In the middle of the flourishing and verdant forest of Mirissa sleeps peacefully Julie, a young woman with animal peculiarities, rejected by everyone because of it. Accustomed to lonely days and nights haunted by nightmares from her past, her life w...
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The two towers. A pretty name for an old house built in the trunk of a giant tree. The city peoples called this place like this because of the two large branches sticking out from the rest of the Mirissa forest, stretching toward the sky. Mirissa was a vast expanse of trees of all kinds, blessed from the forest spirits for centuries and covering the entire eastern part of the Oshensta Empire. Many things were said about this place and few knew if it was only rumor or the simple truth... What was true nevertheless was the fact that in this very particular tree, huddled on a sheet sewn up again and again, slept tightly a woman about whom so much more was said. In her restless sleep of nightmares and screams ever more persecuting over the years, she seemed to be a gentle and simple person. Her long white hair fell from her mattress and almost fell on the floor, hiding part of her fine-featured face. Thirty years separated her from her birth, but she had kept an overwhelming youth, so many people thought she was still a young adult. But that wasn't what people were talking about the most. Julie was a mage. A witch for some, a heretic for others. That is why the only presence in this house was her. Alone, lost in the middle of the largest forest in the country, she lived as a hermit. Nevertheless, she liked it. She had a hard time getting along with people because of her cold and imperious temper...
Suddenly awakened by too many screams, she sat up panting and sweating. She rubbed her face with a shaking hand, wiping the tears from her beautiful golden eyes, slit like a beast and endlessly rimmed. Pulling herself out of bed, she ran to a piece of broken mirror attached to the wall of her bedroom. A room as wide as the tree itself and dotted with salvaged or selfmade furniture. She couldn't dry her tears but her reflection stared at her with his vicious gaze.
"You like it huh? She asked him."
She only gave her a sickly satisfied smile before she smashed the mirror with a punch. Her razor-sharp teeth gleamed in the dawn light streaming through the open shutters. She opened her jaw and went down to what served as her dining room, wrapping her hand with a cloth. The connection between her bedroom and the ground floor was a simple wooden ladder, and the dining room was nothing more than a junkyard of oddities piled up over the years. Two tables shared the space, one near the windows against a wall and the other, smaller, near the front door. The oddities looked like tangles of plants and rocks, more or less large, and forming funny magic talismans hanging everywhere. The walls were covered with plants overflowing from their pots and collapsing under their own weight. The room was very bright thanks to two windows carved into the bark and adorned with custom-made glass, although tarnished by the years.
No sooner had she descended the ladder connecting to the ground floor than a wild beast of incredible violence jumped at her throat.
"Georgette! Stop, you're going to put feathers everywhere. Julie chuckled slightly, catching the gallinaceous in flight."
She put her friend back on her table and took a loaf of bread instead. Separating it in two to give to the hen, she ate her share in silence, seated at the table against the wall. Her gaze wandered wistfully out the window to his left which overlooked the back of her house. The view was quickly cut off by the density of the forest giving it a slightly gloomy air which reassured the magician. She nevertheless had a semblance of a garden all around her shack made naturally by the roots of her tree which had prevented the others from growing too close.
