Heart of the Serpent: Ominis Gaunt (temporarily paused)

Chapter THREE - Phials and Witches

I wanted this boy, my tether to the outside world, to keep speaking if only to allow my senses to cling to the way his light voice tilted up or the way I could almost hear the strain of his breathing when my fingers had touched his. With my vision gone, my heart begged for any of the other senses to stitch the emptiness back together.

Yet instead, we sat in silence and I forced my lips shut, forced my bones to stop shivering, my heart to stop pounding and the world to stop spinning

even in the dark.

I couldn't remember the last thing I'd looked at before the world had gone dim, but my heart forced my brain to flip through every thought up to it. Perhaps it just wanted to know the final image my eyes had seen, or perhaps it just wanted to replay memories...

...the closest things I had left to sight.

That night had been just as any other, the warm summer breeze had crept along my skin as the sun slowly dipped below the tree line and I'd been thankful for it. Summer had never been my favorite season, the grass was always too green, the air too thick, the sun too hot. I'd always preferred the fleeting autumn season over any other. I looked forward to the way the leaves turned crisp browns and oranges, the way the air bit gently at my nose, the chill that sunk deep into my bones. 

This night had been one of the first where autumn felt far more tangible than any other previous despite the heat of the day before. That was why I had been so thankful for the reprieve in the harsh sunlight, so thankful for the dark.

It seemed all too ironic now. 

I had been walking the same cobblestone path as I did every night, back from the library where I spent most of my summers lost in books. The path wound out of the shabby little town, back up through some overflowing brush and along the tree line that led to my family's small but quaint yellow house. Mother and father hadn't been able to afford much more than the little one bedroom house, but the love and memories poured into it each year truly made the space home. Father had even surprised mother and I one summer with a few cans of yellow paint to which we took to the outside walls the next day. We had been the talk of the town with such 'bright colored nonsense' until some new gossip finally pushed us from the headlines.

I'd been staring at that yellow paint when I'd heard something bristle through the tree branches to my right. I hadn't been scared, thinking it out to just be one of the many stray cats that roamed the property

but I ought to have been.

I couldn't remember much more after that.

A large dead moment in my brain as if someone had taken a thick eraser to the finer points and scrubbed them away.

My thoughts had only returned in that cold house, body bound, eyes covered and magic unfolded.

I jolted upright as blinding green light seeped through the blindfold. 

Evidently I'd fallen asleep again.

My fingers flexed in the black, searching for the cold skin of my darkness - of the boy I'd clung to - but I found nothing. Instead, the cool padded silk below me had now become a course sort of firm cotton and as my fingers traced further away, it dipped into a solid wood edge, and then another around the front, another down by my legs.

A chair.

I tried to keep the nausea at bay, swallowing the fear and confusion though it pooled in my stomach at the realization that I'd been moved... again.

I forced my spine straight and my now trembling hands out to either side in an attempt to survey my surroundings.

"Whoah there miss. Please, take is slow."

Every inch of my skin prickled at the deep voice of a completely unfamiliar adult male, his words precise and firm.

Fumbling around for something to protect myself with, I came up empty handed and instead forced my aching joints up from the chair and quickly back behind it. Willing the object between us to hold my pounding heart steady, I cleared my throat in hopes of sounding far less terrified than I truly was. My knees shook beneath my weight.

"Where am I?"

"Everything will be alright. You are safe. I am going to get you home to-"

"No." I could feel the anger burning my tongue, could feel the heat below my skin. "No, I asked where I am. Tell me where I am!"

I'd never felt my anger so strong before, the edges of it burnt my skin and boiled my blood. Its sudden consumption of all my thoughts startled me, but I pressed on. 

"I demand to be let go. I can't- I can't take this anymore I need to- need to-" A chill crept over my skin so swiftly I nearly missed it, my voice drowned out as something whizzed past my head and crashed somewhere ahead of me. Glass shattered distantly, clinking in twinkled little fragments around my ears.

Something shuffled in front of me and I recoiled on instinct yet the noise seemed to dart to the side rather than towards me.

"Miss-" The man sounded ever so slightly startled. "Miss please calm down, you're-"

"I will not calm down. I need answers!"

Another whiz,

another crash,

another quick shuffle of boots on the floor.

"Please miss, you are destroying my-"

"I haven't done anything wrong-"

"You are shattering my phials."

Thoughts whirled within my head.

"I haven't touched anything!"

"Your magic has."

"My... hold on, what?"

Perhaps I'd hit my head. Perhaps I'd dreamt it all up. Perhaps I'd been in an accident or an attack and lost my vision... Perhaps I'd lost my mind there too.

Nothing made sense.

"I-" The man stopped and let out a long breath. "I believe we have far more to discuss than I was originally informed."

Perhaps I would finally get answers.

He cleared his throat. "Let me begin again. I am Aesop Sharp, professor Sharp. And you my dear... you are a witch."