Maryellen Brady 💗📚 (@mebrady)

Feb 1st, 2005 It is often muttered that if you believe in the magic of the cove, you will see it. I've seen it. Me, Rayven Sinclair, physics major. Or at least, I try to. Could you imagine the scientific breakthroughs possible if humans could harness magic? There is this castle-like villa on the bluffs of Starlight Cove. It appears most often when I'm on the 6:15 ferry to Seattle, shimmering between the evergreens and mist like a dream caught in amber. But never when I'm desperate to find it, never after I've bombed another quantum physics exam, and absolutely never when I've spent hours driving those winding roads around the cove trying to track it down. The villa defies logic. Which drives my scientist's brain mad. Sometimes it perches on the cliffs like a crystal crown, its spires catching the rare Pacific Northwest sunlight in ways that shouldn't be mathematically possible. Other times it seems to hover just above the churning waters, as if the sea itself is holding it up. There are times I see tigers & parrots up there, meandering around as if they belong there. Exotic creatures prowling through Pacific Northwest mist, as impossible as my quantum mechanics homework – but somehow making perfect sense in that magical space. My fellow ferry commuters only see fog and forest. One morning, when the villa was practically glowing in the dawn light, I tried to point it out to a businessman in an expensive suit. He squinted through the mist and commented on "that old abandoned house." But I saw what I saw: impossibly elegant architecture & windows that reflected stars even in broad daylight. My university professors would scoff. They'd blame sleep deprivation and too much coffee. They'd want peer-reviewed studies on mysterious appearing mansions. They'd demand scientific proof. But how do you prove something that disappears the moment you try to photograph it? My phone camera captures nothing but artistic blurs, and my sketches never quite match what I see. Even my attempts to measure light refraction patterns around the villa result in equations that shouldn't be possible – as if the mathematics itself is laughing at me. The villa seems to have a sense of humor about my attempts to understand it. The more I try to apply logic – tracking its appearances, mapping coordinates, calculating angles of refraction – the more it eludes me. Yet sometimes, when I'm lost in thought about something completely different, there it is, taunting me with its impossible magic & beauty. I've started keeping a journal of its appearances. There's got to be a pattern. The villa shows itself during moments of quiet wonder: when the sea is particularly silver, when the morning fog does that dance, when the ferry crosses paths with a pod of orcas. Never when I'm looking too hard. Never when I need reassurance that magic is real. Sometimes, in the twilight between wakefulness and sleep, I imagine finding my way there. Walking up a path that probably doesn't exist, knocking on a door that might not be there tomorrow. Would they have a room for a physics student who can't quite reconcile magic with mathematics? Would they explain how it all works, or would that destroy the very thing that makes it magical? For now, I keep watching from the ferry, keep taking the long way home past the cove, keep believing despite my textbooks telling me I shouldn't. Because sometimes, between quantum equations and theoretical papers, I catch a glimpse of something that doesn't need to be explained to be real. The Villa reveals itself only to those who believe in magic. I'm starting to think it's more complicated than that. Maybe it reveals itself to those who can hold both mystery and logic in their minds at once, who can see wonder in equations and patterns in dreams. One day, when I've finally figured out how to balance science with magic, I'll be the one looking out at the ferry from that villa. That magic will be mine.