It was a perfectly normal day in the House of the Hearth, which is to say that only three things were on fire (intentionally), two children were attempting to convince King Croak to declare war on the attic dust bunnies, and the living room couch had only slightly turned into a sentient loaf of bread.
Mother Goose was in the hallway, trying to coax a magically stubborn drawer into giving up a misplaced sock, while Father Hearth was peacefully sipping tea beside the grand hearth itself, reading a worn book that hummed softly with ancient magic.
Everything was, by the house's standards, tranquil.
Until someone found the wrong book.
In the cluttered and endlessly rearranging library of the house—where bookshelves moved of their own accord and stories whispered to each other when no one was listening—one very curious child named Elric stumbled across a dusty tome with strange runes on the spine.
It thrummed with energy.
And it was warm to the touch.
Being a child of the Hearth, Elric naturally assumed that meant he was meant to open it. And he did. The pages were dense with symbols and glowed with emberlight. Most of it made no sense—except for one passage that shimmered in cheerful pink:
"Twist the world, turn it sweet,
Make gravity dance and houses bleat."
"Huh," Elric said, because he was seven and deeply unqualified.
So he read it aloud.
In full.
And the world, as it so often did around the children of the House, responded.
At first, there was a rumble.
Then a pop.
Then the unmistakable sound of a frosting cannon going off.
The floor tilted. The walls stretched. The ceiling... laughed?
And outside the window, the city—once a charming blend of cobblestone streets and warm-wood buildings—began to twist.
Gravity hiccupped.
Several houses flipped upside down, their rooftops settling politely onto the cobbled street as though nothing had happened. Trees began to sway sideways. Some floated.
But perhaps more curiously, everything started turning into desserts.
The roads were now rivers of molten chocolate. The buildings transformed into enormous layer cakes, complete with frosting eaves and wafer balconies. Lamp posts were giant peppermint sticks, and the fountain in the city square now spewed bubblegum soda, carbonated with magical fizz that occasionally sent rainbow bubbles the size of carriages drifting into the sky.
And the people?
They adapted.
With unsettling speed.
A baker blinked once as his storefront became a life-sized gingerbread man. He shrugged, pulled out a marshmallow rolling pin from a wall drawer that hadn't been there before, and got to work.
Children in the town began skiing down frosting-covered hills on upside-down baguettes. Local guards patrolled on licorice whips that reared like horses. A judge declared the court's new macaron benches "unconventional but comfortable."
Even the mayor gave an impromptu speech from atop a jellybean podium.
"We are... uh... adapting," he said proudly.
Back in the House of the Hearth, Mother Goose stormed into the main hall, frosting clinging to her boots, a lollipop stuck to her hat.
"HEARTH!" she bellowed. "I WANT TO HAVE A CONVERSATION ABOUT OUR BOOK LABELING SYSTEM."
Father Hearth looked up from his tea, which now inexplicably tasted like raspberry tart. He calmly closed his book and nodded.
"I wondered when someone would find the Confection Conflux Hex."
"You knew this would happen?"
"I didn't know it would be today."
She flung her arms toward the window, where a cotton candy tornado casually swirled near the marketplace.
"There is a man commuting to work via taffy slingshot!"
"They seem fine."
"They are not supposed to be fine with this! The cathedral is now a gingerbread fortress!"
He sipped his tea again. "Delicious."
"I stepped into a caramel pothole. I was stuck there for ten minutes."
A muffled explosion echoed in the distance. A candy corn statue toppled dramatically over a marzipan monument.
"...Seven minutes," Father Hearth corrected gently.
Meanwhile, Elric—the small culprit—was floating gently through the air on a pastry that had become self-aware and deeply philosophical.
"I didn't mean to," he muttered as a strawberry puff glided by him. "It just... rhymed."
The pastry beneath him, which had taken to calling itself Pierre, hummed in agreement. "All rhymes are dangerous, young conjurer. Especially the catchy ones."
Back at the House, Mother Goose was already gathering ingredients for a counterspell. Unfortunately, the kitchen was now halfway submerged in jelly, and the spell components kept eating themselves.
"This is ridiculous," she muttered. "It's worse than the time Nathan Void turned the furniture sentient and the armchair fell in love with the broom."
Father Hearth stepped into the jelly like it was nothing more than a puddle.
"Are you not going to fix this?" she asked, exasperated.
He shrugged. "It's... charming."
"Charming?" she pointed out the window again. "That man just dove into a cupcake and vanished."
"Magic has layers," Father Hearth said serenely. "Like cake."
She let out a long-suffering groan, then turned toward the children, who had gathered on the second floor balcony to watch the chaos unfold.
"All right," she said, clapping her hands. "Which one of you sugar-drenched imps started this?"
Elric floated by, still on Pierre. "Hi!"
Mother Goose narrowed her eyes. "Oh it's you."
"Sorry."
"Are you?"
He hesitated. "...It's kind of fun?"
She pinched the bridge of her nose and muttered something about needing stronger wards and fewer books that giggle when opened.
By the time evening came, the city was still a confectionery chaos, but things had stabilized—in a way.
People were using gumdrop lanterns. Families had built marshmallow fences. Children were ice skating across pudding ponds.
The House of the Hearth itself had avoided complete transformation, though parts of the western wing were suspiciously edible.
Mother Goose finally cast the reversal charm, which required the light of a blue moon and an apology written in frosting. She got both.
With a sigh, she sprinkled the final word into the air. "Undo."
A tremor rippled across the city.
Candy began to melt into stone. The roads reformed. Chocolate rivers shrank and twisted into cobblestone alleys. Gravity hiccupped one last time and settled.
People groaned as they slowly returned to normalcy. Some even looked disappointed.
And the House returned to its usual self—mostly.
The kitchen now smelled of chocolate for reasons no one could explain, and one of the bedroom doors refused to open unless given a cookie.
Later that night, Father Hearth and Mother Goose sat by the hearth, the flickering fire casting warm shadows across the wooden floors.
"That could've gone worse," he said.
"I now know six different ways to weaponize licorice," she replied. "So yes. It could've."
They sipped their tea in companionable silence.
Then a sudden noise echoed from upstairs.
BOOM.
"ELRIC!" they shouted in unison.
"…I didn't open anything this time!" he called down.
Pause.
"…It opened me!"
The two caretakers looked at each other.
Father Hearth sighed. "Tomorrow?"
Mother Goose nodded. "Tomorrow."
And the House of the Hearth lived on, slightly sweeter than before.