Or:
Magick Is A Lonely Business
There was no doubt about it: she was a witch. It was present in everything she wore, from her Lycra halter top with the star made from rhinestones that stopped just before her bellybutton, the one with the polyester cross-stitching and the 300 thread count; to her lime green hip-hugger pants and a flowered belt with a shiny, shiny buckle and strappy sandals which had inexplicable big clunky heels. Usually bad attire for walking anywhere less level than a mall. But in the lowland swamp that was Henteko, it was just dumb.
Her hair was unusual too; it gave the appearance of being long and short at the same time, and of being curly and straight at odd intervals. Every angle she turned her head made it change color, sometimes it was blonde, sometimes blue, and sometimes red with black highlights. It was like watching a fractal, only much less entertaining. Her nails must have been at least three inches long, though her wrists gave the impression of being so slender they would snap under any duress. Her eyes were either purple or green or blue, but her lashes were so ridiculously long that it made little difference. She walked, swaying her slender yet curvy hips a bit more than necessary, one would think. At the edge of the town, she stopped to check her reflection in a nearby stagnant pool, giving her reflection a little kiss. If she could list any of her faults, it would be that she was too loyal, too perfect, and too smart, funny, wise, beautifulwittyfunstrong-
And here it was. Hen-taykow. She began to talk to herself, purely for expositional purposes, though as fodder to move the story along, it didn’t do very well.
“Gee, that primeminister of magic was so helpful, I’m getting my powers awfully quickly for a new witch.” She cooed at no one in particular. “I can’t believe they let me transfer here from Hogworts, seeing as I was in my eight year and all. I’ll be sorry to leave, all the boys were so gaga over me and Hermine was asking me for help on her homework I hope that everyone here like me cause if they don’t I’ll just kill myself and there better be cute boys otherswise I’ll have to commute.”(Author’s note: MY SOUL HURTS!)
She continued swaying into the township. No one in town knew what was going to hit it. She was going to shake things up and out. She was going to make tons of new friends and sidekicks and, heaven forbid, an arch nemesis or two. She didn’t see the school, even from the hill, which was really only the height of a school bus. However, she did see a bar, of sorts, that she could probably get Faerywyne or honey mead or one of a thousand others that Role-players drink. She sashayed down the hill, though it was not readily apparent how she did so without breaking a heel. She gave no thought to why the town looked deserted, the temperature of 103° in the shade may have had something to do with it, though she gave not a drop of sweat.
She flung open the door and stepped into an entirely different atmosphere. The bar was dark, much darker than bars were supposed to be. The furniture was flung about the room in no particular pattern, and there were only three people in the bar. They were hunched over an upended table and weren’t what you would normally consider bar patrons. There was a boy of medium height and build, about thirteen or so, with green eyes when he turned to look at her, and skin that was a golden tan color. His hair was near-typical anime hair; it looked like a lemon had exploded in the freezer. There was a girl she had almost mistaken for a boy, but then she had noticed the pink and blue sari she was wearing. She turned as well, and her small body gave an air of fragility. Slightly paler than her companion, her silver hair projected short spikes pointing forward, the other anime hair template. Her eyes were dark blue and carried a look of mistrust in them, in contrast to his look of bald confusion.
The girl struck what she thought would be an impressive pose and made to speak, when the third figure in the middle made a move. They stood up, and they were considerably taller than the other two. The person’s hair was the same pitch black as their clothes, making sexual discernment impossible. Which was slightly scary in itself. But it was when they turned around that the girl really regretted coming in here. The person was a woman, though it seemed strangely tall for a woman, and that she could only tell by a slightly darker shadow on her chest. Her skin was a hellish white, but her eyes, they were the things that tied the whole mephitic ensemble together. They were black and liquid, that was all she could tell until her senses returned. They somehow managed to be a shade blacker than the other two, a strange, tenebrous pair.
