#straycatreadsthat

the last in the 7-part and 6 months late challenge with @straycatreadsthat

(part six)

prompt: not enough of you

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Magic came to Ena as it came to most people: when she was small, and angry, and alone. It didn't really matter why she was any of those things, or that she was all those things at once. What mattered was that the anger and loneliness drove her to her first magical act, and it was her smallness that helped her get away with it unpunished. The forces that governed the craft were always kinder to children.

Those forces had whispered in her ears, and guided her hands, and taught her tongue the spell: she bundled dried twigs and leaves together and wrapped a strip of bark peeled from a green stick around them, and hummed the melody without really hearing it.

When she was done making the poppet, she knew what it could do without being told. She held that power in her hands. Then, with the wind in her hair and the dirt on her knees and between her toes, Ena pulled the poppet apart, gave the power back to the earth, and learned the first lesson any good witch learns: what is done may always be undone. The magic comes and goes, and it is not yours.

Ena sees this virtuous lesson in human form, transfixed in the darkness by wires of light. The magic of Alina's spell runs through Fish. It flows into her and through her, and Fish keeps none of it inside. Instead Ena sees the whispers of a spell, sees how it uses Fish's body to become a crucible that transforms the substance of Alina's working.

Ena aches to reach out to Fish, to lend her strength so that the spell doesn't burn Fish's body up. But she must trust the witch to hold on for a little bit longer. They each have their own part to play. She tries not to think, Fish, Fish, there’s not enough of you, but the thought occurs to her anyway.

Breathe, Ena tells herself sharply. There is Ena, too. Fish will corrupt Alina's spell for as long as she can, and Ena will work out how to undo it. Desiree and the other cursed dreamers are the thread she needs to pull on. But now, tonight, Ena lifts her voice to join the others, filling the night air with Alina's strange spell and holding back her own power.

“This is the end that justifies the means!” Alina calls out, her voice rising in one final, ecstatic chant.

When the circle repeats the chant back for the last time, the thin beams of light pinning Fish wink out. They return to become flames upon torches once more, and Fish disappears from view as abruptly as she had appeared.

Across the circle from her, Alina smiles serenely.

“Sister Ena,” she says, graciousness hiding all her triumph. “Welcome.”

“Thank you,” Ena replies. She has a part to play.

Sorry this took so long! Writing is just…not working. Neither is editing, so this hasn’t been touched except to fix a tense change. I’ll post the other over the next few days.

For this post!

“I am not going in there.” Marcie yanked her arm out of Ethan’s grip. “My shirt is stained, my jeans are ripped, and look!” She kicked a leg up, showing Ethan her bare foot. “No shoes! I’m not even wearing a dress!”

Ethan shrugged, his suit jacket thrown over his shoulder. Despite the tears that ran through it and the bottoms of his pants legs, he looked remarkably put together. “I’m not wearing a tie.”

“My heart weeps for you,” Marcie hissed. She ran her fingers through her hair until they caught in her curls, yanking out dozens of strands. “Let’s just go home, okay? I’m tired, we can eat ice cream in our pajamas and watch rom-coms and cry about how neither of us have a boyfriend.”

“Sure, if you want.” Ethan caught Marcie’s hand as she turned to go. “Or, we could go to the party you’ve been waiting for for months and have a great time despite looking like we just fought through the zombie apocalypse. Which we just did, so no one should be allowed to judge how we look.”

“But I don’t want to look like it!” Marcie aimed a kick at the wall, stopping millimeters from the molding. “I had a dress all picked out and I’ve been practicing my makeup for, like, a month. It was going to be perfect.”

“It still could be,” Ethan offered. “Trust me, you look more beautiful than any other girl in there.”

“Even looking like this?”

“Of course.”

Marice bit her lip, studying the door. “I don’t know…”

“Come on.” Ethan folded his mouth into a dramatic pout. “For me?”

“You don’t even like parties,” Marcie said, but she was laughing. “Alright. For you. But you owe me an ice cream night.”

“We can still do it after. I think we’ve earned it.” Ethan pushed the door open, letting out a flood of instrumental music. He wrinkled his nose and Marcie nodded in silent agreement. Too many violins. It was an epidemic across the globe. “Shall we?” Ethan asked, offering Marcie his arm.

