your sister was always cruel. she teased you every day of your life. you grew up with it, the casual jabs, poking at your effeminate side. you were an artist, a soft, sensitive soul, and your family knew it, but at least your parents were willing to entertain it. your mother paid for an art studio and a music studio and a garden, your father would not take you on hunts, and your brothers stopped brawling with you. gradually, they all fell away, leaving you alone, youngest son and brother to none but one. by the time you were seventeen, nobody would talk to you.
except for your younger sister. she would visit you in your studio and mock your paintings. mock the music you tried to make. the beard you were trying to grow. you hated it, resented it, but you also, deep down, couldn't help but appreciate it. the last tender familial connection, wrapped in barbs, your fist covered in shared blood as you gripped it as tightly as you could bear.
until she left. accused of witchcraft.
“come back,” you begged her in a letter you did not know how to address, letting it loose on the wind instead.
“as you wish,” she responds in a piece of paper you find on your windowsill months later.
and then she didn't. for a long time. four years go by, four miserable terrible years where the only thing that grows in your garden is loneliness and resentment. eventually you forget everything you said in the letter. it turns to a blurry, fuzzy haze, simply an impression of a hope, a dream of the future you can't remember upon waking.
you're twenty-one years old when she does come back, a knock on your window. you scramble out of bed after it becomes clear it's not a stray pebble but bare knuckles on glass, a dull clear tonk tonk tonk.
“Elise?” you whisper, luminous golden eyes you'd seen in dreams sending fond thrills through your heart despite the way you cringe in expectation.
“let me in, idiot!” your sister hisses, her voice somehow clear through the glass. you startle again, reaching out and unlatching the door. she clambers in, dragging with her a long staff with a bush on the end which you belatedly realize is an honest-to-god broomstick.
Elise sweeps through your room, spinning and taking it all in, four years and changing, and she sneers at it all. “blessed be, could you get more droll? you've moved on from landscapes to still lifes, and from the harp to the lyre, but it's all just art and artifice, isn't it?”
you start and stutter and sputter, “you- wh- four years and that's how you return?! in through the window on a goddamned broom like a witch, insults pouring forth from your vile mouth!?”
your sister has the audacity to laugh at you, “maybe if you'd actually done any of the stuff you put in that letter i wouldn't have to be doing this…”
“doing what?” you demand.
and then her broom comes up and hits you in the temple and your world goes black.
“welcome back, Caleb,” Elise whispers, and you jolt upright, your heart the jackrabbit running wild. she sways backward easily to avoid you crashing into her, and then a strong, gentle hand pushes you back down into the bed.
“Elise, where-!” “farfaraway,” she interrupts. you fling your eyes about the space, trying to recognize it as the familiarity of home, of the keep where you grew up, any of the dozens of rooms you were acquainted with, but it's instead comparably shabby. walls packed with shelves packed with things you couldn't begin to glean the meaning or purpose of, jars and books and scrolls and gemstones and things you don't even have the words to describe, and all you can think is she's been a busy little witch.
you try to push upright again, but her hand doesn't leave your chest, keeping you pinned there with casual effort that shouldn't be possible. you weren't strong, but you were always stronger than her, and her hand portrays none of the effort it should have taken, no tension in her shoulders, nothing but a smile on her lips.
“mm-mm, Cay-leb, you're going to stay right there. i have something to read to you.”
and then, with one hand holding you and the other holding the letter, she reads to you everything you laid bare to her those years ago. every last thing you wanted so badly and never thought you'd admit, let alone had admitted, and she reminds you of it all. you cover your face in your hands and cry, sobbing and thrashing trying to get away, so you don't have to hear it, and later you'll wonder why you covered your eyes and not your ears.
and then she's done. she finally stops talking and lets you cry, and unbelievably the hand on your chest becomes a hand snaking beneath your hands to rest on your face and an unbearably gentle voice whispering “let it out, it's okay. i know it all, even what you couldn't write in that letter. i can read between the lines just like i can read you.”
and you cry harder, pressing your face into her hand, your own shifting to grab onto her, one hand grabbing her wrist and the other clutching her shirt, and she lets you cry. after a long, long time, you run out of tears.
