Chapter 8: The Jagged Cliff

By the time Allison reached the bottom of Seminary Ridge, her legs were jelly. The ride had burned off the worst of the restless energy, quieted the loudest mental noise, and put enough distance between her and whatever happened in her living room. The chaotic, emotional morning now felt like something that had happened to someone else. And while the smell of the beach still lingered during her ride, it had softened enough that she could almost convince herself it was just her overactive imagination again.

Her client's deadline, however, was not imaginary. It was very real, and it was tonight, and she'd spent the morning out riding an old memory of her late father's smile instead of writing the fifteen-hundred-word article due by eleven p.m., which would put an extra $75 in her pocket. The guilt of time lost to things that weren't "productive" felt as cold and as heavy as a boulder in her gut.

She needed food. She needed coffee. She needed to force words onto a page that someone would actually pay her for in a place that wasn’t her house. And she needed the creature comforts of home that wasn’t home—only the Jagged Cliff could provide.

The café appeared around the bend on Chambersburg Street—a converted 1860s brick 3-story home, three stories of warm history, tucked between storefronts on one side and another old rowhome on the other. The ruddy brick was already heating up in the sunshine, almost hot to the touch. Allison coasted to a stop, swung off the bike, and leaned it against the building, as always.

She pulled her backpack from the rear basket, along with everything she'd tossed in earlier, with the reverence of someone stuffing a receipt into a DOOM drawer. The bag swung over her shoulder, its weight oddly comforting. She stepped inside.

The comforting, familiar aromas hit her first, as they always did—freshly roasted coffee beans and something baking, warm, yeasty, and sweet. These aromas layered over the faint scent of old wood and furniture polish. The original floors creaked beneath her feet, wide-plank and worn smooth by over a century and a half of footsteps. The walls were warm wood, plaster, and exposed brick, hung with paintings and photographs from local artists, ready to be sold—battlefield landscapes; jewel-toned abstracts; a watercolor of the town square Allison had eyed for months but couldn't justify buying. Wooden doors. Original hardware. This place felt like it had stories soaked into every surface.

It was a weekday. The café was calm, cool, and mostly empty—the lull between the morning rush and the lunch crowd. No line. Perfect.

She stepped up to the counter to the fresh face of an unfamiliar barista. They were likely a new student from the nearby college on their first shift. They were nervous; Allison could tell. They were trying so hard not to fidget with their black canvas apron; Allison thought she should do the thing she was always good at, getting people to smile and relax — so she decided to break the ice first

Allison smiled gently, trying to put the new barista at ease. "Afternoon. Did you just start? I haven't seen you here before." She motioned to the barista's hair. "Love that shade of teal in your hair. So fun. I'm Allison, by the way. I use she/they pronouns. It's nice to meet you."

The barista seemed to relax; her fidgeting stopped, and she straightened out her apron. "Good afternoon. I'm Shelly." She nodded. "And yeah, I just moved here last week for college and started here this morning. It's my first shift. Sorry. I'm a little nervous."

Allison nodded. "Well, Shelly, you don't have to be nervous with me. I'm here often and real easygoing. So anyway, do you have the stuff for lunch sandwiches ready?"

The girl smiled back, her nerves gone and her brightness returned. "Sure do. I'll get right on that. Want something to drink too? I can fix that so you can have it while you wait for the sandwich."

Allison ordered the ever-changing daily special—the seasonal Memorial Day delight: iced white chocolate blueberry mocha—and her favorite, the Simple Sensation sandwich—turkey, provolone, avocado, lettuce, tomato, and a generous smear of tangy house-made mayo on toasted, seedy, whole-grain bread. It was comfort food with a bit of flair, and she needed both today. The iced coffee would keep her wired enough to make the deadline. The sandwich would keep her alive long enough to care.

The card was swiped. The receipt was signed.

"I'll be up on the third floor; I'm going to try to get some work done," she told the cashier, but then Allison stopped, looked back at the girl, and smiled warmly. "Welcome to Gettysburg. You'll do just fine, don't worry. It was nice to meet you. Thanks!"

The cashier smiled back, already prepping the iced coffee with the slightly over-careful precision of someone who hadn't yet learned to do it on autopilot, yet still needed to check the recipe. Now she had an extra pep in her step after their exchange. Allison remembered that feeling. She didn't miss it, but she was glad she could be a kind voice with gentle encouragement.

Upstairs was her sanctuary.