Suddenly she was sinking in a primordial sea, a part of things greater and more terrible than herself, unable to scream or gather her matter together enough to pound at the walls of her imprisoning reality. The veil of madness had been torn and could not be repaired, patched, or hemmed. Reality washed up and down like the tide, and madmen giggled in grottos far past imaginable time. Great and elder gods, existing without purpose or sanity, played flutes of time and shadow to the rhythm of daemon assemblage. Dimensions heaved, and suddenly she found her feet firmly planted back in the shores of the golden land, once again to suckle the sweet nectars of existence. That was odd, she thought. Did we just change narratives?
“…help you?”
The girl snapped her head back to her body and looked back at them. The woman wasn’t nearly so threatening now, one eyebrows cocked and a look of mild distaste on her face. The children no longer looker like pillars in a corridor that only went one way, and she noticed with some excitement that they had tails. Maybe they were Neko! She took and exited breath and let all her thought out in a singular stream. The trio allowed this to wash over them like a river of molten wind. Once she was done the woman asked to again explain, and talk at the normal speed.
“OMG! OMG!”
A look passed between the others.
“Oh, emji?” the girl queried.
“Omigawd, like, omigawd, so, this morning, iwaslike, atmymom’s hairdresser, and, like, I went to bed and when I woke up I was, like a student at a magical university and like, I transferred to hogwarts, but then the, um, master magician, or whatever, like, told me to come here to learn to be a sorceress. Andiwasalllikedude,andtheywerelike,dude,andiwasallDUDE!”
Silence filled the bar like a standup club that has just been visited by Joe Piscopo with a massive head wound. Far away, a dog barked. Which was odd, because there were no dogs in Henteko. The girl, who had been able to follow most of that, decided to take a crack at deciphering it for the others.
“So…you’re here to learn to be a witch?”
The girl blinked densely.
“No I am a witch! I wanna become a sorceress!”
The girl shot a confused look at the woman, who was staring at the newcomer as if she had a horn growing out of her head, and another one growing out of her ass.
“Uhh.” She said.
“Umm.” The boy added usefully.
“Okay, maybe introductions first?” the girl said optimistically. “What’s your name?” (A.N.: don’t, you’ll regret it!)
The girl beamed and tugged down the hem of her top a little more, making the others cringe.
“My title is Grand Mage Cecelia Aurelia Moonwindigo!”
The woman looked as if she had swallowed something still alive and kicking. The boy covered his face with his hands. The girl put up a brave front, but tears of exertion formed in the corners of her eyes. The boy gave a wet cough and extended his hand.
“Jikiarashi Cade”
The girl seemed to relax visibly when he introduced himself, blinking her eyes rapidly.
“Kiba Celes.”
The girl squealed and both children flinched again. She put her hand palm down in Cade’s.
“Ashanti.”
Cade furrowed his brow for a moment, then took his hand away, deflating her somewhat. But she kept on with her positive chi. She turned and beamed radiantly at the third party member. The children look up at the woman expectantly, and with an air of resignation, she spoke one word.
“Jen.”
The girl blinked. Jen? Just one word? Wasn’t that what male RPGer’s usually named their characters? Was she sure that this was a woman? She was awfully tall, and the deep voice didn’t help. Also, her hands were fairly repellent. They resembled lopsided squid, clenching and unclenching involuntarily. Still, her instincts told her to plough on, and plough on she did.
“-and then I got pregnant by him but then the dark one fed me a potion to get rid of it and I’m just too beautiful and the other day Draco told me he loved me and then he stabbed me with a dagger why, why would he do that for our love is pure as a mountain stream, and our hot, passionate lovemaking is-”
“”Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Jen said. “Would you excuse us for just a moment?” Out of sorts from being interrupted, the girl caught her breath and nodded. The other three immediately went into a huddle.
“{What the hell do we do, Jen? She’s killing me!}” Cade hissed.
“{I don’t know, I don’t know! I thought she was sent by outside wizards to kill us, but maybe she has another plan in mind.}” Jen wet her lips. “{The way she talks is the most mutilated form of English I’ve ever heard. It’s actually physically painful to hear. I think the bastards are trying to pull a harmful sensation hit on us.}”
“{Well I just…harmful sensation?}” Celes looked questioningly at Jen. She sighed.
