Chapter Three – Stitches in the Air
Amanda didn’t notice the magic right away.
The night after the festival, she stayed up later than usual, her hands moving in their familiar rhythm. Hook, loop, pull through. The soft yarn—autumn orange and gold from the skein she’d bought earlier—warmed her fingers. She wasn’t even sure what she was making yet, just letting the stitches flow.
Outside, the campground was quiet, the kind of silence that made the world feel hollow except for the crickets. Chris had gone to bed hours ago, but Amanda’s mind buzzed with ideas. Every stitch is a story. The phrase clung to her, urging her on.
When she finally set the piece down, she realized she had crocheted a small square: a sunflower. Not just in color, but in shape. The petals curved outward, bright and alive.
Amanda smiled to herself. She hadn’t planned that. But it was pretty.
She set it on the tiny table by the RV’s window and went to bed.
In the morning, the sunflower square was gone.
Amanda blinked at the empty spot, convinced she’d misplaced it. She searched her craft bin, the floor, even outside near the picnic table. Nothing.
Then she noticed something strange. By the gravel road that wound past their campsite, a single sunflower had bloomed. Tall, golden, impossibly bright.
Amanda froze, her heart hammering. There had been no sunflower there yesterday.
She stepped closer. The petals looked exactly like the stitches she had made. Each curve, each arc—familiar, as if her hands had shaped them not in yarn, but in soil.
A laugh bubbled in her throat, half disbelieving. “Okay,” she whispered. “That’s… weird.”
That evening, she tested it. She pulled out her vinyl sheets, cut a design onto a blank mug: Home is Where the Thread Begins. She set it on the counter and waited.
The next morning, a little paper flyer was stuck under the RV’s wiper blade. Amanda pulled it free. It was for a quilting circle, scheduled for that weekend—words that mirrored her design. Home is where the thread begins.
Amanda sat on the RV step, mug in her lap, flyer in her hand. The air felt different around her, like the road itself had leaned in to whisper back.
Her crafts weren’t just souvenirs anymore.
They were becoming something else.
Something alive.
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