“We shall.” Marcie linked her arm through Ethan’s and together they waltzed into the party.

for this game

★rhiot chews on his hand/knuckles when he’s nervous or emotional. it gets bad to the point of drawing blood whenever  he’s separated from loula for any length of time. (tic)

day 1 of 7 the writing challenge where @straycatreadsthat and I give each other prompts for seven days and we have to continue a story. and with the above prompt from cat, here goes! 

"This is the end that justifies the means," Alina says, her voice cool and steady. She raises her hands up to the moonless sky, and black smoke curls from her fingertips. In the torchlight, Ena can see the wisps curl around her wrists before streaming from her to choke out the fire, torch by torch by torch.

The small circle of women around her, all wearing their best black dresses and sharing significant looks, stare at each others’ faces for one last moment, join hands--and then all sight is lost to the heightened darkness that follows a doused light.

“This is the end that justifies the means,” the circle of women say as one, repeating Alina in a slow and measured voice. It is their mantra, spoken until the night air is heavy with their words. Ena wants to sway to the rhythm of their chant.

“This is the end that justifies the means.” Over and over and over again.

Then the first of the five torches flickers back into life with a gasping, guttural sound. The circle of women falls silent; the other four torches light themselves in neat succession, and then Alina is visible again at the center of the circle, her arms still raised.

She lowers them.

The spell is broken. The women relax, shoulders slackening and smiles pulling at the edges of lips, and Alina slips through the gap between the women closest to Ena.

“So,” she says, grinning broadly and gesturing at their gathering. “What did you think?”

Ena thinks Alina is reckless. She’s gathered housewives, young professionals, and college students, all of whom share only one thing in common: boredom with their lives. None of them—Alina included—understands what a ritual costs; what magic costs. 

“It’s--fascinating.” Ena tries her best to share Alina’s excitement, but all she can say is, “I wouldn’t have thought incomplete rituals from old books would lead to any success like this.”

“I know!” Alina agrees readily. She hums with energy, all but bouncing on the balls of her feet, and the hem of her skirt sways with her barely-contained energy. Her long-sleeved dress is the blackest of them all, and her black-as-pitch hair blends into it. She looks almost like a pale face floating in the air. A laughing pale face, one that says thoughtfully, “But you said you left school early, right? Maybe you just didn’t learn about this stuff.”

“Maybe,” says Ena.

@straycatreadsthat‘s wonderful prompt for day 2 of our 7 day challenge. 

There’s a reason why one must have a license to practice magic (though little things here and there have always been acceptable in the turn-a-blind-eye sort of way.) Anything beyond the simplest and most well-known spells is tremendously difficult, full of wrong steps towards an early--though that is not necessarily to say quick--death.  The forces that govern magic are capricious at best. 

Everyone knows this.

Everyone except Alina, Ena revises in the relatively safe space of her own head. Alina dives into everything blindly, and nothing but the most incredible luck keeps her from killing herself horribly. Luck, or a powerful charm.

A charm of that like could only be made by a true master. One of the great ones, the ones that are whispered about in corners but who rarely reveal themselves; the ones that have, through some great skill or extraordinary training, harnessed the powers of old, from before the centuries of precise bindings and conjurings.

Someone like Ena's master, who had disappeared around the time Alina began her experiments with magic.

Ena had only been three years into her apprenticeship with Fish when the great wizard had gone off one day in a hurry. She had gone to help a friend, and left a list of instructions for Ena so long that Ena suspected immediately that she would not find Fish again very soon. 

She had not thought they would be separated for this long, though. In three months, Ena thinks, I’ll have been studying off Fish’s notes alone for more time than I spent with Fish! 

But Alina doesn't appreciate Ena's loss, or her mission.

Instead, Ena finds their familiarity has bred contempt. Alina senses Ena's lack of genuine interest in her rituals, and she's worse than affronted. She sees it as a debilitating lack of creativity, or perhaps just plain intelligence, and treats Ena accordingly.

"Sweetheart, I know the next gathering is very late for you," Alina says, in magnanimously forgiving tones, when Ena asks about the meeting over a coffee date. The new moon is in a scant few days.  "So you don't have to come."

"No, please, Alina," Ena says, properly apologetic--she regrets having been quite so transparent. "It's hard, to adapt to new ideas, but I am interested."

Alina lifts her perfect eyebrows at Ena. "You should join us for real this time, then," she urges immediately. "Think about how much we could teach each other--with my intuition and your training, just imagine what we could do!"