“{Like Ringu?}”
“{Oh.}” She said, not quite mollified.
“Hell-oooo? I was talking?” the girl said in a nasal tone.
“Well, um, Cecelia-”
“Oh, you can call me Sakura, it means cherry in Japanese.”
For the first time in three days, Jen felt like just walking off into the swamp and leaving the townsfolk to sort out their own damn problems. But where would that leave the children? She sighed and shook her head.
“You are aware that you are in Japan, aren’t you?” she asked, peering at her through hooded eyes. The girl scrunched up her nose and Jen was reminded of raccoon bears, just before they attack. Hmm, she hadn’t had good Tanuki in a long time. The large testicles were somewhat daunting. The girl interrupted Jen’s distracted reverie.
“So, um, like, where’s the magical school?” these were not words Jen was used to hearing.
“…What?”
“You know, like, the magical college where I can be journeymen witch!”
Complete silence met this statement.
“A school?”
“Of magic?”
“In HENTEKO?” Jen said incredulously. The girl giggled.
“I know, I’m a little young to be a journeyman-”
“I’LL say!” Jen exclaimed. The girl frowned and went on.
“But the prime minister of magic told me I was the most powerful witch he’d ever seen, and that I was to become a sorceress in no time at all.”
Jen’s patience was nearly out, and though she dictated this in a calm voice, she was reaching for her sword.
“Okay, one, sorcerers are born in the flesh, you can’t learn to be one, and two, journeyman witch? I’ve been doing magic for years and I’ve never heard that term!”
“Well, obviously your just not in the know.” She said haughtily. She turned and walked away just in time for the chair Jen threw to miss her and crash out one of the windows.
“Jen!” the children rebuked her. She sighed and ran a hand through her hair.
“Come on, I’ll take you two home.”
By that time twilight had fallen, and the temperature had fallen to a cool 97°. She ushered the children into their separate houses and looked longingly at her house on the horizon. How easy it would be to put on “Station to station” and just sink into a coma. But she had to report to the mayor, Kassuru, or as everyone called him, Thirsty. The incumbent and slightly corpulent head of Henteko lived like any of them, in a thatched clay house with a small crematorium in the back. It helped him to connect with his community. That and the three charges for manslaughter. Jen had a theory about the town, anyone with too few outstanding warrants was seen as too “normie” for the town and anyone with too many was too crazy to coexist peacefully. She didn’t know exactly where she stood on that scale, it was hard to look past the mob with torches that met her at her house every spring. Of the few people she had an open dialogue in Henteko, the mayor was one of them, and it was a tenuous peace betwixt them.
After a lengthy battle with two farmers from the neighboring town, she had woken up in what she had at first thought to be an exploding cattle testing ground. It was, as it turned out, the mayor’s bar and the only bar in Henteko. He had inherited it from the previous mayor, and it had looked pretty bad before Jen’s fighting and then drinking spree. But at least it had most of its lumber in the same place. That was what he would scream at her through a dislocated jaw and a few loose teeth. Maybe. He may have been talking about how much he liked eating pork for all Jen knew, it was kind of muffled though the bandages. She just got the feeling he was upset about the whole mess when he was brandishing the sign like a cudgel and trying to kill her. But, water under the bridge.
And when she finally arrived at his house on the outskirts of town, water everywhere. He was watering, but not keeping his mind on his business, rather on the window of a house three houses down.
“Bindi know you watch her like this?” she asked casually, and he scrambled awkwardly to face her. Bindi was one of the town’s other witches, with fiery red hair and an ass that refused to quit.
“Jen, do you have to be so crude about it?” he muttered, red-faced and straightening his pants for some reason she didn’t care to fathom. Yes she did. The mayor of the town was built like a fleshy snowball, gaining mass as it rolled downhill-
“oh, that’s enough!” he shrieked, causing her to end her crucial narrative. “Why do you always do this when you come over? You can’t just get to the point and tell me something? You always have to undermine me?” said the fleshy snowball, shiny with his own exertion. He stopped and glared at her, and she smiled precociously back. Life just wouldn’t be the same without this little routine, which for her was as old as the hills.