The third floor of The Jagged Cliff was always quiet—a series of small rooms connected by narrow hallways. The tourists rarely made it all the way up there. The house's original layout is still visible in its bones. The wooden stairs creaked with every step, announcing her arrival to the empty rooms above. She climbed past the second floor. Busier, louder, tables closer together. Then up to the third. The ceiling sloped. The windows were tall; the glass rippled with age. The world felt far away, but close enough to people-watch between paragraphs.

Her favorite table sat by the tallest window, bathed in early afternoon light. She claimed it the way she always did—bag down, chair out, a silent sigh of arrival. The view looked out over Chambersburg Street: rooftops, treetops, the gentle roll of the tree-covered mountains in the distance. From up here, Gettysburg looked like the quintessential postcard in every gift shop in town—quiet, quaint, and calm. It was the kind of place where nothing extraordinary ever happened—except during tourist season, special events, or when a movie was being filmed somewhere in town.

She chuckled to herself, pulled her notebook and pen from her bag, and set them on the table. Then she quickly checked her phone—no messages, no missed calls, no magical interventions from raccoon-adjacent entities.

"Nothing. Good," she murmured, quietly hyping herself up, putting her phone face down on the table. "I've got too much to do today. Let’s do this."

The Sparkkeeper card, which had been riding at the bottom of her bag, had migrated to the top during the trip. When she pulled the notebook out, the card came with it — sliding free and landing on the table, face up, centered, gilded edges catching the window light. It sat there like a place card at a dinner party, marking her assigned seat.

Allison stared at it. "Hmm, that's strange," she said, bemused, completely forgetting she had tossed it in her bag along with everything else.

She nudged the card so one end tucked under the edge of her notebook, propped open to a clean page, and picked up the pen. She always preferred to start her writing projects the old-school way: pen to paper. The pen's brass, though still a queer feeling, was warm in her hand, grounding her as anxiety squirmed in her stomach. The nib caught the light, adding a strange thrill to her determination. She had about seven hours to write 1,500 words on sustainable packaging trends for a client that sold eco-friendly shipping supplies, and every second's pressure made her pulse throb.

She set the nib down, touched it to the paper's tooth, and was about to make the first stroke when the pen vibrated in her hand.

"No," she said firmly as if the pen could hear her. "Absolutely not. Not right now. I don’t have time."

The buzzing intensified. It was as persistent as it was yesterday, traveling through her fingers and into her wrist. The nib hovered above the page, trembling with eagerness, angling toward the paper like a dowsing rod that had found water. She was fighting to keep her hand steady.

"I said no. Not now!" She tightened her grip, trying to keep her voice low. The pen pushed back with the relentless persistence of a dog who wanted a walk and had all day to stare you down.

Allison bent to reach for her backpack when a little glowing firefly cautiously poked its head out of a fold of fabric as she lifted the flap. It stood on the bag’s hem, spread its wings, and took off. It buzzed to and fro around the room without a pattern, then finally settled on the corner of Allison’s notebook for a rest.

“What a curious little thing you are. It’s not firefly season yet. You have months to go yet," she said sweetly with an air of annoyance as she pointed the end of the pen toward the firefly. “Keeping me company today? Better than the ghosts, I suppose.”

The firefly seemed to watch Allison carefully, then flew around again, but this time it hovered over the pen as Allison tried to write. It looped once around the pen, settled on the nib's tip, and pulsed. Allison gently swatted it away, but it just looped again and landed back on the pen.

"Oh ho, so you’re one of those magical ones. Did Thimble send you? You know what? Fine. Whatever." She exhaled through her nose, frustration tightening her jaw as she tried to ignore it and stay focused. "Do what you want. Sit there. But I'm working. I have a deadline. Tonight. An actual, real-world, someone-is-paying-me deadline. So whatever magical shenanigans you and this pen have planned, they'll have to wait. And you can go ahead and tell our dear Thimble that," she snapped, trying to keep her voice low.

She loosened her grip on the pen and let it touch the page. The pen behaved just enough to write half a sentence: Sustainable packaging solutions have become increasingly important in—

The pen suddenly jerked to the next line and all the way to the left. It began writing on its own again. This time, it wrote something she hadn't thought, hadn't planned, hadn't intended, in that small, tidy, luminous script she'd used in her journal the night before.

"No! Stop! Oh, come on. Please work with me. I can't do this with you right now," she groaned.

