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Local Witches of Yen Sid

Raven Rassul; Daughter of the Moon and Hell and Ae-ra Kang; Sorceress of Bad Luck

“Anger is pointless, my emotions are under control.” “Looks like you’re out of luck.”

The air felt electric in this time of night as if the things lurking in the shadows felt more alive and tangible. It made her feel more alive and tangible. There was chaos and craze and freedom in the night, something very few understood. Even less so those who knew how to make the darkness bend to their will. 

It was how she was going to be spending her evening, at least until she heard the knock on her door. 

The last thing she expected was raven showing up on her doorstep in the middle of the night. Surprise flickered across her face before settling into a blank expression. Reluctance pulsed through her unsure of what action to take. Let the enemy into her home-but Raven had always toed the line between someone she considered a friend and someone she should push away.

The events of the blackout had not left her, nor the night where she might’ve been too honest for her own good. Ae-ra hadn’t shared anything, but still felt as if she shared too much. Vulnerability wasn’t too her liking and she coveted her secrets fiercely.

“Sure,” She stepped aside, raising a brow, “Good ol’ Mommy sent you a postcard?” // @znthcs​

She had made a mistake coming here. This was the last place that she needed to be, Ae-ra wasn’t going to take this seriously, why did Raven even bother. She should have just internalized this like she did everything else, why didn’t she just... A deep sigh escaped the Azrathian, a shake of a head and a girl turned inside out because of facts before unbeknownst to her. Ae-ra did not know the difficult choices ahead of Raven, she did not know so Raven could not hold it against her.

Raven entered the apartment and she took a deep breath. Breathed in the reality before her, a reality that was too hard to chew, too hard to swallow and she had never done well with emotions. They weren’t her thing, she had never been shown how to process them, she had never been taught how to deal. There were no coping mechanisms hardwired into her makeup, she was not made to do this.

She walked without fault, carried herself with head high even as all she wanted to do was crawl within herself.

what do you dream about, ae-ra?

even with her eyes open, she could see her dreams vividly. she could see the flames as they scorched everything around them, turning whatever they touched into ash. she could hear the screams ringing through the air, higher and higher like a beautiful cacophony. of people begging for mercy, pleading to be spared, eyes desperate and voices shaking as they tried to speak through their tears and fears. the blood being spilled, staining the ground underneath her feet.

she dreamt of others like her taking the world and controlling it. crushing whatever light people hoped and dreamed about. claiming what was rightfully theirs. all their hardwork, all their planning paying off. the galaxy was going to be theirs. it was never for naught. it was what was owed to them.

she dreamt of surviving. of climbing. of rising. through that inevitable chaos, she would be there. she would be at the top. her. her hive. other foul and ruthless souls like her. she’d done it. she reached her place. the one she’d been striving for since her earliest days. she’d come from nothing to something. she would be the biggest and worse curse of them all, this Jinx.

“eh,” she offered a shrug after a long moment’s pause, “i’m living in the moment, no need to dream about that. although fantasizing about a good burger is pretty appealing right now.” // @znthcs​

And just like that, as soon as it had began, the connection was over. Ae-ra’s walls climbed back to their before position and Raven with drew her hand from where it had rested on Ae-ra’s arm. It was better off that way really. It meant that Raven would not have to get deep back and more than that, it mean that Raven would no longer have to suffer from being at a loss for words. That was one of her worst personality traits, her inability come up with quick formidable responses.

Though a portion, however small, of her wanted for Ae-ra to continue. There was so little that she knew about this girl, this girl that she had considered to be a friend, and Raven was never the curious type. That wasn’t in her nature, but she wanted to at least know something. Something that she could show for when the inevitable happened and Raven shut the girl out. Something that she could fall back on when this friendship stopped existing. 

Something that she could remember her by. 

But Ae-ra was never a talker, not of important things and Raven never pushed her. Maybe that’s why they would always remain floating on the surface, unable to break tension and fall beneath into whatever lie below. 

“Do you want to go get food or continue to talk about deep topics while laying under the stars.”

“no thanks.” she quickly dismissed the idea. no. that kind of life wasn’t for her. even if she was somehow able to attain a life like that, what would it be that she would have to give up now. her reputation? her morals? her goals? her family? there was too much at stake for a flimsy fairytale, as much as she liked to fantasize about the ‘what-ifs’, reality grounded her.

if she was too carefree, how much of herself would she lose? how much of ae-ra would cease? how much of jinx would cease? sure, her life up to this point hasn’t been the grandest or luxurious, leaving her with more scars than she could count or see. but it made her, her. 

 and there was no one else she would rather be. 

“i wouldn’t even know what to dream about if i somehow got there.” // @znthcs​

raven mulled. she had been seeming to do that more and more in this girl’s presence lately. while she loved having her mind stimulated in such a way, the fact that she didn’t know what to say was not something that she was fond of. a sigh escaped through parted lips and raven turned her eyes from the sky for her gaze to find purchase on the girl beside her. ae-ra. someone raven had found herself around more and more as time passed, raven studying how taunt her face was. the stress that lied within there, behind the skin. whatever was in that mind of hers, it caused much.. not torment. just realization and the reality that came with such. 

