“I wish you wouldn’t have said that,” she said, sadly.
The breeze was just the closest facet of the greater whole; a system of systems, layered, built upon the other. All magic felt the same to her, Sirossa would’ve had to admit, if pressed, and she had been before. Covered with the dust and dirt of the road, and worse, the off-road game trails she had taken from Blackglass, otherwise known as the Town-Between. There you could find witches and wizards rubbing any number of things; elbows, magic tomes, coppers, or just a pint at one of the shadowy inns about the place.
A flick of her wrist, and her simple leather riding gloves were held off to the side, palm up. Just the right hand, it was all she needed to conduct the instruments into a single line of creative will and expression. It started with silence, with the very breeze and chilled wind that cut like tiny, icy, daggers just...stopped. The air stilled the very moment her hand moved upward, taking the energy of it, the very spells and enchantments that weaved within that wind, and slowed it to nothing.
“If I should decide to leave, I SHALL.”
Everything changed after she paused, after the word ‘leave’; she grew, feet, and feet more, towering near eleven feet in height, her voice deepening as the light of the evening around them drained away, the shadow around her and under her thickening so fast, so much, there was nothing BUT the giant red haired sorceress with eyes that shined like rubies in firelight. Eyes that shimmered, glittered, even as Sirossa whispered something past hearing to something, someone, past understanding—a whisper that returned in a chain reaction, like a scared voice in a hollow, haunted, vault.
“See me.”
It was an invitation. To look, to look away, was a choice that very little of Nora’s focused mind would make. No, Sirossa knew, with magicks such as the wild and untamed of a sorceress unshackled, the best choices, the only choices worth listening to, were the quieter ones that the mind made without active participation. Nora talked to that girl, not that girl. Nora liked her tea this way, not that.
Sometimes Nora would know why, sometimes she wouldn’t.
Such was choice.
When Sirossa saw Nora’s eyes snap shut, she knew the choice was made. Sirossa herself would only faintly be aware of what was shown; hard to say, it wasn’t a science, like wizards or witches wanted it to be. To a sorceress, it was an art. To a sorceress such as Sirossa, it was the echos of spells laid generations, one coming in magical arcs until it collided with another, sang the song of surreality and the natural world within, before cascading through her, little more than a lens with a choice to make of her own:
See me.
And so Nora chose. And so Nora saw.
Segments of memory, pressings of emotion, woven together for a clearer, rawer picture: The beaten orphan child, the servant girl, the nice conjurer’s child helper, and when the nice conjurer revealed himself to be anything but nice, the country estate with the gardens, and the bones, and the blood, and the basements, and the chains. The wizards and their tower, their training around the horrible white woods of theirs, the days of being driven to demonic possession, just so they could prove she was the liability they were convinced she was, and then when she stayed strong…the dagger, her hand locked to the table, her screams as she realized they were going to cut her finger off. The panic, the blinding white fear.
By the time Nora was back, she was saddled on the horse, the sorceress leading the horse on foot, towards the direction of her village, village walls peeking between gnarled witchwood trees in the distance. Her eyes down, her face heavy; sometimes when she awoke, between dreaming and awake, in that place between worlds, she still felt the cold sting of chains on her skin. Showing meant remembering. Remembering meant anger, pain, and sadness. The end of the path was always the same:
Why didn’t my parents want me? Did they even have the chance to?
Thoughts she kept locked, and hidden, forcing a little chuckle on her lips as the energy of the woman brightened, as she awakened, “Welcome back. Turn me in if you want. I don’t really care.”
She said it, as if she meant it.
D3AD ST4R,
Lilpeepz,
ShankySpice,
MaeB,
Ezekiel,
Deadline,
enmuni,
headintheclouds,
Tyler Night,
Riven Wight