Shaking his head in defeat, her waved in the vague direction of a chair, which she immediately turned around and set upon, wrapping her arms around the back. He wearily lowered himself into an old recliner that had seen better days, most of them inside. It was almost impossible for anyone to do anything with Jen until after a certain interlude of insult/offense. Everyone had become used to it by now, but she still had ways of picking at cracks in your armor. After sinking to a comfortable level, he managed to get to
“How’s the bar?”
She gave him a wicked glance and popped open one of the cans of beers lying around.
“{Not too bad.}” She gave a swig and settled back, her face going thoughtful
“{Although there was one little setback.}” He sighed and covered his face.
“{Fire?}”
“{No.}”
“{Water?}”
“{No.}”
“{The walking dead?}”
She considered for a moment.
“{Not today.}” She decided. He sighed.
“{What then?}”
She made a face and swirled the contents of the can.
“{A little hard to describe. She says she’s a witch. She’s a newcomer.}”
He drew up taller at that. More people made it into Henteko than left it by the landward side. It was the way it had maintained its solitude and…relative peace. But the occasional wizard would crop up, looking for a deceased predecessor, out on a hit, or sent there out of spite from their rival town. They were usually dealt with quickly, and violently. But sometimes, perhaps out of sadism, a high-ranking wizard would tell an irritating subordinate about a mystic land where real wizards proved themselves. It was a horrible lie, of course. The most it usually earned them was a quick burial in a shallow grave dusted with quicklime. But every so often, through no fault of their own, one would escape and spread the myth further.
It wasn’t as if it troubled Jen, killing kids whose only crime was not knowing better, it was the fact that someone else expected them to take care of their problem. She hated being used, when she had killing of her own to do. The mayor crumpled his can and with a bored look on his face, he stood up.
“{You finished with the exposition?}” he asked wearily. She narrowed her eyes and sat up.
“{She started talking, and it escalated to the point to where I threw a chair at her.}”
“{…And?}”
“{It missed.}”
“Ah.” He lay back in the chair again. “This may not matter in a day or two, but what was her name?”
“Cecelia Aurelia Moonwindigo!” she exclaimed triumphantly, seemingly out of nowhere. The other two both gave nasty starts. The mayor tumbled out of his chair, backwards, and Jen spit out the beer in her mouth, choking. The smell that had nearly preceded her, the reek of designer-imposter perfume, was some part of their shock. Once they had both recovered enough to stand up, the mayor having to give Jen a few whacks on the back, they faced her with awe. No one had managed to sneak up on either of them for a while, not since the bone saw incident. Jen was hard pressed to see how she could have done it, seeing as how she had acquired quite a goodly amount of metallic jewelry since they last met.
The mayor, turned, astonished, to Jen.
"{I thought you killed her!}" he screamed.
"{I...never got around to it.}" she muttered uncomfortably.
"{You usually kill them! Why not this time?!}" that vein in his forehead was standing out, Jen noted. Best to diffuse this situation before it got ugly. She picked up a shovel and with a loud "pang!" hit him in the head with it. He staggered forward slightly, and his breathing slowed. He straightened up again and wiped his forehead.
"{Thank you.}" he said. “{I don't know what got into me.}"
"{Possibly her.}" Jen nodded to Bindi, who was walking up closing her bathrobe, her huge mass of red hair flowed out in waves and trailed on the ground behind her, gathering quite a few burrs. Jen noticed Aki the bread maker coming out of her cottage behind her, and wondered if the mayor knew what they had been doing there. It was a pathetic triangle, between him, Bindi, and whomever Bindi was with at the moment. Something she just kept out of, for the sake of sleeping ever again. The mayor muttered something, red-faced, and Jen nodded. She picked up a horse blanket hanging on a loom nearby and handed it to Bindi.
