"You're always welcome to stay the night, you know." Grandma said from across the table. "I know, but I have work tomorrow and a cat to feed." I laughed thinking about how that was my life paraphrased into one sentence. "Okay dear, I want you to take this with you." She said while passing a bag over to me. "You look more and more malnourished everytime I see you, Nina." She continued while I opened the plastic bag full of bread, ready meals and tins.

She wasn't wrong, I had lost a bit of weight recently, nothing major but enough that it was noticeable to her keen eyes. It was from the stress of working and trying to afford a two bedroom apartment that seemly no one wanted to move into, apart from me. She walked me to the door while grandpa jim appeared from a room in the back. "Are you leaving so soon?" He asked. "Well, it's getting pretty dark." I said while glancing at my watch. It was only half 8 but the sun was setting quickly. "Ofcourse, best to always be home before dark. Are you still wearing it?" He questioned while glancing down at my hand. I laughed, "You'd never let me hear the end of it if I wasn't."

"When I was 12 or 13 he had given me a silver ring with a pentagram on it. Back then I only ever wore it when I was around him because I was embarrassed by it, until one day he saw I wasn't wearing it and I had to sit through an hour and a half lecture on why it was important. After that I wore it around the clock, I just turned it around so it just looked like a silver band. I hugged both my grandparents and thanked them for the food. I wouldn't admit it to them but living off tips at the restaurant meant that most of my meals were leftovers that the cook would give me at the end of my shift, so there was never really any food in my apartment.

"I got into my old Toyota and began to drive away. It was a 45 minute drive so I turned on the radio. I always enjoyed driving home from my grandparents house. I always had a full stomach and it gave me time to catch up with the new music on the radio. I began to think about my grandparents. I spent majority of my childhood at their small house with my sister. My father had always warned me not to listen to my grandfather's stories, saying that he was just a crazy old man, but as a child I loved them. They were always filled with so much detail and excitement. Other little girls got stories about princesses and castles, but my grandpa would tell us about mythical creatures and tales of a hero who used to defeat them. He used to read short extracts from an old hardback copy that he kept in the house. I began to wonder where it was now, I hadn't seen it in years. He stopped reading to us when I was 11 and my older sister, Liv, was 14 because she felt she was too old for bedtime stories. Just remembering the look of hurt on his face when she told him that made me sad to think about.

"I pulled into the parking garage of the old apartment building and took the stairs up to the lobby. I greeted the lobby worker, picked up my mail, then walked up two more flights of stairs. I fumbled in my handbag trying to find my keys without dropping the bag of food my grandmother had given me. I finally pushed open my door and dropped both the bags on the counter before opening my mail. Bills and more bills. I felt the familiar press of Zeb on my leg, I bent down to pet the ginger cat then opened one of the cabinets and poured out some wet food for him. Then I unpacked the food that grandma had given me and went to the bathroom to wash off my makeup. I looked in the mirror. I thought about how I was going to have to dye my hair again soon because my dark blonde roots were showing against my light blonde hair. I moisturized my face, brushed my teeth then turned off the light and returned to the living room.

"In the 2 years I had lived here, it still didn't look very lived in. Most of the furniture had come with the house, apart from a few lamps and cushions. I picked up my book from the coffee table and read till about 10pm then got changed into a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt and got into bed. I could hear the neighbours next door yelling, but couldn't hear what about. Zeb padded his way into the bed then curled up and fell asleep. I plugged in my phone beside my bed and closed my eyes.