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Emily holds her at arm’s length, “You don’t have to be sorry for anything! It’s okay to be scared.”
Tears streaming down her face, Sam asks, “Was it all a dream?”
Emily looks at her friend’s battered face and wishes all of it had been just a dream, “The last little bit, yeah. Just now.”
“He’s gone now, right? Like for real?”
“Oh, honey. Yes,” Emily pulls Sam back into a warm embrace, “Yes, he’s gone for real now.”
They hold the hug for a long moment, while Sam pulls herself back together as much as she can. As her tears slow and she feels more grounded in reality, Sam pulls back and looks around the room, “Where is everyone?”
Emily shrugs her shoulders, “Who knows?”
Sam motions toward Callie and Raven’s empty spots, “Well, I guess we don’t know where those two are but I think we can confidently say we know what they are doing.”
Emily laughs, “Sucking face, I’m sure.”
Sam turns her body and sits next to Emily, laying her head on Emily’s shoulder, “Do they really think they’re being smooth? Because they are straight up, starry-eyed, in love.”
Emily gasps delightedly, “Do you think they’ll let us all be in their wedding someday?”
Sam scrunches up her face, “Only if I can wear pants.”
Emily replies, “It’s going to be a lesbian wedding. I think pants are required.”
Sam bursts into laughter and falls over onto her side on the floor.
Once she has composed herself, she sits up and puts her arm around Emily as she chides, “That is what we call stereotypes, Emily, dearest love of my life.”
Emily nods with a smile, “Noted. I’ll do better.”
The friends lean into each other and have finally started to truly relax when they hear muffled yelling from outside. Exchanging a look, they stand and walk to the window. Running across the lawn are Callie and Raven holding hands and screaming up at the window. Emily and Sam strain to hear their friends’ words, but then they see it.
Coming around the corner of the house is his obnoxious red car. It is throwing mud and grass behind it as it plows toward the house.
What had started as a very focused practice for Willow, has now devolved into a struggle to stay on track. She was elbows deep into her grandmother’s recorded spell work when her sister snuck giggling behind her with the girl of her dreams. Willow knew they were there before they were even there, but she pretended not to notice. Why take that moment away from them? Someday, years from now, it might just be the moment they remember as when they fell in love.
A smile spreads across Willow’s face as she thinks about her sister being so genuinely happy and authentic to who she is. Willow has known this moment was coming and is so excited to watch it finally unfold. She knows her sister to be one of the most pure and genuine people on the planet. Raven is good, through and through.
Callie makes Willow feel the same way she feels about her sister and their other friends. She is good inside. Willow has a way of feeling these kinds of things in people. Not as strong of a gift as Raven’s version, but enough to know it’s reliable. Their circle may be small, but it is all they need in the world. Of this Willow is sure and Callie is now a part of it too. They are all forever bound together by the events of the last few days and she is certain that is the way she wants it anyway. She would have liked it to all come together under better circumstances, but she’ll take it however they got here.
They’ve always been a close group, as they added members over time. Willow and Raven have always been a package deal, from the moment of Raven’s birth before Willow was even old enough to register a memory. A few years later, they added Emily during preschool play dates. A couple years after that Sam fell into the fold after a very dramatic summer camp incident involving a leaking canoe and a broken playdough sculpture. Callie has had the most dramatic entrance yet to date, but that will cement her place in their little cobbled together family even more. Without a doubt, she is already a part of it all and Raven’s relationship with her will only strengthen that. It feels like this is all how it was supposed to end up, abusive dead ex-boyfriend and all. Even with the stress she has felt today, this gives Willow some peace of mind.
The peace of mind is warm and comforting but doesn’t quite cover up the tiny bit of intuition telling her this isn’t all over yet. She is trying so hard to ignore it, but there it is in her mind, burning a hole in her blanket of comfort.
Taking a deep breath, Willow tries her best to douse its growing flames. As she is trying to find her center, she hears yelling from outside. Opening her eyes, she looks out the kitchen window to see Callie and Raven sprinting toward the house hand in hand. Willow furrows her brows and leans closer to the window as if her intense visual focus will help her hear them better.
As she stands to move closer to the window, a mechanical roar covers up the yells of her would-be saviors and a set of bright headlights comes around the corner of the house. It turns directly toward the window she is walking toward and speeds up. Willow’s eyes grow large in her petite face and she turns to run in the exact same moment that the car slams into the kitchen wall.
The flames of fear in Willow’s head burn into a raging inferno just as her whole world goes black.
Nessa’s mind swirls with incoherent darkness. Tendrils of fear and hate tether themselves to her and try to hold her down. The intensity of casting a curse has invaded her dreams.
The burden that curse casting places on the soul is one Nessa knows exists, but that she has never experienced. She grew up seeing the stress lines and dark circles permanently etched into her mother’s face, but never fully understood what put them there. She knew respect and reverence were due to the woman that sheltered and protected her from the world’s evils but never gave it to the full level she now understands it was owed. Casting a curse herself is a feeling of having years of her life sucked away as if she is strapped down in the pit of despair with the Six-Fingered Man. It is a deafening roar in her consciousness, reminding her that what she has done can never be undone, even in her dreams, but then…
A thunderous crash causes the dream tethers to go slack and Nessa sits upright in her bed. She is, all at once, alert and awake. The whole house is shaking with the sudden impact and Nessa registers the screams of the young women in the home. Nessa rushes to spring from her bed and race down the stairs, but her bones feel brittle and her muscles ache. She struggles to sit upright and make her way to the stairs. Finally, she reaches the first step and isn’t sure she has the strength to get down them, but knows she must. When she finally reaches the bottom she is fully prepared for so many things, but not what she encounters.
Embedded in her kitchen is a bright red car, resting and revving its engine right where the dining room table would normally be. Her mouth falls open and she stares at the gaping hole torn into the side of her home. The home her mother was raised in, that Nessa herself was raised in, and that she raised her own daughters in. Her heart breaks a little at the sight. This house is full of so many memories and has survived so many decades until today.
