent said as we walked to the garden.

I led them to the gap inbetween two of the hedges that was the entryway to our ‘secret’ part of the garden. “It’s here,” I told them, letting Madeleine and Vincent go first.

“You’re telling me the cool thing is in here? I’ve been to basically every part of this place. If you’re talking about the fountain it’s not that cool. There’s no water in it so it’s obviously old.” Madeleine chattered away as we walked. 

“Not the fountain, there’s another gap inbetween two hedges somewhere.” Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find it. Maybe I should’ve marked it… 

As I dragged my hand along the hedges, Vincent said, “Are you talking about somewhere over there?” and pointed to a startlingly bright glow.

“Wow, it’s basically a second sun. I’m not going blind, though,” Madeleine exclaimed as I stared at the light in confusion. 

“Uh, no, I didn’t see that light last time. We can still check it out if you want,” I offered, walking towards the source of the light, and Madeleine and Vincent followed.

The light got brighter as we went closer, but I didn’t instinctively squint, which made me realize that the glow wasn’t actually hurting my eyes. There was a faint hum that was getting louder as we went closer, too.

We went through the hedge, my eyes adjusted to the brightness, and through the light I could see the figure of a statue. 

“Oh, so this is the place I was talking about!” I realized. “But I’m sure the glow wasn’t here before.” When I turned to look at Vin’s reaction, he was blankly staring into the light, as if he was completing a mathematical problem. I don’t think Vin even likes math, though.

Madeleine went towards the statue and searched on it, muttering, “Where is this light coming from? This sound is super annoying, too.”

From what I remembered, the statue was of a woman that looked like Mom but more goddess-like, and she was holding her hands out like a beggar asking for money on the streets. Madeleine was searching from the feet up, and when she set her own hands on the statue’s, the glow suddenly stopped along with the hum.

“What?” Vincent whispered, but it seemed like only I could hear what he said.

“Finally!” Madeleine triumphantly said. 

“Why isn’t the light going through your hands?” I wondered. “It was super bright.”

When Madeleine released her hands cautiously, we all noticed that there was no more light coming from the statue’s hands.

“So weird,” Madeleine said. “Anyway, why did you want to show us this statue again?”

“It’s because it looks like Mom,” I told Madeleine, forgetting about the light. “Step back and look.”

Vin and Madeleine looked up at the face of the statue, and they looked impressed. 

“Woah, it does,” Vincent said, seemingly forgetting about the light as well. “Who made this? Why didn’t Mom and Dad tell us about this?”

“I wonder if the hair is soft,” Madeleine said jokingly, then reached her hand out to touch the hair. She was too short, so she had to stand on the tips of her toes, but ended up falling on her knees to the concrete ground surrounding the statue. “Ow!” 

I was about to rush to Madeleine to help her up, but as she was rubbing her knee with her hands, her palms began to glow.