#luasha

Sasha and mornings did not mix very well, to be honest. The harsh glare of the sun annoyed her and the mattress below her seemed extraordinarily soft, especially right when she woke up after a night out. She and her band, the Shadow Knights, had a gig at ten the night before, and they had jammed for hours. Sasha sang vocals, so every morning she had a hoarse voice and it hurt to speak. The quiet girl usually didn’t mind as she preferred observing to socializing, but she still felt the pain when she did utter the few words she would speak.

As Sasha slowly came to the realization that she couldn’t lay in bed forever, she realized that something felt… off. She reached around her without opening her eyes, hoping to ignore the world for a few moments more while still figuring out the problem. Her hand collided with nothing as she found the empty space her girlfriend should have been in. Of course. While Sasha loved the night and the soft glow of the moon, her girlfriend preferred early mornings. Still, her girlfriend usually didn’t awake this early.

Actually, the white-haired girl had absolutely no idea how early it was. She never really had an internal clock, and never understood why people seemed to care about time. Time was just a construct built by people, after all, it didn’t matter in the grand scheme of the universe. Yet it’s flimsy, human-constructed laws still bound her, unfortunately.

With an angry sigh, she cracked open an eye and snatched her phone from its spot on her nightstand. Ew. The bright white numbers shining up at her from her too-bright phone read 11:39, so maybe she did oversleep just a bit. Sasha usually slept in, but never this late. Normally Lucinda would accidentally awake her in the mornings, but maybe she had let Sasha sleep in a bit longer than usual due to her late night last night.

Now that she acknowledged the time, she had no choice but to awaken. At least Lucinda had taken care to leave the curtains closed so she didn’t have to suffer under the sun. Sasha’s had so much hatred for the sun that Lucinda sometimes joked that she was a vampire. That wouldn’t bode over very well with her werewolf friends.

Sasha chuckled faintly at her own very unfunny joke before rubbing the sleep from her eyes. As much as she would rather stay under her warm comforter for the next three weeks, she told herself that she simply had to wake, mainly because she wanted to find Lucinda. She kicked off her blankets and yawned as she managed to pull herself out of bed.

Her foot touched the cold wood of the floor and she let out a hiss of annoyance. She had been telling Lucinda for weeks that they needed a new carpet after Sasha may or may not have accidentally spilled chili all over their old one. Oh well, nothing to be done about it now.

She yanked the comforter off the bed and wrapped it around her shoulders. As she did so, a loud yowl of anger came from where the comforter once rested. It seemed that their black cat Doctor Bartholomew, Ph.D. had been asleep next to Sasha and she hadn’t noticed him. And yes, the cat’s full name included the Ph.D. part. It was in psychology.

“Sorry cutie,” Sasha muttered in her hoarse voice to the annoyed cat, running her hand down his back as she began her walk to the door. That seemed to calm him, as the touch caused him to let out a purr and lay back down on the now comforter-less bed.

Sasha pulled open the door and listened for any noise from deeper in her apartment. Nothing. Lucinda wouldn’t have left without leaving a note, so Sasha ventured into the hallway before coming to any conclusions.

She cleared her throat in an attempt to cure her voice before calling out Lucinda’s name. “Luci? Ya home babe?” She waited a few moments. No response. Sasha let out a huff before putting her ear up to the door of Lucinda’s study and knocking lightly on the door. She heard no sound in reply.

Huh. how strange. Sasha pulled away from the door and entered into the main sitting area attached to the kitchen. No sign of her girlfriend anywhere, and no food on the counter either. Lucinda sometime’s liked to cook up strange food combinations for the pair to try, but not today it seemed.

Sasha paused as she mused over her girlfriend’s possible location. Did she have any prior engagements, maybe going out to hang with friends? Out shopping, perhaps? No, in both cases Lucinda would have written a note so Sasha wouldn’t worry.

Then it struck her. She knew exactly where Lucinda would be.

She pulled her shoulder cape/blanket tighter around her shoulders as she exited the door of their apartment, descending down the steps and trying not to trip. After walking down the single flight of stairs, she emerged in the back room of her and Lucinda’s potion shop. Well, Lucinda made and sold the potions while Sasha just provided semi-accurate palm readings. To be honest, Lucinda could read auras so she probably should have done the reads since she was an actual witch but Sasha wanted to help so she did them anyway.

Sasha, instead of entering the main shop, she entered into another side room with its door slightly ajar. The room contained hundreds of plants hanging on the ceiling and scattered on all available surfaces. Everywhere that didn’t have a plant instead held different flasks of liquids of all colors or jars of strange materials like bat ear and pickled cow tongue.

Her witch girlfriend sat hunched over a bubbling cauldron filled with some sort of deep purple liquid. Her spellbook hung floated in front of her to the side and her beautiful orange hair rested atop her head in a very sloppy bun. From what Sasha could tell, Lucinda had been up all night working on the potion in front of her. Poor girl.