“what do you dream about, ae-ra?” her words hung in the air, hanging from fallen stars that seemed too close to be real. being on this asteroid, seeing the way that everything moved around them, raven could swear she could touch the planets just by reaching up. 

“i miss the days where i could dream of being carefree.”

the mumbled words tumbled out of her lips, more weight to them than she would ever ever care to admit. even her earliest memories she did not have the luxury of living without cause, without care. back on that rock of a planet where too many faces blurred together easily, she always had to think about herself. what to do, how to act, a status quo that she grew to resent as she grew older. it was not her fault, nor her parents, that things bored her too easily, that she acted out to bring forth excitement. no. that was just life. some people just would never hold the right cards. 

but atleast as a child she could dream about living so freely. it was a possibility she could escape to. now, all she has is grand plans and ambition and greed to rival even the big shots in the Underworld. there was a never a time where ae-ra could live without care, but there was a time when she could atleast dream about it. // @znthcs​

another beat of silence as raven mulled through how to reply. raven never had the luxury of thinking that she was going to get to leave the temple, never got the chance to think about a life outside of it because the monks were never going to let her leave. she was going to grow old and die there, the daughter of a demon and there was nothing that she could have done about that. until she did. 

but this was never something that she could have planned. it was hard for her to find the words to capture how this made her feel, words and feelings, her two downfalls as a friend. a friend? was that what they were? raven didn’t have many of those.

“There’s a part of me I can’t get back.”

her lips were curled with dissatisfaction, a sharp gaze directed at the starry above their heads. she was laying on the ground, unbothered by the cold bite of the air. honesty was not something she was skilled at, nor something she cared to be skilled at. she’s built an entire reputation on lies and falsehoods, lived her life day by day weaving and creating tales to satisfy her own needs and purposes. but there was always a moment in the evening where honesty just poured out of her. unfortunate, really, because that usually meant she was half asleep with no coherent thought to her words. // @znthcs

there was a long moment of silence between them after that statement, raven letting her words soak into the earth around them. she had never been one for the touchy feely bits of having friends, but there was something that ae-ra needed to speak of and because of that, she would listen. it was the least that she could do. it was the same thing that she would offer gar, kari, the rest of her gaggle. she could extend the same to ae-ra. raven didn’t speak though, finding it best to let the person who needed to talk fill the air with their lungs. instead she did something that she almost never did, extending her hand and putting it on ae-ra’s forearm. a silent gesture that had never been shared between the two. 

“Pocket sized?” Hanging out with a librarian, she’d put in a token effort, but there was no way in hell she was lugging around one of those thick ass books everywhere she went just so she could look up every word she had trouble with. For starters, it’d mess with her skating, but most importantly, she had a reputation to protect. What kind of nerd brought a dictionary everywhere she went?

“In-com-pre-hens-ible… In-com-pre-hens-ible…incomprehensible,” There was no guarantee she’d remember the meaning of it a month from now, but she’d be damned if she forgot how to say it. You could fake knowing what a word meant as long as you stuck to a non-committal laugh or nod, but pronunciation there was no dodging. At least integrity was easy enough. Especially since now that she knew the meaning, she was pretty much certain she’d never have to use it herself.

 “Oh, I mean, you know, conception…you’re having a baby. And well, it’s a miss, so like, surprise, it’s a girl!” Apparently there was something worse than not knowing what a word was. Being absolutely certain you knew it and coming nowhere close to right. Reese was sure she’d be seeing this moment in her mind as she tried to fall asleep for years to come. Decades from now she’d be exhausted, winding down from her day, and just before she fell asleep, her brain would chime in with a, ‘Hey, remember that time when you fucked up that word?’

“So I guess that was a misconception, huh?”

“They have ones that can go directly to you phone now, don’t even have to show anyone that you’re carrying around a book.” Her tone was sarcastic, carrying the words like yesterday’s news. If anything, this girl should seriously consider just taking one course in literacy and maybe Raven would be able to get through a text conversation with her without grimacing. If she wasn’t already ignoring the girl by that point that would have caused it, the sure will power to continue to read those messages was just something that she did not possess.

As Reese repeated a word to herself, Raven mulled over how exactly she had gotten this far into life without knowing more complex words. Incomprehensible was pretty standard, it’s not as if she was reaching into the farthest depths of her vernacular and pulling words at random, this wasn’t all too complicated. But, she supposed, everyone does have their needs and wants in life. Much like Raven never wished to learn how to skateboard, Reese never wished to learn the English language.

Upon Reese explaining exactly why she thought that misconception had to do with pregnancy, Raven could see why she would have thought that and nodded in reply. It made sense, truly, that she had gotten that conclusion from the word. At least, through this interaction, Raven now knew that the girl at least knew how to use context clues when working with new words. That was a light at the end of a tunnel that Raven didn’t think that she would have to go down. And yet.