"Nelly! Wake up. We'll have visitors later!" Mom took my duvet away from me. Moaning, I looked at the alarm clock. 8 o'clock.

I hadn't dreamed. The second, dreamless night. That had never happened before.

"What?" I blinked.

"We’ll have a visitor! Come, Honey. Get ready quickly, okay?" Mom seemed nervous.

I rubbed my eyes. "What's wrong? A visitor? So early? It's Saturday. Please, let me sleep." Yawning, I took my blanket and snuggled under it again.

Mom pulled the blanket away from me again. "No. Unfortunately, that's not possible; our visitor could come at any time! You can't lie in bed and sleep. Or show up in your pajamas. That's rude."

"But it's Saturday!"

"And we're getting a visitor!"

"Who's coming anyway? I want to sleep. Your friends have often seen me in my pajamas! And didn't we want to pick up the contact lenses? My long-awaited contact lenses?"

"Your father is already on his way to get them. Your aunt is coming," Mom replied and opened my window to let fresh air into my small room.

Now I was wide awake.

"My WHAT?"

"Your aunt. My sister."

"You have a sister?" I looked at her in surprise.

Mom sighed. "Nelly, please. I told you about her. She lives far away. And after a long time, I finally see her again."

"I have an aunt?" In my dreams, I had always had one. Naomie had an aunt. But me? I vaguely remembered that Mom had once mentioned an aunt abroad. She and Dad rarely talked about other family members. My grandparents were dead; Dad had no siblings. And I had never met that one aunt.

Was that why I wasn't allowed to wear pajamas?

Nasty.

"Nelly..." Mom's gaze became strangely impatient. "I think Tanja won't have forgotten you. Come on, get out of bed. There's coffee in the kitchen. For waking up. We don't have much time. Heavens, it's too early for stress!"

If confusion could reach a climax, it had been the case at that moment. I had an aunt Tanja?

"Tanja?"

"Now get up and get ready, honey," Mom shooed me into the bathroom.

"And put on something neat! I'll quickly go to the bakery around the corner and buy fresh rolls and cakes! Your aunt is ... not used to supermarket bread," she called to me through the bathroom door and hurried away.

"What?" I stared at the door.

Still dazed, I washed myself and put on my brown T-shirt, a dark blue hooded jacket and my faded skinny jeans. Hopefully that counted as neat.

I wondered what this said Aunt Tanja would look like. My personal hair miracle had already been weird, and strangely enough, Mom had never said much about the suddenly long hair, but could it get any stranger?

It could.

A few hours later, and not enough explanation later, when my aunt stood in front of me, and I could recognize her thanks to contact lenses, a fainting spell on my part was unavoidable. The ugly toad, i.e., ME, fell over.

Goodbye toad!

Aunt Tanja looked like Aunt Tanja. And as soon as I had seen her, I learned the advantages of a hard floor.

"Nelly. Sweetie. Wake up!" I heard Mom's calm voice. A little disoriented, I opened my eyes. Bent over me, I recognized three faces, one of which I didn't want to see. Aunt Tanja didn't belong in reality.

"Mom? Am I hallucinating?"

"Why do you call the poor child Nelly? This strange appearance is enough!" the familiar-looking woman grumbled, giving me a cruel blow to my very weak self-respect.

"Strange," I murmured, grimacing. "Why..."

"Are you okay?" Dad asked and helped me get up.

Mama glared at my aunt.

"No. I think I suffer from hallucinations!" I grumbled and looked at my aunt. She actually looked like Naomie's aunt. Her stern eyes were blue, her forehead was wrinkle-free, and her long, pinned-up, dark brown hair shimmered with scattered gray strands. I suddenly noticed how much she resembled my mom:

They had the same blue eyes, the same nose, and the same hair color. Only that mom's eyes had a friendlier expression, and her hair was streaked with more gray strands.

 Dad's hair had long since turned grey. He had once been light blond.

Light blonde with light green eyes...

"Hallucinations?" He laughed softly and looked at my aunt as well. "No. I don't think so. But I do believe that we now have a need for explanations and have not properly addressed this situation. In our defense, this is the first time we have done something like this."

I grimaced.

"Hallucinations?" murmured Aunt Tanya. "You haven't said anything to the girl yet?"

"We didn't know how." Mom looked at me nervously. "Nelly. You certainly don't suffer from Hallucinations. That's your Aunt Tanja. Sorry, we didn't want to scare you. I had hoped... It was planned differently... Oh..." She shook her head.

"She probably wasn't expecting me, Kamilla." Aunt Tanja smiled slightly sourly at Mama. "But that's not your fault. The magic... I didn't get around to telling the child, as we had agreed." She sighed. "And of course you couldn't have known that. It's been a long time, sister."