𝒜𝒻𝓉𝑒𝓇𝓂𝒶𝓉𝒽 | 𝒟.𝑀.

32 | ﴾ Hell's Snow ﴿

Hilda's bachelorette was scheduled for Thursday night, and I came home early from work feeling exhausted and entirely prepared to nap before hand. I hadn't really partied since Draco and I had started the next phase of our lives after the war ended, and I wanted to let loose. 

Earlier in the day I had been confronted by Theodore with a highly incriminating photograph, showing my husband holding a beautiful blond girl in his lap at some dicey nightclub. He was laughing and her arm was around his neck, her other hand on his chest. I had decided not to panic and confront him at a later date when I'd had a chance to calm down more. As a result I was really looking forward to seeing Hilda, who knew how to have a good time by an absolute mile.

It was only five but I bathed and got in a nightgown, and sat brushing out my lavender hair. I would try to squeeze in two hours at least before meeting them at the designated ritzy hotel she had given me as an address. While I sat before my antique make up stand I heard a note slide under the door again, swooshing against the wooden grains of my flooring. Draco knocked on the door eagerly but I ignored it, and eventually I heard his shoes retreat down the hallway. 

I bent to pick up the fancy parchment with his signature spidery cursive in the center, reading simply: We need to talk before you leave. It's critical. - D.M.

I rolled my eyes and tossed it on the table, then climbed into my fluffy bed and drew my curtains across wandlessly. I fell deep into a slumber of blackness, only to slowly come to in the dreaded Realm of Moons. I was standing up to my knees in gently glowing ferns, and the air was filled with bright little spores. The sounds of woodland creatures that I didn't recognize echoed ominously around me in the bizarre gravitational atmosphere. My hair was floating in a wondrous swirl that only served to partially blind me as it moved without my control. 

I patted my dress in futility, fully aware that Ascelin never allowed me to bring a wand. I breathed in a full and steady breath and closed my eyes; I would not permit her to panic me.

"You have angered me, Edana," her disapproving, throaty voice called, and when I opened my eyes again she was there before me, towering unbelievably tall with her nasty fluorescent vision. 

I crossed my arms and it nearly made me dizzy as my appendages blurred before me in a strange motion, "I 'ave agreed to entertain improving my knowledge of your Realm. What more do you want from me?"

She smiled at me evilly, and I felt a frigid change in the atmosphere with her impatience, "I have told you to remove the servant boy. You have relapsed." 

"Relapsed?" I scoffed in offence at the notion. My voice echoed in a million watery layers as I shouted. "Draco is my 'usband."

She drifted straight towards me before I could even blink, and then she was glaring down into my face. It was vividly strange, like looking into a mirror version of myself with only minor differences. I refused to lean backwards as the heat from her purple flames threatened me, and I sucked in defiant breaths to calm myself and hold my brave stance. Her arms kept morphing into plum colored feathers, releasing a reeling, crawling noise that drew my gaze and reminded me of the legs on a centipede. "There is a more superior mate for your future intentions. You have received my counsel on this, and yet you test my benevolence with your insolence. I have chosen you for ascension, do not continue to offend me."

I lit my own flames on my hands, and her eyes brightened with a maniacal glee. I ignored her evident delight with my blossoming outrage, "You will never force me to leave 'im. Dat, you cannot 'ave."

She turned with a burning grin on her beautiful face, holding her eyes on mine for way too long before she was practically gliding away with her long black train trailing behind her through the woods. Above in the sky the multiple, massive planets that hung close the Thermosphere drew my eyes upwards in awe of their hues as I climbed through the underbrush after her. I could hear her cackling ahead of me, and what sounded like a whale below the water called out somewhere on the horizon. I fought through the branches that did not seem to impede her movement whatsoever as I slowly lost her ahead.