Rideten, Five Year BeforeAislen parked down the street as the on-street parking was already occupied directly outside of Stella’s house and walked the distance. Even as she approached the hedge, she could hear voices chanting in harmony. The gardens were busy with women weaving through the rows of herbs and the rose beds taking clippings, dressed in flowing dresses and flower crowns. Aislen looked down at her black dress and felt immediately out of the place. White and the colours of nature were predominant amongst the other women.“Ah, there you are,” Stella greeted her warmly as she stepped onto the porch. She was weaving flower crowns and garlands with two other women, one of whom she recognized as the witch who had performed the sage cleansing the night before. “This is Juniper, and you will remember Daisy? This is Aislen.”Daisy smiled and examined the basket of flower crowns. “Which one…” she murmured. “Ah, this one for you, I think. Rue to purify, lavender to calm, yarrow for
Havermouth, Present Time **Trigger Warning - this chapter leads into a school shooting ** “It feels… wrong,” Guy said for about the fourth time. “Like, I shouldn’t be free, and wow, June, watch your speed. It feels like we’re going really fast. I’ve only been in the prison transport to and from hearings over the last five years, remember, and there isn’t a view out of them. I forgot what it looks like for things to whizz past you so fast.” “I’m doing five kilometers under the speed limit, Guy,” June told him with more patience that Aislen would have. “If I go any slower, the cars behind me are going to go nuts.” “I don’t know what I expected about being released,” he admitted, bracing his palms against the dash as if physically trying to slow the car. “Maybe something more formal than sign here, here’s your stuff, off you go.” “You have to check in with your parole officer tomorrow, and then start work, so I guess that will be more formal. But for now, let’s just get you home, and
Havermouth, Five Years BeforeThe OBGYN doctor’s surgery was inside of a residential house that had been converted in an effort to appear welcoming and homely for its patients. Aislen, however, felt anything but welcome or at home. She sat uncomfortably in the waiting room, hiding behind a magazine.It was Aislen’s third visit, and she had decided that the feeling that she was in the wrong place was going to persist throughout her pregnancy. The adoption agency had been recommended to her through the coven, and the OBYGYN was connected to the agency. She knew that it wasn’t the surgery’s fault that she felt like she did - they were, in fact, very nice to her – it was her own relationship to her pregnancy that was to blame, and her obsession with what the other patients waiting to be seen made of the black clad and very obviously alone teenager amongst them.She could use her telepathy to find out – she was beginning to develop some control, both in choosing to hear, and, more often, n
Havermouth, Present Time “You’re not going out there!” The receptionist exclaimed in horror, the phone at her ear. “Yes! Yes! Havermouth High School. There’s a shooter. We heard gunshot!” “He’s going for the library,” Aislen said with absolute certainty. “It’s raining. The library will be jammed packed, and there will be a bottle nose at the rear door if they try to flee…” She saw it so clearly, as she had in the library on a similar rainy day five years before. “They’re sitting ducks.” She ran out of the office and into the rain, along the walkways towards the library building, the school grounds so familiar and yet with small changes – a new mural on a wall, different posters on another, fresh paint on the outside tables near the grassy hill where the Triquetra, the jocks and the cheerleaders had liked to sit… There was a boy on the ground in front of her, trying to drag himself off the pavement, a trail of blood showing his passage. “Help!” He was wide eyed and panicked. “Help m
Havermouth, Four and a Half Years Before** Trigger warning – this chapter features pregnancy loss. **In the quiet, Aislen could hear the small settling movement of the house, the draft where old joins met imperfectly, the creak of boards, and the groan of joists. There was the buzz of the refrigerator in the kitchen, and the drip of water into the sink, the tick of a small insect body hitting glass as a blowfly trapped indoors sought freedom.She breathed in and released the breath slowly, trying to settle into the peaceful oblivion beyond the small sounds and movements. Daisy sat opposite to her, and Aislen imagined that she could feel the air warmed by body heat, that she could feel the shift in the air from Daisy’s breath.She focused on the bubble around herself and that around Daisy, holding both in place as she stretched her hands out to meet Daisy’s. The bubbles disappeared – they didn’t burst, but rather evaporated as if they had never been there in the first place, the mome
Havermouth, Present Time“Aislen,” Talen murmured into her ear. “It’s time to wake up little demon.”Aislen fought through the darkness. There was a roar of mental sound, and she hastily repaired the bubbles until there was quiet again. The effort and the sharp pain in her head it cause pushed her back into the darkness... Daddy... Talen.. She remembered and tried to surface again. F-k she hurt… Ah, yes, the police had shot her. Oh god. Was she dead? No, Talen was there…“She’s coming around,” the woman’s voice was vaguely familiar.“Judith,” Aislen tried to say, but realized there was something in her mouth. She panicked, her eyes flicking open and then closing against the painful glare and her hands lifting to her mouth. Talen took her hand, holding it gently in his – she knew it was him because his touch came without mental noise – preventing her from pulling at the thing that gagged her. Intubated, she told herself, she’d seen it often enough on TV.“It’s alright, sweetie,” the nu
Havermouth, Four and a Half Years BeforeAt least, Aislen thought as she dressed, she did not need to ask herself what she would wear to the funeral, most of her clothing was in the right color. She dressed slowly staring in the mirror at the darker patch on the floor behind her.Bianca, Helena and Christine had all pitched in to clean up from the miscarriage, scrubbing the blood from the wood and remaking the bed in clean linens so that by the time she returned from her overnight stay in hospital, the stain was the only evidence of what had happened. She had been acclimating to the patch on the floorboards in the weeks since, gradually hardening her heart until she could look at it without crying.The little cardboard box of ashes sat on the bedside table, the only other remnant of the little life that she had never wanted to grow, that she had intended to give to someone else… You would think that she would feel relieved not to have to continue with the pregnancy, she thought as she
Havermouth, Present Time“Keep an eye on the door,” Heath said to Cameron as Talen reached into his pocket and took out a pocketknife, flicking open the blade. Cameron stepped over to the doorway, his gaze switching between the little window and Talen, his fascination evident on his face.“That’s a little generic and probably not too sanitary,” Rhett commented on the pocketknife.“What did you expect?” Heath snorted. “One of those fancy pointed rings that your employees like to play with?”“Well, yeah, actually,” Rhett retorted. “I sort of thought that was the origin of the design, or that maybe he’d use his teeth, not a pocketknife which he could have used for god knows what before.”Talen flicked him an amused glance. “Like werewolves, vampires are pretty resilient to germs,” he replied. “And I only wear one piece of jewellery,” he gestured to his neck where the key to Aislen’s collar hung on the chain.She automatically reached for her neck, with a panicked thought that the nurses