Enchant
You are not just being stubborn.
There is something about the portrait. You can feel it.
And now that you are looking into it, really looking, it looks back. And the girl smiles to you and offers you her hand.
Maybe you are hallucinating. They warned you that you could get sick drinking water from the tap in this country, maybe you have a fiver. And your mom wouldn't shut up about the dangers of staying up so late.
Whatever. Is not like you can make yourself wake up, right? It's better to go along.
You take the hand of the girl and she helps you to climb into the painting. Inside, she introduces you to her family. They are welcoming and they tell you a lot of myths about the town. Including their own story:
"Casimiro and Candelaria would always compete to see which of them could do the best trick, and their mom dared them to work together instead. So, they created our world, painting our portraits, and the market."
They explain that, after he lost his family, the paintings where the only thing that Casimiro took to the small house. The enchant has faded in most of them in the last decades, so he risked to hang this one back in the family house, because it has the property of keeping all kind of spells alive.
There is so much live in this imaginary town where it's always day, that you loss track of time, until the little girl says "Good bye, visitor! Have a good day, and please come by again".
Before you can ask what is she talking about, you fall on your back. The dusty carpet of the abandoned house softens your fall and, from the floor, you can see the girl's portrait under the light of dawn.
The end
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