“{Bindi, close up shop.}” She muttered sotto voce to her, and Bindi looked down, puzzled. Her only bathrobe was made for a woman less voluptuous than she, and apparently one three feet tall. It left nearly nothing to the imagination, especially on Bindi who never could seem to close it all the way.
“{Oh, all right, Jen, I’m covering up, stop it!}” she snapped pettishly. “{It’s not as if I’m making fun of Thirsty!}”
“ hey, u guys did you orget about me?” (A.N.: kill me now, I’ll give you the knife!) someone in their vicinity whined, and it was a few seconds before they regained voluntary muscle control. The mayor shook his head like a diver coming up from the water, and Bindi swayed dangerously on the spot. Only Jen stood still, but inside, she screamed and screamed.
Three pairs of eyes turned to look at the fourth, now inexplicably purple with silver pupils. Bindi responded, because, the mayor’s mouth went surprisingly dry.
“And what is it you were saying, dearie?” she cooed. Everyone was dearie to Bindi, and she had a voice that could make butter melt out of a refrigerator. The girl chose to see it as effrontery.
“nobody here thinks I can do anything because I’m just a kid, but I’m not kid anymore and I can mary who I want!” the statement came out of left field and caught Bindi on the chin, making her stagger.
Thirsty took it upon himself to chose an acceptable scapegoat.
“{Dumbass, what did you tell her?}” he snarled at Jen, and Bindi shook her head and coughed.
“I…don…thin…it…as…her…” she managed to get out, and looked as if she was in desperate need of some water.
“{Bindi, Thirsty, I swear to god I haven’t met this bitch before today!}” Jen thundered, and the girl stomped her foot.
“and I should be aloud to practise magick where I want,” she exclaimed, and everyone caught the k. Jen cleared her throat, and they all went into a huddle.
“{I swear to god, never before today!}”
“{Mighty Hanuman! My ears!}”
“{She said Magick, right? I mean, I’m not insane, am I}?”
“{No, you’re not insane, just stupid. I told you she was trouble, she’s a spellkaster!}”
Spellkasters were notorious in the tri-town area for their endless alternate spellings, and their ability to show up every weekend a planned event was going on and whine that they had permits to celebrate midsummer’s dawn, or shit like that. Then when mages were called to interfere, and they always had to be, they people would try spellkasting, despite repeated statement that they could never harm anyone with magic. Usually it got out of hand, and the local witches were called upon for assistance, something they were loathed to do. They hated being told what to do, and hated wizards as well. It never really worked out. Bindi had gotten a pretty good shiner when one of the damn peaceniks had thrown a votive candle in a poor diversion tactic. Jen had cut him down with all due force, and a stadium seat. Usually, when they showed up, it was best to ignore them and covertly move to another picnic table. But when they showed up on home territory, all bets were off. Henteko, while not inaccessible, was pretty far off the main road, and was over two-thirds swamp. Why anyone would want to live there was beyond even the citizens. Anyone else, that is.
Yet, still, Bindi thought it was good to be hospitable to the occasional traveler.
“{Come on, what could it hurt?}” Bindi murmured in Thirsty’s ear, and Jen knew all was lost. He got that deer-in-the-headlights looked and managed a “Why not?” Jen sighed.
“{Look, if you’re going to let her live here, just keep her away from the borderlands.}” she told him irritably.
“Why?” They replied in unison. She raised her eyebrows at them.
“Do I really have to say it?” she asked. They came up from their huddle and found the girl humming tunelessly to some flowers, which seemed to be wilting rapidly. Thirsty cleared his throat.
“It’s done.” He announced in his mayor voice. She turned quickly, and Jen was troubled to see her eyes were now gold and her hair blindingly blonde.
“d0es that meen I can stay?” she cried. The pair nodded, Thirsty with tears in the corners of his eyes. Only Jen remained unmoving, standing to the side like a malevolent shadow.
“Kewl!” she warbled.
There was no moon that night, and the wind sobbed in the trees.
