Eleanor had been looking forward to festival day for three whole months. In the village where she lived—a bustling place of perhaps three hundred families clustered around a central market square—festival day came only twice a year. Once in spring to celebrate planting, and once in autumn to celebrate harvest. This was the autumn festival, and the entire village buzzed with preparations.
Merchants arrived from distant towns, their carts loaded with goods nobody could get locally. Exotic spices from lands Eleanor had only heard about in stories. Cloth dyed colors so bright they seemed to glow. Pottery painted with intricate designs. Tools crafted by master smiths. Sweet cakes made with honey and nuts. And toys—beautiful, fascinating toys that made Eleanor’s nine-year-old heart race with longing.
Her family wasn’t wealthy. Her father was a cooper, making barrels for storing grain and wine, which was steady work but didn’t leave much money for luxuries. Her mother took in mending and helped with harvests when extra hands were needed. Eleanor had two older brothers who would inherit the cooperage, and a baby sister who was still learning to walk. Money was tight, carefully counted, spent on necessities rather than desires.
But Eleanor’s grandmother, who lived with them and told the best stories of anyone in the village, had slipped Eleanor two copper coins that morning. “For festival,” she’d whispered with a conspiratorial wink. “Buy something that makes you smile, child. Life is too short to be serious all the time.”
So Eleanor wandered the festival stalls with those two precious coins clutched in her hand, trying to decide what would make her smile most. The honey cakes smelled divine but would be gone in minutes. The ribbons were pretty but impractical. The wooden toys were lovely but felt too childish for someone who would be ten next month.
That’s when she saw the mask seller.
The Stranger’s Cart
The cart sat slightly apart from the main cluster of merchants, in a shadowed space between two larger stalls. The seller was a woman—middle-aged, with graying hair and hands stained with paint. Her cart was small but packed with masks of every description. Animal masks—bears and wolves and birds with sharp beaks. Character masks—jesters and kings and demons with exaggerated features. Beautiful masks painted in gold and silver. Terrifying masks meant to scare children during winter solstice celebrations.
But one mask caught Eleanor’s attention immediately and wouldn’t let go.
It was painted in bright colors—red and blue and gold—with traditional folk art patterns swirling across its surface. The face was smiling, but not in a simple way. It was the kind of smile that held secrets, that promised adventure, that suggested whoever wore it would become someone more interesting than they normally were. The eye holes were surrounded by intricate designs that looked almost like writing in a language Eleanor didn’t recognize (see the generated image above).
“You have good taste, little one,” the mask seller said. Her voice was pleasant but had an odd quality, like she was speaking from farther away than she actually stood. “That’s one of my finest pieces. Very old design, very powerful.”
“Powerful?” Eleanor asked, unable to look away from the mask. “It’s just a mask, isn’t it?”
“Just a mask,” the woman repeated, and something in her tone suggested she was laughing at a joke Eleanor didn’t understand. “Yes, of course. Just paint and wood and craftsmanship. But then, words are just sounds, and music is just organized noise, and stories are just arrangements of words. Yet they all have power, don’t they?”
Eleanor wasn’t sure how to respond to that. She reached out tentatively and touched the mask. The wood was warm, which surprised her—it should have been cool from sitting in the shade. And the moment her fingers made contact, she felt something. A pull. A whisper of invitation. A sense that this mask wanted her specifically, that their meeting wasn’t accidental.
“How much?” Eleanor asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Two copper coins,” the mask seller said immediately. “Exactly what you have in your hand.”
Eleanor’s fingers tightened around her coins. How did this woman know what she had? Eleanor hadn’t shown them to anyone. But maybe she’d seen Eleanor counting them earlier, or maybe it was just a lucky guess. Two coins was a standard price for something like this.
“Will it fit me?” Eleanor asked. She was small for nine, with a face that her mother said was too thin and needed more meat on its bones.
“It will fit perfectly,” the woman assured her. “This mask was made for you, child. It’s been waiting for you for a very long time.”
That should have been a strange thing to say. Should have been a warning that something wasn’t quite right. But Eleanor was nine years old, at a festival, holding money that was hers to spend however she wanted, and looking at the most beautiful mask she’d ever seen. Caution didn’t stand a chance against desire.
She handed over both coins. The mask seller took them with a smile that matched the mask’s—secretive, knowing, slightly unsettling if you looked too closely. She lifted the mask from its hook and placed it in Eleanor’s hands with a gentleness that suggested she was transferring something precious and fragile.