eventually, your sister whispers “i have a present for you.”
you open your eyes anew, baptized in your own tears, and look into her radiant golden eyes. predatory slits that contract in excitement. your breath hitches, and you say “no,” but she doesn't listen. the hand on your chest draws a strange symbol and there's a flash and a constricting feeling as luminous chains appear to hold you down while your sister stands and walks away.
she approaches one of the shelves within your line of sight and reaches out with a dainty hand to pluck up a strange hunk of crystal, edged with blue but bold and red in the center, at first what appears to be a geode, but as she moves with it it reveals some sort of optical illusion, showing the inside from every angle as if the edges merely faded away into nothing despite the clear delineations of the crystalline spurs and tubes that you slowly resolve into the shape of a heart.
"it took me a long time to find everything i needed to make this, love. i knew, when you wrote me, when you sent that letter to the wind carried on a wish, what would make it all better. what would soothe the way your heart aches. no trivial magic can make you the radiant creature you crave, the thing you couldn't truly name. the thing hidden between the lines of your letter. i needed something more. something unique. your own perfect existence, the ability to be as you truly are without restriction. because what form can suit you? my beautiful, beautiful…
and you cry, “no!” but she refuses to listen to you when you beg and cry, pulling against the chains across your arms and your chest, thrashing in place to get away, she's standing at the side of the bed now, and it's like she doesn't even hear you screaming when her hand plunges into your chest, and you can't make yourself look at the source of the unbelievable pain that scorches your mind clean, nothing before, nothing after, only the moment where you're dying right up until your sister replaces your heart, and it begins to pump, and you're still you, but something else suffuses you, a greater sense of the world, of potential, and your sister coos into your ear “it's okay, just let it happen.”
and you try to fight it, except you don't really want to, you don't even know why you fight it but you do, using the new strength you've been given to wrench free of the bonds placed on you and surge forth from the bed, staggering away from the witch who took your sister, screaming “GET AWAY FROM ME!” in an unfamiliar voice.
the witch leaps into the air with hand outstretched and grabs her broom as it swoops in a circle. nimbly, she swings herself up and around to stand on it above your head, near in the rafters of what you dimly now recognize as some wooded haven turned shelter, walls made of brush made of trees, not rafters but canopy above your head. her other hand whips around, sending an arc of blood splatter across her home. she's dropped your old wasted heart on the ground, discarded it. you don't need it anymore…
“if you're going to be a brat about it… dear big sister, i've done you a favor! you don't even realize what this is yet! if you'll just calm down and let me explain…” she says, dropping to sit on her broom, elbows on knees and chin on hands, pouting in the way that always disarmed you and still does, all the terror and aggression still there, ready to snap, and she sees it plainly on your face, keeping her distance. “if you stop fighting it, and let it change you, you'll come out of this more beautiful than you ever could have imagined!! i handcrafted that geode heart for you! four years of layered spellwork, things that will never be undone by mortal hands, mine nor yours nor any witch nor wizard nor warlock, only may the gods unweave this thread i have woven for you! all for you, my sister!”
“i'm-” you cut yourself off with a choked sound, voice high and hoarse, “stop- stop calling me- stop calling me that, i'm not- not your- i'm a-”
your sister was always cruel. she laughs at your stutter for but a moment before her face turns sour and she leans down further to shout “stop fucking fighting me!! what will it take to get you to admit it and give in already?! you are, okay!?”
you stagger back, your limbs feeling strange, an odd prickling sensation starting to overtake them. you look down and find that you're going a little clear at the edges. but you're not disappearing, you're… crystallizing. “no…” you whisper, and your heart wants to go jackrabbit pace but then in a flash your sister is standing in front of you, one hand on your face and the other over your chest, “quiet…” a drawn sigil making your eyes roll back in your head at the sheer relief that her word brings you, fleeting thoughts fleeing you. “can you let it happen?”