Fighting it was like Sisyphus rolling a boulder up the hill. It would concede for a little while, letting her write as she wanted, then start up again. She knew that. She'd tried. So she resigned herself, letting out a heavy sigh and a grr from her throat. S picked up her coffee with her free hand, took a long sip, and let the pen do its thing.

"FINE!" Exasperated and irritated, she shouted at the pen, “Cat, darn it! Go right ahead—be my guest. You’re gonna do it anyway. Doesn’t matter what I want, does it? Or whether I need to pay my bills. Who cares. Write away.”

She just huffed and took another swig of coffee, tapping her foot so loudly she hoped the powers-that-be knew, without a shadow of a doubt, how much she hated all of this.

The words that appeared on the page weren't a memory this time. This was something else—an old tale, a parable probably told around a campfire long ago—about a key left in plain sight that no one ever picked up because, over time, their people had forgotten what it was for. Then it told about a trickster raccoon who stole truths from people who didn't want them and left them in the pockets of those who did. It wrote about an echo hiding in a doorway, and fireflies — tiny, living sparks — that weren't insects at all but seeds of stories that grew into worlds if you fed them, and withered into dust if you didn't.

One line lingered longer than the others, the ink glowing brighter, pulsing with that heartbeat rhythm: Be careful what you feed the fireflies. The pen stopped. The buzzing died. The nib lifted from the page, still and lifeless in her hand. Allison stared at the words. She hadn't written them. She knew she hadn't. And yet they were there, shaped by her hand and whatever spirit possessed her pen. The story was beautiful. I don't think I’ll ever get used to this. She set it down on the notebook’s fold and pushed it away. Her arms felt heavy. Her head felt full. Whatever the pen had just pulled through her had left her drained.

Her stomach growled—incredibly loud in such a quiet room. She looked at her sandwich, bulging with fresh, crunchy veggies and succulent turkey slices, still sitting on its plate, untouched since the Quill had commandeered her writing hand. She pulled the plate close, picked up the sandwich, and took a bite. The flavors hit her like a hug. She closed her eyes and chewed slowly, savoring it, letting the simple pleasure of good food ground her back in the physical world.

"Yeah," she thought, eyes still closed, head nodding, body wiggling back and forth like it does when her food makes her exceptionally happy. "That's precisely the right answer. Yum."

When she opened her eyes, the firefly perched on the pen's key end, its head turning this way and that as it watched Allison's every move. Its golden glow pulsed to an inaudible rhythm. She put down her sandwich. She wiped her fingers on her napkin. She leaned forward. And pointed at the firefly with the energy of a woman who had reached the hard limit of her patience with magical creatures interrupting her workday.

She whispered it in a tired voice. "Look, little guy, I don't know what this is"—her hand made a broad, encompassing gesture at the firefly, the pen, the card, the shimmering ink, all of it—"but I actually need to get real work done today. Now that the pen was done doing whatever it was doing, this little song-and-dance is getting tired, and I'm getting fed up.”

The firefly flashed at her. Once. Twice. Then it lifted off the Quill, drifted upward in a lazy spiral, and settled on a nearby windowsill, tucking its delicate wings under its elytron, its lantern segments glowing softly in a relaxed, uneven rhythm.

"Thank you," Allison said indignantly.

She pushed the second half of the sandwich away, pulled the notebook back, flipped to a clean page, and picked up the pen. This time, it behaved. The tip met the paper and produced exactly what she told it to—her words, her article, her sustainable packaging content in her normal handwriting.

She settled into the familiar groove of client work. It wasn’t exciting, but it was necessary, and it fit her skill set. It was the kind of writing that paid the bills, kept the lights on, and didn’t require her to feel anything or think too hard—exactly what she needed after a morning of feeling everything.

Two hours and twelve hundred words later, she heard footsteps climbing the creaky wooden stairs—slow, light, unhurried, and clearly headed somewhere. Allison's fingers paused on the pen. She'd chosen the third floor specifically because nobody came up here during the afternoon lull. The whole point was solitude. In her irritation, she let out a very low, quiet growl. Maybe they'll go to a different room, she thought, and kept writing, trying really hard to ignore it.

The footsteps reached the top of the stairs and stopped. A throat cleared—soft, almost apologetic. Allison looked up, over her glasses, which had slid down her nose. An attractive woman with long, black, stick-straight hair stood in the doorway. She was about Allison's height, maybe a little shorter, with a curvy build and an expression that was meant to catch Allison's attention. 