“Wear it well,” the woman said. “Let it show you who you can become. But remember—masks that change the wearer are difficult to remove once they settle into place. Be sure you want what it offers before you put it on.”
Eleanor nodded, not really listening to the warning. She was too focused on the mask, on how perfect it felt in her hands, on how badly she wanted to see what she looked like wearing it. She thanked the seller and hurried away, clutching her prize, already looking for a quiet spot where she could try it on.
She didn’t notice that when she looked back a minute later, the mask seller’s cart had vanished completely. Didn’t notice that none of the other merchants seemed to remember seeing a mask seller at all. Didn’t notice the way her grandmother’s face went pale when Eleanor showed her what she’d bought.
“Where did you get that?” her grandmother whispered, reaching for the mask with trembling hands.
“The mask seller. Over by the big cloth merchant’s stall.” Eleanor pulled the mask back protectively. It was hers. She’d bought it fairly. “Why? What’s wrong with it?”
Her grandmother opened her mouth, closed it, then shook her head slowly. “Nothing, child. Nothing I can prove, anyway. Just… be careful with it. Some festival trinkets are more than they appear.”
But Eleanor was already putting the mask on, settling it over her face, adjusting it until it fit perfectly—which it did, as if it had been carved specifically for her features. Through the eye holes, the world looked sharper, brighter, more vivid. Colors seemed richer. Sounds came clearer. And Eleanor felt different. Braver. More confident. Like she could do anything, say anything, be anything she wanted.
She laughed—a bright, delighted sound that rang across the festival square. Several people turned to look, smiling at her obvious joy.
And that’s when it started.
The First Loss
Eleanor wore the mask for the rest of festival day. She danced when the musicians played, something she normally would have been too shy to do. She climbed on the platform where storytellers performed and told a joke that made the whole crowd laugh. She won a game of skill that required throwing stones at targets, even though she’d never been good at throwing before.
Everything felt easy. Fun. Right. The mask made her feel like the best version of herself, the version she always wanted to be but could never quite manage. When she laughed—and she laughed often that day, more than she had in months—the sound was pure joy, uninhibited and free.
But as the sun started setting and families began drifting home with their purchases and tired children, Eleanor tried to take the mask off.
It wouldn’t budge.
She pulled gently at first, then harder, then with real force that made her eyes water. The mask stayed fixed to her face as if it had grown there, as if her skin and the wood had merged into one substance. No gap existed between mask and face where she could get her fingers underneath to pry it loose.
“Grandmother!” Eleanor called, panic rising in her chest. “Grandmother, help! It won’t come off!”
Her grandmother came quickly, her weathered face grave with the expression of someone whose fears had just been confirmed. She examined the mask carefully, trying every method she could think of to remove it. Nothing worked. The mask clung to Eleanor’s face like it belonged there, like it had always been there, like it would never leave.
“We need to get you home,” her grandmother said quietly. “Now. Before full dark.”
They hurried through the thinning festival crowd, Eleanor’s mother and father joining them with worried faces and questions nobody could answer. Her brothers stared at her mask-covered face with expressions mixing curiosity and unease. Her baby sister reached for the bright colors, cooing happily, unaware that anything was wrong.
At home, they tried everything. Water. Oil. Prayers. A knife carefully wedged between mask and skin—but there was no space for the blade to fit. Her father talked about taking Eleanor to the village healer, to the priest, to anyone who might know how to remove an object that had fused with human flesh.
But her grandmother said quietly, “No. Not yet. This isn’t a medical problem or a spiritual one. It’s an old problem. The kind that requires old solutions. Let me think. Let me remember the stories.”
That night, Eleanor went to bed still wearing the mask. She couldn’t eat properly—the mask had no mouth opening, though somehow she could still breathe fine and speak clearly. She couldn’t drink. She could only lie in her bed, staring at the ceiling, feeling the mask warm against her skin, wondering what she’d done and how to undo it.
And that’s when she first noticed her laugh was missing.
She tried to laugh at a memory of something funny from the festival. The emotion was there—amusement, joy, the desire to laugh. But the sound wouldn’t come. Her chest moved as if laughing, her shoulders shook appropriately, but no sound emerged. Not a giggle. Not a chuckle. Not the bright, delighted laugh that had rung across the festival square earlier.
