Alone in a dusty old cabin that seemed to be falling apart at every seam but was somehow still standing, a girl with long puffy, frizzy brown hair that was almost long enough for her to sit on is working diligently on her ancient sewing machine. The wall in front of her is lined with countless glass bell dome display cases, each with a single plush stuffed animal inside of it. They seemed to disappear into the walls on both sides.

               She suddenly stopped sewing and held up a now complete stuffed puppy. She smiled and kissed it. As soon as her lips detached from the puppy, the display cases on the wall spread apart revealing a new empty case. She lifted up the glass and put the puppy inside of it carefully and then with a swipe of her hand, the cases slid across the wall disappearing into the wall to the left as more came to replace them from the wall on the right as if it was a conveyor belt.

               Her name is Ulalume and she has a very special job. She is one of the witches in charge of creating life. Her particular area of work is to make Korean male celebrities. That includes singers, actors, dancers, models, TV hosts and even some sports stars. She doesn’t decide how they become famous, just that they are destined to become stars. Each plush on her wall represents a single famous male born in Korea. She is relatively new to her job. She was created during the 200th witch creation, in human year 1900. Every 1000 years, Shufai makes a few more witches to help him create life. Each time they are given more specified areas of expertise.

               Ulalume looked back at her wire framed bed and smiled at a green stuffed dinosaur with a leopard print belly and a single wing charm sewed onto its back. “So…” she says to it. “Who should we check up on today?” She turned her attention back to the wall of plushies that was still slowly moving towards the left. She lifted up her hand and the wall stopped. Reaching out and putting her hands on both sides of a glass container of a particularly colorful stuffed dragon. “Let’s see what G-Dragon is up to.”

               The glass filled up with fog as she looked into it. Inside of the fog she could see G-Dragon at a hair salon. “Oh, he’s getting his hair done again! I hope he goes back to blonde soon. I really liked him as a blonde.”

               The witch pulled her hands away and she snapped her fingers. The wall starts scrolling again but each of the three rows of shelves alternated directions. The top and bottom shelf scrolled towards the right as the center shelf resumed going to the left. She grabbed the stuffed dinosaur from her bed and hugged it as she sat on the window seat next to her bed, mindlessly braiding her huge amount of messy hair into pigtails. Outside of her house are a bunch of trees and a continuous cover of light fog on the ground. The bushes in front of her house have lights sprinkled throughout them and a light post on each side. She looked up at the sky and the sun was going down and the stars were starting to show.

               She looked down at the dinosaur. “I should probably go to sleep soon, huh?” She made the dinosaur nod its head with her fingers and smiled at it. “Alright! Let’s go to bed!” She curled up on her bed and covered herself with the old quilt she had made and hugged the dinosaur close as she fell asleep.

               Suddenly she was standing in a dance practice room. She laughed as she saw the person the dinosaur represented dancing intently in front of her. She had started dreaming about seeing him in the city every time she went to bed. His name was Jang Dongwoo and he was a member of the idol group Infinite. She saw the other members around the room as well so she sat down on the floor with her back against the mirrored wall and was content just watching them practice and interacting with each other.

               Even though it was only a dream, she was always invisible to them. She has never been able to speak to a human before, even when she left her house and made her way into the city. Witches were unable to be seen or heard by humans. She was able to interact with physical objects but humans were unaware of her presence. Even if she tried to bump into them, they would go right through her as if she were a ghost.

               Dongwoo took a break from dancing and happened to sit down next to where she sat against the mirrored wall. Ulalume sighed and looked at his sweaty makeup free face as he talked jokingly with Woohyun from across the room. “I really did good work on this one.” She noticed his ear and saw his wing earring that he tended to wear a lot. “I wonder if that’s cause of the wing I gave you…” she wondered out loud as she reached out to touch it.

               Her finger gently touched the metal earring when Dongwoo suddenly reached up to mess with it. She instinctively pulled her hand away before his hand went through hers. She couldn’t feel it and neither could they but it did look really weird seeing someone else’s body parts suddenly going through your own.

               Suddenly she was woken up by a knocking sound. She opened her eyes and looked out her window and the sun was just coming up. There was another knocking sound. She stared at her front door very confused. It had been at least 100 human years since she had any visitors. It was rare for witches to interact with each other after their training period is over. Even then, they only interacted with the witch they are placed with as their trainer.

