The Warp and The Weft

Chapter Eight: Acrophobia - Angelique

These people are fucking insane Ange thought standing outside Philip's room, sounds of movement and the smell of magic in the air.

"You sure we can leave sleeping beauty?" Ange asks her closest friend, leaning against the wall and tapping her fingers.

"I mean," She waved her hand in the passed-out human's direction "Can you see anything?"

She closed her eyes and opened her mind, something she's been able to do for as long as she can remember.

She saw glimpses of faces, streets, bright lights, clouds, and uncertainty. 

"I don't see anything, but you know that does not mean nothing will happen." She said, the sounds of movement stopping from inside the room.

The door swung open, and Philip and Margaret stepped out, hair slightly dishevelled with Philip's ears bright pink.

"Pip, you look like a kicked puppy," Rebecca said, giving her brother a once over "I'm quite used to hearing shit I'm not meant to."

"Yeah, sure, let's just go." He replied walking quickly towards the elevator. 

Margaret, whose dignity remained unaltered, stayed behind with the girls as the sound of Philip calling the car several times in rapid succession echoed off the stone floors.

"It's been a while, Ange," She said, interlocking their arms "How are you?"

"Oh, the usual," She flourished her hand through the air "All play, no work, that kind of thing."

"I'm sure your mum is thrilled over you using your Second Sight to get ahead of all your uni work months before it's given," Margaret said in a slight whisper.

"Oh, she couldn't care less," The pair walked together towards the opening doors of the elevator with Rebecca silently following behind, content to listen "We don't talk much these days, I spent summer here instead of home."

Ange pursed her lips in thought, her mother and the rest of the family had never approved of how she lived, a carefree lifestyle of art during the day and parties at night.

"Still not seeing eye to eye with them yet?" Margaret looked sympathetic, placing her other hand on Ange's arm "I'm sorry, I'm sure they'll come around."

"And if they don't that's their loss," Rebecca added taking Ange's other arm.

Ange lifted her chin slightly, her family had always looked at her sideways. Her father was a rather unremarkable young Witch from Maharastra in southwest India, who managed to seduce the eldest daughter to the matriarch of the ancient Witch De Brigue family while on a college exchange trip to the University of Reims.

The two quickly fell in love, both only being a year older than Ange's twenty-one, and soon discovered Angelique's existence, totally unplanned but not unwanted. As they began to plan a wedding for early 2010, they got a second surprise inside one of their bodies. A tumour in his pancreas. They found it in the winter of late 2009 and he was gone before spring could roll to summer.

Now here she was, a bastard half-Marathi girl growing up in France, with a skin tone only slightly lighter than her dead father's, being raised in a family whose traditions dictate that she one day become its head. Of course, this didn't sit well with the remainder of the family who all began to vie for positions ahead of her mother in succession for the family.

Despite all this, her grandmother and the head of the family loved her dearly with Angelique being her favourite grandchild out of a dozen. She made sure to solidify her eldest daughter's claim to take her place and to secure Angelique's future through the means of a considerable trust fund completely inaccessible by anyone else in the family.