It seemed as though Lucinda hadn’t heard Sasha enter the room as her focus remained on the cauldron. Sasha crept forward towards her girlfriend until she posed directly behind her. With a playful smile, she threw her arms around Lucinda, pulling her into a backward hug but also making sure not to jostle the potion,

Lucinda let out a startled shout before looking down and noticing the familiar chipped nail polish and bracelets that lined her girlfriend’s wrists. “Babe! You scared me!” She said with a laugh as she leaned her head back onto Sasha’s shoulder, grateful for the wonderous distraction that was her perfect girlfriend.

Sasha tilted her head until it rested against Lucinda’s. “You weren’t with me this morning. Did you even sleep at all last night?” She asked, her voice still hoarse and uncomfortable. At Lucinda’s long silence, Sasha withdrew her arms from around her girlfriend and spun Lucinda’s chair to face her.

Yep, there were dark circles under Lucinda’s eyes and her usually razor sharp makeup held so many smudges Sasha could barely even count them. She raised her eyebrows in an accusatory way as Lucinda let out a sigh. Sasha opened her mouth to respond before catching herself, remembering her painful voice. She instead gestured to the injured area before glaring down at Lucinda, trying to convey her message of being angry at her for not sleeping.

At Sasha’s pantomiming, a sly smile curled onto Lucinda’s lips as a playful edge crept into her tone. “Oh? Has my darling lost her voice?” At Sasha’s frustrated nodding, she laughed playfully, her smile shifting from playful to flirty. She gripped her girlfriend’s hips and pulled her towards where Lucinda sat on her chair. She stared up at her girlfriend with her sweet bedroom eyes. “You know I love your raspy, sexy voice…”

Sasha felt a small blush rise to her cheeks, but after months of dating her girlfriend, she finally had grown accustomed to Lucinda’s constant flirting. She smiled back at her with an equal amount of flirtation. “Is that right…” She replied before stooping low over her girlfriend. Lucinda turned her head upwards and the two kissed a deep, passionate kiss. As passionate as the kiss was, it ended far too quick for Sasha’s liking.

“Well, as much as I would love to keep being all sexy like you like, my throat really hurts and I could use some tea with a lot of honey…” Sasha said, wincing painfully as she spoke.

Lucinda noticed the pain in her girlfriend’s voice and a look of concern crossed her face. “I wouldn’t want you to be in pain at my expense, darling so I prepared something for you.” She pulled away from Sasha and turned back to the bubbling cauldron in front of her. “That’s why I didn't sleep last night. I was preparing this.”

The redhead snatched an empty vial next to her and began to pour some of the deep purple liquid into it. She filled it until it reached one of the hatch marks on the side and thrust the vial to Sasha. “It’s a new concoction I’ve been working on. I haven’t really tried it yet, but it should work, darling. I hope.”

Sasha gingerly picked up the vial from her girlfriend's hand and studied it cautiously. She glanced back down at Lucinda, noticing her curious yet excited gaze. “I’m going to be your first test subject?” Lucinda nodded enthusiastically, smiling all the while. Her own smile appeared on Sasha’s face. “Well, this won’t be the first time I’m your guinea pig.” She shrugged and quickly gulped down the liquid.

Instantly, she felt the soothing liquid pour over her injured vocal cords and relief filled her body. She felt better almost immediately and a happy look crossed her face.

Lucinda snatched a notebook and a pen from its spot on the table next to her, looking back to Sasha expectantly. “So? How do you feel? Does it work?”

“I think-” Sasha cut herself off as her voice came out high pitched and squeaky. Lucinda began to laugh at Sasha as she began to clear her voice quite a few times. “It works, but it appears that there are some side effects.” Sasha joined in with Lucinda’s laughter as the redhead wrote down a couple notes, shaking her head at Sasha playfully.

“I’ll have to add that to the warning label. The effects should wear off in an hour or so. I think.” The pair giggled again before Lucinda placed a lid on the cauldron and stood, placing another kiss on her girlfriend’s lips. “Let’s get back upstairs. My body is starting to crash and I could honestly use some of that tea you mentioned earlier.”

Sasha looped her arm through Lucinda’s, and the redhead snatched the blanket off of Sasha’s shoulders, wrapping it around her’s instead with a sneaky smile. Sasha shot a fake-angry glare at her as Lucinda looked the other girl up and down. “Is that my shirt? Are you using the shirt you gave me as a pajama shirt?”

The white-haired girl let out a snort of laughter in response and kissed Lucinda’s cheek playfully. They excited the workroom and began the walk back up the stairs as Lucinda shook her head in mock surprise. “I’m pretty sure that’s against the law in like thirty countries.”