BelieveInWinx Contest: Magic Winx! Rewritix! Winners

The Alfea library was in flames. Flames licked the walls with greedy orange tongues, devouring the thousands and thousands of pages of carefully chronicled knowledge that the many books held within them. A thick, choking smoke hovered in the air, and every time Musa inhaled, it brought more of it into her chest. Her lungs burned for want of fresh, clean air. A serpent-like line of flame leaped out at her, but she fluttered backwards just in time.

Musa didn’t know why she had come back into the burning room. The other fairies had gotten out safely and warned her not to return. Techna had managed to save Galatea before Musa even had the chance to consider it. With a heavy, painful sort of acknowledgement, Musa understood that Techna was far braver than she could ever be and so were all of the other fairies, in fact. “Have you earned your Enchantix yet?” was a question that always brought a bright flush to Musa’s face.

But Musa had been drawn back into the room. Call it fate, call it destiny, but Musa could’ve sworn that she heard a small voice - as delicate as the twinkle of wind chimes - call out to her. If there was anything she had learned from being part of the Winx, it was to trust yourself. And right now, Musa felt as though she needed to return to the library.

She reached up a hand and cupped it to her mouth so that her cry would reach maximum volume. “Hello?” she shrieked out. The only response was the sinister crackling of the flames and the groaning of an architectural structure under immense strain.

Sweat beaded on Musa’s brow. Her wings seemed to sizzle against the searing heat in the room. Every breath was laborious, and her lungs cried out in protest at having to inhale such noxious fumes. She called out again, considerably less loud, “Is anyone in here?” The power it was taking to support herself in such a room was beginning to show itself - her muscles burned behind her skin, which was beginning to blacken from the soot that was falling from all areas of the room. “I can help you!”

A deep, wooden creaking sound seemed to warn Musa against going any further with this impulsive plan. This room wasn’t going to be able to hold up much longer. Desperately, the girl tried one last time, “Show yourself!”

At the far back of the room, a small voice called out weakly, “Musa?”

A long dormant feeling inside Musa stirred. There was something vaguely familiar about the voice - it was gentle, musical, comforting, motherly. But she did not dare to indulge herself with such a foolish hope. Without waiting to survey a safe path, Musa flew forward into the musty, inky black smoke. Her eyes began to water and tears streamed down her face, for the smoke seemed to clamp its cruel jaws against her face.

“I’m coming!” she cried out. “I’m comi -”

Musa stopped dead in her tracks, facing the far wall.

A figure was slumped against the wall. She was still conscious, but barely so. Her head fell down onto her shoulder every once in a while, as though she was nodding off, but she picked it back up again each time. Her voice was barely audible at this point, but she whispered, “Help me, Musa.”

The smoke cleared around the woman for a moment and Musa felt her stomach drop to her knees. A new, painful combination of grief and happiness seemed to swat Musa across the face. A pair of warm but bloodshot grey eyes blinked up at Musa from a pale face. A brown bob reached the woman’s shoulders, but the ends were singed from the fire. Her orange kimono had streaks of soot all over it. But through all of these imperfections, the woman was still beautiful to Musa.

A ghostly image of Matlin, Musa’s mother who had been dead for over 10 years, stared up at her daughter.

Musa wasted no time. She reached down and pulled her mother up off of her feet. Despite her transparent appearance, Matlin still had the weight of a human. Gently slinging her over her shoulder in a fireman’s hold, Musa began to make her way through the flames.

The fire, however, wouldn’t make her venture easy.

With a splintering crash, one of the wooden beams from the ceiling crashed to the ground like a flaming meteor. Matlin cried out weakly, but Musa did not even flinch. She flittered to the corner of the room and pressed herself against a wall as tightly as she could. Skirting narrowly around the wall of flame, she spoke soothingly to her mother, hardly believing that she was holding the woman who she had longed to meet for so long: “I promise, Mom, we’ll get out of here. I promise.”

Even though Musa felt like lying down and giving up in the middle of the library, she refused. She wouldnot let her mother down. She would not let her die again.