Ena smiles weakly. "Yes to all of that eventually," she demurs. "But I still have some projects ongoing and I don't know how your work might affect them. Can I observe again?"

The effect of her words is visible. Alina's brows lower and she leans back in her seat, staring at Ena beneath lowered lashes, clearly reassessing her.

"If you really feel you need to to understand," she says, eventually. "Though I can also answer any of your questions now."

"Thank you," Ena replies. "I really appreciate this opportunity."

in which @straycatreadsthat and i give each other the same prompt... i’m late though!

here’s day three.

—————-

"Hi, Ena."

Ena palms her keys and checks the moon's position in the sky, ready to protect herself with the moonlight-powered distraction spell etched into her silver-and-gold fob.

"Hi, Desiree," she says.

The college student unfolds her long limbs and rises slowly from her perch in Ena's stoop. She stretches as she moves, and Ena wonders how long she's been waiting. Smiling awkwardly, Desiree steps down onto the sidewalk and clears the way to the door.

"Can I come in?" she asks.

Ena hops up the two steps to her door, but she doesn't move to open it and she doesn't let go of the moon spell either. "Everything okay?"

Desiree folds her arms over her chest and glances down the street. "Uh, yeah. I just wanted to ask you some things, you know? Alina said you went to Fariah."

Fariah just one of the many small academies that specialize in magic, but like the others, there's only so much teaching it offers. Students are expected to leave the school and continue their education through apprenticeships, because magic can only be learned and never mastered. Those who don't realize that never last long.

"I did," Ena confirms, though she wishes Alina hadn’t said anything at all. She’s still unsure of how she feels about the other woman’s flagrant use of magic without a learner’s or practitioner’s license, and she doesn’t want to be seen to be encouraging the group.

The girl looks hopeful for a brief minute. “Please, Ena—I’d really appreciate it.”

Ena studies Desiree for a long minute. She’s the youngest in the group, though not alone among Alina’s college girls. She’s quieter than the others though, with serious dark eyes fixed on Ena.

“All right then,” Ena agrees at last. Reluctantly, she fits her key in the door--never letting go of the fob--and opens it. If Desiree asks for help with doing magic, she’ll turn the girl away. Ena isn’t about to become a teacher for a gaggle of the uninitiated. “Come on in.”

———————-

day part 4 of the writing challenge with @straycatreadsthat

it’s been done and it’s short and idk what’s wrong with me but here <3

Ena sits Desiree down in her living room, then goes and fills them both glasses of water from the tap in the kitchen.

When she brings them back, Desiree is staring at the coffee table with its magazines and candles and few personal effects—Ena doesn’t keep photos or anything too personal in this house, and certainly nothing that could be hers and carry reflections of herself—and wordlessly accepts the water Ena offers.

She brings it to her lips, pauses, then lowers it again, like she's thought better of taking a sip. Twisting the cup in her hands, Desiree puts it down. “It’s about the—the sisterhood," she says abruptly.

The Sisterhood of Endings, Alina calls them, and she still wants Ena to join. Ena spent her time avoiding Alina and her insistence well: she's been reviewing all the spells of Revelation and Sight that she knows, among others, in order to piece together just what kind of spell Alina’s been using.

“Please, Desiree,” Ena says, tired of all the guessing and ambiguity. Magic is not a field for guessing and the imprecise . “Just be direct. What about it?"

Desiree shakes her head. “That’s just the problem. I don’t know what… I think I might be sick.”

Ena takes a sip of her water and waits for Desiree to continue.

“But in a different way,” Desiree whispers. “It’s like… When it’s sunny out, but you know you’re still in a nightmare, and as soon as you turn the corner or go back inside something’s going to eat you up alive, so you desperately try to wake up, but you can’t.”

Ena grips her cup very hard and stares wordlessly at Desiree. She recognizes that description. How could she not? It's drilled into every student's head on their first day: daylight, in bad dreams. That's what it feels like when magic itself is slowly siphoning away your life. That’s the day every magic practitioner fears. 

Ena doesn't bother asking Desiree what magic she's left unsealed, what projects unfinished, what spells active and uncleaned. 

The answer is obvious.

AUgust day 11: ft. iska & kalna  & filling cat’s prompt

“Love isn’t a zero-sum game.”

“Yes, it is,” he said as he scrubbed his fingers through his hair. And then again, harshly, “Yes, it is.”

happy belated birthday, cat!!! this is AU because let’s be real when have these fools ever talked anything out.