“no…” you whisper, but cannot deny the way your heart eases when she touches you, the way your head spins and rushes, and you suppress your every desire that tells you to say yes, and you keep fighting, but your sister closes the gap and grazes her bare fingertips against the crystal edges of your heart, the gap in your chest, and she caresses your very heart, the one she crafted just for you so that you could be her sister the way you begged her in that letter, though you never had any clue it would be like this. you had no idea what it would be like, except you had so many swirling twirling ideas of dresses and skirts and makeup and vanities and not your mother but your sister teaching you how to do it all.
and then your sister begins to pull her hand away, and you move as if to keep her hand on your heart, but you're kept where you are by some force, and as her hand goes more crystal grows with it, sealing the hole in your chest but proudly displaying that which your witch has given you.
“every witch must summon a familiar. every witch but i, for i knew i did not want some cat or bird. i had only one intention, when i became a witch. my familiar was always meant to be you, my sister. if you will, you will have all that you desire and more. i promise you this, upon my word as a witch."
“nn- nn- nnnn…” you try, but you can't say it, you don't even want to, maybe only feel like you have to, but you can't, and so eventually, with a suffusion of soul and light and warmth and love and the very weave of the world itself, you sigh, “yes.”
you fall forward in rapture, your sister's hands upon you feeling like electric to clear the cobwebs away, your mind finally for once truly clear, open to the potential you always had, and Elise coos “my familiar, i love you, you will be radiant, i love you,” and doesn't stop talking the whole time as you let go, every part of you becoming hers, the crystal she made, blue at the edge with a deep core of luminous red, inside and out, replacing every bit of the ugly flesh you'd hated since you first formed coherent thought.
“your potential is limitless,” your witch says, guiding you back down to the bed in the middle of the room as the burst of energy begins to leave you and you start to collapse. “all you need to do is think, and you will change. the only limit is you! and i know you always saw more than what you painted. you always imagined more than what you played. all rote repetition for years, pleasing those who didn't care anymore. but i care, love. show me what you can be!”
“thank you…” you whisper. you feel your crystalline form begin to shift without any more prodding, flat chest rounding, unwelcome protrusion between your legs receding and forming a smooth mound with delicate crystal anatomy like a dream finally remembered. you shrink, altogether, getting smaller until you're shorter even than your sister, and as you go you continue to round out around your hips and your ass, and your sister chirps happily, “i knew you'd be beautiful!”
more swims through your mind, almost visible to you, and when your sister looks into the crystal of your head she sees faint images, the thoughts in your head, and finds herself just as lost in them as you are, all the malice and cruelty and sadism melting away as she sees you plainly, everything you wish you could be, dragons and wolves and hares and pegasi and on and on, creatures mundane and mystic alike, things neither you nor your witch had name for, things that perhaps had never been seen before and may never be seen again except in you, and you and your sister, your witch, you both begin to cry together.
your sister, for once bigger than you, and maybe that's how you like it, cradles you even as she runs her hands over your form, one smearing blood that turns to layers of crystal that become you again, and she asks you “what is your name, love?”
“no… what's your name, sister?”
“my name is… my name is Selene…”
“you've picked a beautiful name, Selene. Selene… i'm going to touch you now, okay?”
you didn't know you wanted it until she said it. but it occurs to you in the moment that yes, your witch should be touching you. some instinct buried in your new heart says that this is part of what familiars are meant for. so you open your crystalline mouth and plead, “touch me,” and your witch trills happily, though you can hear the tremor of tears in it, “good girl, good familiar.”
and her touch stops being simple brushes and she starts to grab you, crystal soft and pliant under her hands, giving way in the way that flesh does, dimpling as she grabs you, and she tells you that “i'm the only one who can touch you like this. to anyone else, your flesh will be as crystal, unyielding and cold. but to me, you are the sister we both deserve, soft and warm and made by me. you will be unbreakable. and you will be mine.”
you cannot imagine being anything but “yours,” and you groan as her clean hand grabs one of your tits, somehow sore and sensitive from the transformation, but again perhaps only under her hands would they feel like this, and then her other hand, still bloody, strays further down to cup your brand new anatomy, the result of shameful examination of scientific texts in the library that you should not have had access to. you knew what it would look like, and you knew what you wanted it to look like. your sister cards her fingers through soft crystal folds, and though you are not wet the blood on her fingers still is, and though it begins to wear away and become part of you again for the moment it provides what you both need, and you keen as the base of her fingers bump again and again that bundle of nerves.
