Farah Dowling WRITOBER 2O22

It's not me. It's you [WE SEE WHAT WE WANT #1]

Farah Dowling was worried. Her magic hadn't gone rogue since she was a child, and nothing could explain why these strange... phenomena were happening right now.

Alfea was at peace. Rosalind was gone, the Burned Ones menace eradicated.

She was relatively happy, living her normal life, teaching classes, spending her weekends with tea and some good books, having occasional night caps with Saul and Ben.

And then there were the visions. Every so often, when she was near you, third year light fairy and her current assistant, she would have an hallucination. They only lasted a few seconds, but having a vivid daydream (too vivid to be anything less than magical) of her best pupil wordlessly making her sexual advances was proving exhausting. The fact that said pupil was also one of the prettiest girl she had ever laid eyes on and someone she had grown to care for wasn't helping either.

The first time it happened she had thought she had imagined it; the second time she had started to worry, and by the third she had been positively terrified. She had looked at you, horrified and ashamed, but you were peacefully carring out your assistant duties as always; you clearly had not noticed anything.

What the bloody hell was happening? She was clearly the only one able to see those hallucinations. It must mean that they were a product of her inconscious, right?

But she wasn't attracted to you. Was she? She had never lusted after students; the mere thought made her inwardy shudder, her thin lips pursed in disapproval.

And yet, those visions said otherwise. Could it be that she had been inconsciously suppressing her desires because her moral compass told her that having them was unethical?

A few weeks ago she would have laughed at the idea. But since those thrice damned visions had started to manifest before her eyes you had infiltrated yourself in her thoughts and, she could blush only thinking about it, in her dreams; and she wasn't so sure anymore.

She had been reminded of how bright and beautiful you were. She had started noticing how you smiled at her when she asked something of you, and how graceful your hands were – the same hands that never failed to brush against hers when you passed her papers or a cup of tea.

She had started to find excuses to have you more often in her office, only to stop abruptly and almost avoid you for the next few days as soon as she realized what she had been doing.

The conversations she had with you outside classes about whatever subject she was currently teaching had started to become the highlights of her week. Your questions always offered some novel insight, and you had recently began to discuss better ways to perform a spell or channel magic or mix an herbal solution – the intellectual thrill she felt when speaking with you never seemed to wear off.

For the first time in her life she had considered the possibility of actually mentoring someone after the degree. But of course that was out of the question now.

She could never ask you to become her protege while hallucinating sexual scenarios where you were the protagonist.

It wouldn't be right for you and it would be devastating for her, as well; she knew that whatever this was it was doomed from the start, and that the best thing she could do was let you go as far away from her as possible and live your life.

What killed her was how innocent and oblivious you were; it made her feel dirty, full of guilt. She felt like a pervert who couldn't avoid ogling a young, desirable woman.

Tonight she felt she had reached new heights of grotesque. Queen Luna was visiting, and she had been exchanging a few words with you while waiting for Farah in front of the Headmistress office.