The mask had taken it. Stolen it. Swallowed it somehow.
Eleanor touched the painted wood covering her face and felt something she hadn’t felt before—vibration. The mask was humming very faintly, almost imperceptibly. And if she concentrated, if she listened very carefully, she could hear something inside it.
Laughter. Her laughter. Captured inside the mask like a bird in a cage, echoing endlessly, unable to escape.
The Price of Joy
Eleanor’s grandmother came to her room early the next morning, carrying a thick book bound in cracked leather. “I remembered where I’d seen a mask like yours before,” she said, settling onto the edge of Eleanor’s bed. “In this book—stories and warnings collected by my grandmother, who collected them from hers, going back generations. There’s an entry about masks that trade.”
“Trade?” Eleanor’s voice came out muffled through the mask but clear enough to understand. “Trade what?”
“Joy for confidence. Laughter for courage. The ability to feel certain emotions in exchange for the ability to do certain things. The masks were made centuries ago by artisans who understood that everything has a cost, that magic always requires exchange. You wanted to be brave, to perform, to feel comfortable in your skin. The mask gave you that. But in return, it takes something equivalent. In your case, it seems to want your laughter.”
Eleanor felt cold despite the warm morning. “Why laughter? Why that specifically?”
Her grandmother’s face was sad but understanding. “Because laughter is valuable, child. It’s pure emotion, unfiltered joy. It’s the sound of a spirit that’s free and light and unburdened. The mask feeds on that. It collects laughter from whoever wears it, storing it, using it to fuel whatever magic lets it do what it does. And once it has enough, once it’s satisfied…” She trailed off.
“Once it’s satisfied, what?” Eleanor demanded. “Does it come off? Does it kill me? What happens?”
“The old stories say it moves on. It loosens its grip, falls away, and waits to be found by the next person who needs what it offers and doesn’t understand the price. But how much laughter does it need? How long does it take? That part varies. Some people wore the trading masks for days. Some for years. One story mentions a man who wore one until he died, having never laughed again after the mask claimed his first laugh.”
Eleanor felt tears prickling behind her eyes. She was nine years old. She’d just wanted a pretty mask, a moment of feeling special, a memory of festival day that was more than just watching from the sidelines. And now she might never laugh again? Might wear this mask forever? Might spend her whole life unable to eat properly, unable to see her own face, unable to express joy in the most basic, human way?
“There must be a way to remove it,” she said desperately. “Some trick, some spell, some—”
“There might be,” her grandmother interrupted gently. “The stories mention a few people who broke free early. But it required something difficult. Something most people won’t willingly do.”
“What? I’ll do anything. I just want it off.”
Her grandmother looked at Eleanor for a long moment, her eyes ancient and sad. “You have to give it what it wants most. Not laughter, but the source of laughter. Pure, genuine joy. An experience so joyful, so filled with authentic happiness, that the mask gets more than it could ever steal in years of taking your laughs one by one. It gorges itself and lets go, satisfied.”
Eleanor thought about that. “So I need to be happy? Really, truly happy? That’s the solution?”
“Not just happy. Joyful. The deep kind that comes from the soul, not the surface. The kind you felt when you were very small and your parents lifted you in the air and you knew you were safe and loved and the world was good. That kind of joy. Can you find that, Eleanor? Can you feel it genuinely while wearing a mask that’s stealing your ability to express it? That’s the challenge.”
The Search for Joy
The next weeks were the hardest of Eleanor’s young life. She went about her daily activities wearing the mask constantly—there was no choice, since it wouldn’t come off. People stared. Children asked questions their parents shushed them for asking. Some villagers whispered that Eleanor had been cursed, or possessed, or had done something to anger whatever spirits watched over the marketplace.
But worse than the stares and whispers was the emptiness where her laughter should have been. The mask took more than just the sound. It was taking the feeling too, slowly, gradually, like water wearing away stone. Things that should have been funny didn’t make her want to laugh anymore. Her brothers’ jokes fell flat. Her baby sister’s antics seemed tedious rather than delightful. The village fool’s performance at the next market day felt pointless and stupid.
Joy was leaking out of Eleanor’s life like water through cupped hands, and the mask seemed to be feeding on it, growing warmer against her face, humming more loudly in moments when she should have been happy (see the generated image above).