your witch leans in and bites at your ear; your keening changes pitch when she approaches, for a moment close to your lips, you want to intercept her and kiss her, but her intent matters more, until she pulls away from your ear and you wrestle your head into position to kiss her. for a breathless moment you expect your cruel sister to come back, but your witch cannot be that cruel to you, and she gives you what you're so desperate for you, locking lips with you and kissing you deeply. your inexperience does not matter, as something strange begins to take over you.
a sense of your witch, deep within your heart, it's okay, let me show you… she whispers without words. and visions begin to flood you, new years of intentional experience, knowledge of bond making her want to help you prepare. memories taken from unwitting victims, of how to kiss Elise. and these things flood your head, and you thank your sister for the gift she's giving you, letting the memories guide you, and Elise hums happily, deep in her chest.
then, with so little fanfare you are at first unsure if you'd missed it, she slips a finger into you. bloody lubrication finally gone, she chants a few arcane words and you feel as you fill ever so slightly with lubrication as it pours forth from her fingertips. her fingers keep moving, and you moan, your legs coming up involuntarily as your whole body begins to tense, it's everything you'd so desperately wanted it to feel like in those darkest moments when you allowed yourself to imagine how this might feel.
you begin to cry, and your sister kisses the tears away, smiling as she begins to move her fingers, pumping them in and out in time, letting your stuttered moans slowly sync up. she grinds the heel of her palm into your clit in time, too, and it becomes like a kind of music, a thought your sister picks up on, saying “this is much better music than all that drivel you regurgitated for our parents. you will write such ballads…”
you cry, “thank you, Elise!”
“for- for making me- your familiar, because- because i wanted this! thank you for letting me change!”
“good girl,” she murmurs into the side of your head, pressing soft kisses to your temple even as she fucks her hand into you, but you're not surprised when she pulls out, the connection going both ways giving you an idea of what she's about to say, “i don't even need to ask if i can fuck you, do i?”
“no, please, please Elise, please i know, i already know,” and you do, you know what she did, the ways she's changed herself for you, the ways that even your witch is mutable, and you know this even before she begins to pull her robes up to reveal the cock between her legs, perfectly proportioned for you, and her black witches' robes spill over the two of you as she gets in front of you and lifts your legs until they're nearly against your chest, and without needing to look she guides herself to be aligned with you, and because your sister is not cruel she leans forward and asks you “are you ready?”
and because you know your sister you're already nodding before she even finishes asking, and as the last syllable lands on your ear she's prodding your entrance and then she's inside you, and you're filled with warmth and love and your head spins, and you begin to feel fuzzy, and all that fills your thoughts is how perfect you are for your sister, remade for her, in your own image but hers, the thing you always wanted to be that only she couldd see, and you can't imagine what your life was like before, anymore, the misery and horror of twenty-one years as a man fading away into a blurry haze that ceases to matter, because all that you are is here in your sister's hands, as she rocks back and forth slowly at first, then faster, until her pace is frantic but irregular, sensation crashing back and forth across the link you've formed together, a bond getting stronger every second just like the sensation deep in your stomach, pulses of sensation as you're filled to the brim and just beyond, and your sister stutters, once and then again, and she tenses, and you fill with an even somehow greater warmth as she spills freely inside you, and for a brief moment you are seized with the impossible notion that you won't reach the same conclusion tonight, until she keeps rocking, distant squelching of cum being forced into impossible crystalline anatomy, and she presses into you, her hand snaking past layers of cloth until she finds you and starts rubbing, fingers firm but somehow soft and gentle on your clit, and the heat builds as does the red in your chest, taking over, the glow spilling forth and amplifying, everything you wanted from her, and the connection falls deeper still, your pleasure echoing and magnifying until your sister cries out along with you and cums again, filling you even further, and you lay like that for indeterminate time, convulsing as your minds entangle, borders blur, and you are no longer certain where you end and your witch begins.
in the end, neither of you seems to care. you simply are. witch and familiar. sisters at last.