The woman slid her glasses up onto her head as she sipped her smoothie through a straw. Her eyes were dark, bright, and intense. Allison couldn't stop staring. She wore black distressed jeans with a frayed rip at the left knee, a black-and-gray striped shirt, and a brown leather messenger bag slung over her shoulder, with a tiny stuffed raccoon clipped to the strap crossing her chest. In one hand, she held her smoothie and in the other, a bowl of baked oatmeal with raspberries and milk, still hot from the kitchen.

And then the fragrance. Allison caught it the moment the woman passed her table—raspberries. Fresh, sweet, unmistakable. Underneath was the faintest trace of forest, damp earth, green things growing, and rain on leaves. Their eyes met, but the woman's gaze didn't linger on Allison—only long enough to give a brief wink and nod of acknowledgment—then it landed on the firefly. 

No, Allison thought, her heart accelerating. Can she see that? There is absolutely no way. The lady smiled, her eyes squinting. Everything about her seemed familiar for some reason, but she couldn't place her.

The lady sat at a nearby table, occasionally glancing at Allison as she ate. Allison tried, in stops and starts, to get back to work for about twenty minutes. Eventually, the lady got up, put her bowl in the self-bus station, and looked at the firefly again, then back into Allison's eyes. She nodded once, as if confirming what Allison was thinking, and stretched out her arm toward Allison as she finished her turn around the room and headed toward the door. A little sweep, a slight flourish, a tiny smile. 

The firefly launched itself from the windowsill and flew around Allison, blinking frantically, which drew all of Allison's attention. 

"What's going on, little one? Settle down. You're ok," she said as she patted the table by her notebook, beckoning the firefly to come sit with her, which it did.

When Allison looked up again, the woman was gone. Vanished. Without a trace.

Allison sat still for a moment and looked around, trying to see where the lady in the striped shirt went. The room was very quiet and still. The only sounds were her own blood rushing in her ears. She shrugged, looked down at the notebook, and started writing again. But she stopped in her tracks when she noticed a line on the page she'd never written, still shimmering gold and just starting to fade back to purple: Be careful what you feed the fireflies. 

Mouth agape, she glanced toward the doorway the woman had disappeared through, then back at the notebook. "Was that..." she began to whisper, but the thought dissolved before she could finish it. She had no framework for the question, let alone the answer.

Allison couldn't focus after that. The lingering scent of raspberries was distracting. She tried. She really tried. She stared at the article, reread her last paragraph three times, picked up her phone, and checked it. But her brain was done cooperating. The gears had seized. Every thought circled back to the woman, the words, the flash of the firefly's greeting; the smell of raspberries lingered—she could still smell it even though the woman had been gone for ten minutes.

She glanced at the clock above the door. It was later than she'd realized. She never meant to stay this long. The coffee shop would be closing soon, Spud needed to be let out, and the deadline wouldn't meet itself. She could finish the article at home if she could force her ADHD brain to actually behave long enough to do it.

She packed up quickly, grabbed her plate and cup, and carried them to the self-bus station beside the door before heading downstairs, bidding the barista goodbye and dropping an extra-large tip into the jar by the register on her way out.

As she pedaled away from the coffee shop, she kept thinking, Be careful what you feed the fireflies. She didn't notice or feel the firefly perched on the back of her right ring finger as she gripped the handlebars, its golden wings folded, letting the wind rush over its shell, its tiny body pulsing with an excited rhythm all the way home.

Spud greeted her at the door like she’d been gone for a century—a scrambling, bouncing blur of white fur and frantic tail wags, his whole body vibrating with excitement and relief. She laughed, crouched down, and let him lick her face while she rubbed behind his ears.

"You are never going to believe what happened at the coffee place today," she said, scratching his chin. "Honestly? I don't even think I believe it."

Spud licked her nose as she locked the door and set her bag down. He didn't care about cafés, fireflies, or mysterious women who smelled like raspberries. He cared that she was home, and that was enough, except for being let out into the backyard to conduct his usual forensic investigation of every square inch of grass. She leaned in the doorway, arms crossed, mind racing.

The firefly, which had followed her home without her noticing, rested on the handlebars of her bike, which she'd parked behind her couch. It pulsed once—slow, patient, content—and folded its wings.

It could wait. It would have to. She had an article to finish.