Her grandmother watched with increasing concern. “You need to find joy, child. Real joy. Before the mask takes the capacity for it entirely. Once that’s gone, you’ll never get free.”
“How?” Eleanor asked desperately. “How do I force myself to feel joy when everything feels gray and muted and wrong?”
“You can’t force it,” her grandmother said. “That’s the trick, see. The mask knows the difference between fake joy and real joy. You have to genuinely experience something that fills you so completely with happiness that it overflows. And that’s nearly impossible when you’re actively trying to manufacture it.”
Eleanor tried everything she could think of. She visited her favorite places in the village—the pond where she’d learned to skip stones, the bakery that sometimes gave her day-old bread, the hill behind the church where wildflowers grew thick in summer. She played with her baby sister, helping her take wobbly steps and clap her chubby hands. She sat with her father in his workshop, breathing in the good smell of fresh-cut wood and watching him shape barrel staves with practiced precision.
All of it should have made her happy. All of it would have made her happy a month ago. But now, with the mask drinking her joy as fast as she could generate it, everything felt distant. Like she was watching her own life through thick glass that muted all sensation.
The mask grew warmer. Its hum grew louder. And Eleanor felt herself fading, becoming thinner somehow, as if the mask was slowly consuming not just her laughter but her entire self.
The Gift
It was Eleanor’s tenth birthday—a milestone she’d been excited about for months but now barely cared about—when her grandmother took action. The old woman had been busy, Eleanor realized. Busy in ways Eleanor hadn’t noticed because she’d been too focused on her own misery.
“Come with me,” her grandmother said on the morning of Eleanor’s birthday. “I have something to show you.”
She led Eleanor out of the village, along a path that wound through forest and meadow, until they reached a clearing Eleanor had never seen before. In the center of the clearing stood a small cottage with smoke rising from its chimney and flowers growing wild around its doorway.
“Who lives here?” Eleanor asked.
“I do,” said a familiar voice. The mask seller stepped out of the cottage, looking exactly as she had at the festival. “Well, not permanently. But I come here when I’m called. Your grandmother sent word. She asked me to come.”
Eleanor felt anger flare hot in her chest—the first strong emotion she’d felt in days. “You did this to me! You sold me this cursed mask! You knew what it would do!”
“I warned you,” the mask seller said calmly. “I told you masks that change the wearer are difficult to remove once they settle. You chose not to listen. You heard only what you wanted to hear—that the mask would make you brave and confident and special. You ignored the warning because you wanted what it offered too much to care about the cost.”
“I’m nine years old!” Eleanor shouted. “I’m a child! You shouldn’t have sold it to me at all!”
“Ten now,” the mask seller corrected, pointing at the sun’s position indicating morning of her birthday. “And yes, you’re young. But age doesn’t exempt you from consequences. The mask doesn’t care if you’re nine or ninety. It offers a trade, and if you accept, you pay the price. That’s how old magic works.”
Eleanor’s grandmother stepped forward. “We’re not here to argue blame. We’re here because you’re the only one who knows how these masks work, how to satisfy them, how to make them let go. Help my granddaughter. Please. Whatever price you ask, I’ll pay it.”
The mask seller looked at Eleanor for a long moment, her expression unreadable. Finally, she said, “The price for help has already been paid. Your grandmother traded something dear to her—a memory she treasured, of her wedding day, the moment she first saw your grandfather and knew he was the one. That memory is gone from her mind now, traded to me in exchange for this intervention. So yes, I’ll help. But understand, the help I offer is limited. I cannot remove the mask. Only you can do that, Eleanor, by giving it what it needs. But I can show you where to look for the joy you’ve lost.”
She led them into the cottage, which was larger inside than it should have been—another impossibility Eleanor had stopped questioning. The main room was filled with masks of every description, hanging on walls and sitting on shelves, each one radiating a sense of purpose and power that made Eleanor’s skin prickle.
“These are all trading masks?” Eleanor asked, looking around at hundreds of painted faces.
“All of them. Each one offers something and takes something. Confidence for laughter, like yours. Strength for compassion. Beauty for kindness. Intelligence for empathy. Perfect memory for the ability to forget pain. On and on, every trade humans have ever wanted to make between what they are and what they wish to become.”