               She stood up and reached up to make sure her hair was still in the large braids. She checked her clothes as well and was wearing only her everyday clothes. A dark brown tank top with light brown trim that buttoned on the front and was longer in the back on top of brown pinstripe bloomer shorts with buttons and frills around the legs with solid brown ribbons with black and white horizontal striped tights beneath them.

               The knocking got louder and more impatient so she didn’t bother to change into the shirt she wore when she left the house. She opened the door and was shocked to see three female witches standing at her door. The one in the middle had blonde hair tied up into a bun on the top of her head and was wearing a black shawl with black and white feathers around the neck. The shorter one to the left had short light brown hair that stuck out on the sides with a wavy hat on top of her head. She was wearing a black sweater with a bunch of tears in it with metal things hanging around her neck. The last one on the right was in a tight black dress and had long thin straight blue hair. She was holding a black see through umbrella that had strings hanging down from it.

               Ulalume looked at them in shock as they walked right past her and into her house. She had never seen this many witches in her entire 1014 years of life. The first time she had seen female witches. Her trainer was a man. The short haired one went straight to the kitchen as the blue haired one slowly wandered over to the wall with the stuffed animals on them. The blonde one turned to look at Ulalume. “Ulalume right?” She just nodded as the blonde one continued. “We are here to ask you about the influx of humans in your care. The witch counsel has noticed that South Korea is starting to get saturated with famous people, almost as many as America.” Ulalume looked confused. “Witch counsel?”

               The blonde witch sighed and nodded. “Yes. Shufai put together a counsel to regulate the amount of work the witches do. We would like you to slow down on your work.” Ulalume nodded. “Well… the ones becoming famous now were created years ago… so, I don’t know how to slow down what I already made… Umm, how did you know where I live? How many witches are there around here?” She asked suddenly getting excited to be talking to someone who could hear her, but was nervous at the same time.

               The blue haired witch turned away from the display case wall and saw the stuffed dinosaur on the bed. “Oh my! Didn’t your trainer tell you not to keep your creations out of their assigned places? In your case, they should always be kept inside of their glass cases.” Ulalume looked confused. “My trainer, Lume, works with a typewriter and his creations are on paper. He never told me that. Why can’t I keep them out?”

               The short haired witch came out of the kitchen eating a graham cracker and sat down at the dining room table. “Your teacher was Lume? You can’t keep them out because it’s dangerous.” She started mumbling with a mouthful of cracker. The blue haired girl nodded in agreement as the blonde haired one took over explaining. “There are side effects to keeping them out inside of your magic aura. The human could start developing things in common with their object, become sensitive to things humans shouldn’t be and even become sleepy when their creator is close to their object. Lume was in charge of making all the Korean men before training you to lighten his load, you would think he would have taught you the basics.”

               Ulalume laughed awkwardly. “He’s constantly typing and he’s a scatter brain. Most of my training time was getting him type writer ribbon and teaching myself to use my machine.” The Blue haired witch laughed a bit. “That sounds like something he would do. You were the only witch he has had to train so far. It’s an honest mistake for someone so busy.” The short haired one suddenly stood up and headed towards the door, followed by the other two. “Just put the dinosaur back in its glass case and slow down with the creating.” She said as she opened the door. The blonde one nodded. “Yes, we don’t want to be forced to come back here.” The three of them left before she could even say anything.

               She sighed and stared at the door. “…What if I wanted you to come back…” She sat down on her bed and looked at the dinosaur. “They never even told me their names…” The witch took the Dongwoo dinosaur and reluctantly put him into his case.

               Ulalume grabbed her black sweater that had pointy edges and kind of made her look like a bat, she thought it was cute, and put it on along with her brown heeled ribbon laced shoes. Outside her house she climbed up a ladder against the back of her house and sat on top of her roof staring up at the sky.

               She sighed as she watched the clouds go by. Time passed by differently in the witches areas. The human world moved much faster, 1 witch year took 10 human years, so the sun was already in the middle of the sky even though the visit with the witches only took maybe 15 or 20 minutes. She sighed at the sky again and began talking. “Shufai, do you even hear me? Why did you send those witches to me?” She watched the sky hoping for some sort of answer from her creator. She looked down at her brown shoes and messed with the large ribbons she used for laces. “Why do I have to be alone? Even when an animal manages to wander into my home they don’t even last a year in our time…”

               She leaned backwards against her chimney. “Why couldn’t I just stay living with Lume? My name means ‘With Lume’ doesn’t it? I can’t remember what his name means though…” She looked back up at the sky and the sun had moved into the afternoon position already. She stood up and groaned. “Even when I go into the city, why can’t humans see me… Why can’t anyone see me or talk to me…” She grumbled more to herself and then pouted up at the sky. “Shufai, you meanie!”

