The Cursed Child (Original Plot)

Chapter 3 - Blood and Water

Years flew by, and soon, she was celebrating a different birthday - her eleventh birthday. In those years of slipping memories and childhood, she had made her deskmate's hair puff up, set a creepy guy's sleeves on fire on the streets, talked to a snake she met in an unkempt meadow, must have started a bunch of shooting stars though Marc told her it wasn't her, and, most frighteningly, made a snake bite Dysnomia's ankle that reduced her to a three-day coma.

Isabelle never told the snake to do anything, but it was a tough job to deny the satisfaction that rose in her after Dysnomia's shriek. That girl was never a pleasure to be around in the same class even for one year, let alone five years. After she picked Isabelle as some sort of interesting target, her presence was so daunting, so suffocating, uncomfortable and painful that she had to draw blood on her palms to prevent her power from blowing Dysnomia to sand-sized bits of flesh and bones and marrow. Compared to all the visualisations that slipped into Isabelle's mind, the snake assault was somewhat benign. Plus it traumatised her enough that she kept her words and hands to herself long enough for the school year to be nearly over, three more months before they parted ways.

After the celebration, it was the same spring as always, underneath the pale moon and the honey-dipped stars. It never rained on her birthday as long as she could remember; never did the clouds block the moon; never was it too hot or too cold; on that day each year she didn't scowl at the weather or the temperature; on her birthday, everything was perfect.

Everything. Except her.

It wasn't the first time she sat in the Harts' garden on her birthday. It wasn't the first time she remembered what happened there. It wasn't the first time she caught sight of the flowerbed of marigolds with a burned edge and felt a shiver in remembrance of what happened. Daisies no longer had their own space but instead thrived among all the flowers she could not name. Memories of her sitting at the same spot with Marc next to her all these years before rushed in like currents and storms, mixing until she wasn't sure of her age, whether it was a week after her seventh birthday or the night of her eleventh birthday; until she no longer knew if the space next to her was empty or filled with the reassuring air of Demarcus.

Some burns deserved a bandage. Some burns deserved to be shown and displayed like a trophy. That's what the flowerbed was used for, a proof it was possible to lose control and survive; a proof that everything can bleed and heal, break and reassemble, burn and cool down.

'Hey Eez'

'Not calling me Belle anymore?'

'Nah. I would rather not let those be called the nicknames of love when we get to secondary. Could you blame me?'

Isabelle snorted. Of course, this is ridiculous. There was nothing romantic between her and Marc. They were simply held together by friendship for who-knows-how-long, since they both existed in this world, since forever. Friendship was in the air around them, one of the many things that didn't make it love.

'I know. But someone takes more than a lot of convincing.'

By 'someone' he meant Dysnomia, and by the knowing smirk on his face said she wasn't the only one thinking Dysnomia got what she deserved.

'Never too late to plan on what to do to her next.'

'Really, Belle? Poor Nomi's traumatised, though I don't see it hurts to make it worse. I mean-!'

Isabelle held up a hand. If she was any more flirty, she would place a finger on his lips; any more romantic, the words would be stopped with a kiss; any more best-friend-like and carefree, she would have grabbed his mouth with her hand to make it stop, but that's not who she was free to be.