The mask seller walked to a particular shelf and took down a small wooden box. “This belonged to the person who wore your mask before you. She was older, a widow who’d forgotten how to feel joy after her husband died. The mask gave her the confidence to live again, to rejoin the world. And in taking her laughter, it actually helped her—she’d forgotten how to laugh anyway, so she lost nothing she still had. She wore it for three years before it finally let go, satisfied with what it had collected.”
She opened the box. Inside was a collection of small objects—a pressed flower, a child’s toy, a letter yellowed with age, a small painted stone.
“These are the things that brought her genuine joy while she wore the mask. Small moments that broke through even the mask’s feeding. A grandchild’s first visit. A letter from a friend she thought was dead. Finding a flower that her husband used to pick for her. Little moments of grace that the mask couldn’t quite consume fast enough. They built up, and eventually, they were enough. The mask gorged itself on the accumulated joy and let her go.”
Eleanor looked at the objects. They seemed so ordinary. How could such small, simple things create enough joy to satisfy a magical mask that fed on laughter itself?
“Because real joy doesn’t come from big moments,” her grandmother said softly, as if reading Eleanor’s thoughts. “It comes from tiny ones. The feel of sun on your face. The taste of bread fresh from the oven. The sound of someone you love saying your name. A hundred small joys added together weigh more than one grand joy. That’s what you need to find, child. Not one perfect moment, but many small perfect ones.”
The mask seller nodded. “I can give you a gift to help. One gift only, because that’s all I’m owed for the memory I was paid. This gift will let you feel one thing at full strength, unfiltered by the mask, for just a moment. Choose wisely what you want to feel, because you’ll only get one chance.”
Eleanor thought hard. One moment of full, unfiltered emotion. What should she choose? Love for her family? Appreciation for her life? Gratitude for the grandmother who’d sacrificed a precious memory to help her?
“My laughter,” Eleanor said suddenly. “I want to hear my own laugh again. Just once. I want to remember what it sounds like, what it feels like. Maybe if I can remember that, I can start finding my way back to real joy.”
The mask seller smiled—a real smile this time, warm and approving. “Wise choice. Then so be it.”
She touched the mask, right where the mouth would be if it had a mouth opening. The wood glowed briefly with golden light, and Eleanor felt something shift. A loosening. A small crack in the barrier between her and her stolen laughter.
“Think of something funny,” the mask seller instructed. “Right now. Something that made you laugh before you put on the mask.”
Eleanor thought of her middle brother Peter, who’d once tried to juggle eggs and ended up wearing them instead. The memory rose, and with it came laughter—pure, genuine, unfiltered Eleanor-laughter that burst out of her like water from a broken dam. It lasted only seconds, maybe three or four, and then the mask clamped down again, sealing the crack, swallowing the sound.
But Eleanor had heard it. Remembered it. And in that brief moment, she’d felt real joy. The kind that lives in your chest and makes your whole body light. The kind worth fighting for. Worth finding again and again until the mask finally gave up and let go.
“Thank you,” she whispered to the mask seller, to her grandmother, to the universe that had given her that small grace. “Thank you.”
The Long Road Home
The journey back to regular joy took months. Eleanor collected small moments the way other children collected shells or interesting stones. She wrote them down in a book her grandmother gave her, describing each tiny spark of happiness as it occurred:
The way Baby Anne grabbed my finger and wouldn’t let go.
Hot cider on a cold morning, the steam rising in patterns.
Father singing while he worked, off-key but happy.
Finding a bird’s nest with three blue eggs.
Mother’s hand on my head, smoothing my hair before bed.
Each moment was small. Each one barely registered through the mask’s constant feeding. But Eleanor noticed them, held them, added them to her internal collection. And gradually, so gradually she almost didn’t notice, the mask’s hold loosened. Just a tiny bit. Then a bit more.
She started being able to smile again—not the painted smile of the mask, but her own smile underneath it, felt if not seen. She started wanting to play with her siblings, to listen to stories, to participate in village life beyond just going through motions.
The mask was still there, still fixed to her face, still drinking her laughter. But it wasn’t winning anymore. Eleanor was fighting back with small joys, accumulating them faster than the mask could consume them. Building a reserve. Creating overflow.
On the one-year anniversary of the festival where she’d bought the mask, Eleanor sat with her grandmother watching sunset paint the sky in colors that hurt with their beauty. The baby—not so much a baby anymore—sat on Eleanor’s lap, pointing at birds and clouds and naming them in her toddler vocabulary.
“Birdie,” Anne said, pointing at a crow. “Big birdie.”