               Ulalume grumbled all the way back into her house and took off her sweater and changed into her nice shirt she wore for outings, a brown pinstriped button up shirt with pretty white lace around the collar and the sleeves. She checked with one of the display cases and saw that it was summer in Seoul and she left her sweater as she grabbed her worn square leather bag and put on her greyish brown bowler hat with a small bow on it and made her way outside and down her walkway.

               She reached the end of her walkway and suddenly came out from a giant boulder. Her home is located in a national park close to Seoul, Bukhansen, and the humans call the rock she lives in by the name ‘Samobawi’ or ‘Gatbawi Rock’. While in the human world, witches experience time passing at the same rate as humans. It takes about an hour or so to walk from her rock to the closest bus stop. She passed quite a few hikers and greeted them as she passed, even though no one was able to respond to her. She was very relieved to see that someone was waiting at the bus stop already. A lot of the time she would have to wait for someone to come wait because the bus drivers were unaware of her, just like everyone else.

               She got off the bus at a subway entrance and then took the bus to Seoul station, just watching people around her. Being around large groups of humans like this made her feel less alone. On the street outside of the subway station, there was a boy playing his guitar for money on the street. She smiled sadly at him. “I’m sorry but you are one of Lume’s boys…” She sat on the curb and listened to him playing for a while as she just watched the people come and go from the various places around her.

               After a while, she heard something familiar and followed the song. Inside one of the shops they had a TV playing a music video. She grinned when she saw it was Infinite’s music video, Back. This was the first time she was able to see it. She gasped and laughed at seeing Dongwoo beat a man with his skateboard. “If he was really in a fight, he would probably run away or cry. Aww my babies are so talented!”

               After the video ended she kept watching the next video, it was a girl group she had never seen before. Suddenly she heard a rumble of thunder. She grabbed her hat with one hand and looked up towards the sky and decided to take the long trip back home.

               She safely made it home right before it started raining. She watched the storm from her largest window but she couldn’t keep from looking back at the stuffed dinosaur in his case. “Dongwoo, the storm is pretty intense isn’t it?” She asked it from across the room as she rested her forehead against the cold glass. “Is it raining this much in the city too?”

               She shuffled into her kitchen and made some tea and grabbed some crackers and sat back in her window. She could tell the storm was going to end soon. Her eyes kept going back to the stuffed dinosaur and she sighed as she finished her food. It wasn’t even necessary for witches to eat or drink anything, but she just enjoyed tasting it. Her favorite foods that she has managed to get were flavored crackers, all sorts of flavors.

               She put her teacup back into the kitchen and decided that it was time to sleep for a little bit since she had to cut back on work. She tossed and her bed, unable to sleep. She tried hugging her pillow but it just didn’t feel right. The stuffed dinosaurs back was curved in just the right way to fit snugly against her body as she held it, even the metal wing charm on his back didn’t bother her while she was sleeping.

               After rolling around for about an hour, she got up and took Dongwoo back out of his case anyways. “I can always try again tomorrow…” She quickly fell asleep once she lay back down with the dinosaur.

               Suddenly she was standing in an apartment living room. She smiled when she realized it was Infinite’s dorm. L and Dongwoo were watching a movie on their large TV. L was lying on the couch and Dongwoo was on the floor with his back against the couch. Ulalume looked at the TV and it looked interesting so she sat down on a pillow on the floor next to Dongwoo and started to watch the movie with them. “I wonder if I can get a TV for my house…” she wondered quietly out loud to herself.

               It started to get late and Dongwoo suddenly resituated himself and laid his head down on the pillow she was sitting on. Ulalume laughed to herself as she looked down at his face. “It looks like he is using my legs as a pillow.” Dongwoo closed his eyes and mumbled “Leg’s would make a better pillow…”

               Her eyes shot open and she was back on her bed still holding the stuffed dinosaur and sighed to herself.