The doorway was barely visible, but Musa pushed towards it as fast as possible. Her mother’s grip on her shoulders began to weaken, but Musa held her even tighter. “Hold on, Mom!”

Bursting through the doorway, Musa gently set her mother down on the ground and then collapsed next to her. “You’re safe, Mom,” she whispered. Voices echoed faintly down the hallway and Musa recognized them as belonging to her friends.

“Oh, no!” she heard Bloom scream.

Rolling over onto her side, Musa groaned and waved at her friends. “I’m...fine...kind of. Not really. I’m hurting a lot, actually. Why did I say I was fine?”

Musa expected a response from her friends, but silence greeted her ears. She rubbed her sooty hands against her eyes - which did not help improve her vision - and turned her head for a better look. Everyone was staring in awe at Matlin, who had managed to stand up.

Musa’s head pounded with pain and adrenalin, but she bolted upright on the ground. “Mom,” she cried out, clapping her hands to her face. “How are you here? How are you…”

But Musa did not get an answer. Immediately, Matlin began to glow with a blue, pulsing light. She turned to smile at Musa and reached out to touch her face. Musa felt warmth where the ghostly hands rested against her cheeks. “Mom…”

“You must have faith in yourself, Musa,” the ghostly voice whispered.

“I will. Do you have to go? ”

“No.”

“Then, you’re going to stay?” Joy flooded through Musa. Finally, she would have the mother-daughter relationship she dreamed of - shopping dates, movie nights, girl talks. It would be everything she constantly wished for.

“No.”

Musa felt like sobbing. In fact, she did.

“Musa, I will always be here for you.” Matlin pressed her almost completely invisible hand against Musa’s heart. “I promise. You just have to be brave enough to see me. I attempted to do something dangerous today - I wanted to come back to Earth, to be with you. But I almost killed myself in the process." Matlin waved a hand towards the flaming library. "What is gone is meant to be gone, Musa, my love. Everything happens for a reason, and - for now - I must go. Perhaps one day, we will meet again in person. But before I depart, I have a final gift.”

Matlin raised her hands towards the flaming library and launched a long stream of blue waves toward it. With what sounded like a quiet, airy song, the flames fizzled out. With a flash of turquoise, Matlin was gone.

Her chest trembling with the force of her sobs, Musa allowed her friends to envelope her in a hug. But almost immediately, they all leapt back.

Something was happening. Musa felt herself transforming, but not into her usual form. A new outfit rippled into view - pink and orange sparkles shimmered in her new skirt and top. Her brand new wings glittered, casting yellow strands of light across the room. “Enchantix!” she breathed as she slowly returned to the ground.

She flapped her wings once to test them and then turned to her dumbstruck friends. “I - I saved my mother,” she whispered, clapping her hand to her mouth. “That’s why I earned Enchantix.”

“But how?” Stella cried out in disbelief. “She’s dead!”

“I have no logical explanation for this,” Techna murmured, shrugging her shoulders. “This ghostly apparition - are you sure it was your mother?”

“Maybe it was just a hallucination,” Flora suggested. “What did you eat before -”

Bloom stepped forward, throwing her hands out to stop the volley of questions. “Enough,” she said in her strong, decision-making tone. “It doesn’t matter how Musa earned her Enchantix. It matters that she did and we all should congratulate her.”

The Winx enveloped Musa in a tight hug, but the celebration was quiet and reserved. Musa appreciated that greatly, as she was still shaken by the whole ordeal.

Laying in bed that night, Musa listened to the quiet breathing of her best friends. She wondered if any of them would really ever understand what she had felt that day. She had come so close, so close, to meeting her motherly properly for the first time. She had been inches away. And no matter how hard her friends tried to convince her that maybe it was the smoke that had distorted her vision and it hadn’t been her mother, she knew that it had been.

Maybe one day, I’ll get to meet her again, Musa thought, closing her eyes and turning over towards the wall. She fell asleep quickly and, in her dreams, she could’ve sworn she heard the delicate singing voice of her mother, promising her that everything would be alright.