“That’s a crow,” Eleanor corrected gently. “They’re smart birds. They remember faces.”
“Crow,” Anne repeated carefully, then looked up at Eleanor’s mask with innocent curiosity. “Why you have face paint?”
It was the way she said it—face paint, not mask, just a temporary decoration that would wash off—that did it. Eleanor felt something crack inside her chest. Not breaking, but opening. A door she’d kept carefully locked to prevent more pain swinging wide to let in light.
She laughed. Really laughed. The sound came from somewhere deep and genuine, bubbling up through all the layers of protection she’d built, bypassing the mask’s defenses through sheer force of authentic joy. Because Anne was right—it was just face paint, just a temporary thing, just something that would eventually wash away if Eleanor could just hold on and keep collecting small joys and remember that she was more than the mask that covered her.
The mask shuddered. Eleanor felt it clearly—a trembling like a living thing in distress. The wooden surface that had been warm for a year suddenly felt cool. The constant hum that had become like background noise fell silent.
And then, with a small sound like a sigh, the mask loosened. Fell away. Dropped into Eleanor’s lap where Anne immediately grabbed it, turning it over in her small hands with the fascination toddlers have for new objects.
Eleanor touched her own face—her real face, uncovered and free—with trembling fingers. Her skin felt tender, like she’d been sunburned, but she was whole. Herself. Free.
“You did it,” her grandmother breathed, tears streaming down her weathered cheeks. “Oh, Eleanor, you did it.”
Eleanor looked at the mask in Anne’s hands. The painted surface seemed dimmer now, less vibrant, as if it had been satisfied and could rest. The trading was complete. Eleanor had paid the price—a year of stolen laughter, months of gray existence, the hard-won knowledge that joy lives in small moments, not grand gestures.
“What should we do with it?” Eleanor asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.
Her grandmother took the mask gently from Anne, handling it with respect if not affection. “We keep it. We remember it. We use it as a teaching tool. When you have children of your own someday, you can show them this mask and tell them about the year you wore it. You can teach them that easy confidence is never really easy, that everything has a cost, that true joy comes from within and can’t be bought at a festival stall.”
Eleanor nodded slowly. That felt right. The mask had taught her things she needed to know, even if the lessons had been hard. It had stolen her laughter but taught her where to find it again. It had covered her face but helped her see more clearly. These Top Scary Stories for Kids weren’t just warnings—they were lessons wrapped in magic, hard truths delivered through impossible experiences.
“Grandmother?” Eleanor asked quietly. “That memory you traded to the mask seller—your wedding day—are you sorry?”
Her grandmother smiled, and it was both sad and peaceful. “I don’t remember enough to know if I’m sorry. That’s the nature of trading memories—you lose them completely, so you can’t regret their loss. But I see you here, free, laughing again, and I know whatever I traded was worth it. Some things matter more than private memories. You’re one of those things, child.”
Eleanor hugged her grandmother tightly, feeling the fragility of age and the strength of love intertwined in those thin arms. Her own laugh—her real, genuine, Eleanor-laugh—bubbled up again, and this time nothing stole it. It rang out across the yard, bright and free, and neighbors looked up from their evening tasks and smiled to hear it.
Because that’s what laughter does when it’s real and unrestrained and joyful. It spreads. It reminds people that goodness exists. It makes the world slightly better just by existing in it.
Eleanor spent the rest of her life learning that lesson deeper and wider. She grew up, married, had children of her own, and eventually grandchildren. She told them all about the mask, showing them the painted face that sat on a shelf in her home, preserved and remembered but never worn again.
“Everything has a cost,” she’d tell them. “Even joy. Even confidence. Even love. But some costs are worth paying, and some prices teach us what truly matters. The key is knowing the difference before you hand over your coins.”
And sometimes, when the grandchildren were sleeping and the house was quiet and she sat alone with her memories, Eleanor would take down the mask and look at it. Not with anger or regret, but with a complicated gratitude. Because yes, it had stolen from her. But it had also taught her where to look for what she’d lost. And in the looking, she’d found not just her laughter but her self—stronger, wiser, more aware of what mattered.
The mask sat silent in her hands, its painted smile holding secrets, its magic dormant but not gone. Waiting, perhaps, for the next person who would need what it offered and could afford what it cost. Waiting for the next lesson to be taught, the next joy to be stolen and found again.
