The Five Cursed Witches: Volume 1 - Zoe, the Witch of Innocence

Chapter 86 Messy labyrinth of colorful threads

Zoe

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It was as messy, jumbled, and as complicated as it had looked. There were different colors everywhere. Spinning and weaving in and out of each other. It was the messiest ball of yarn I had ever seen. Only it wasn't like a ball of yarn. One part of the string would branch off into several, and several would become one. It definitely rather was a labyrinth, but that didn't seem to have a beginning or a place one could escape to.

The different colors were as confusing as the paths. The physical life energy was just one road of light. But here there were all possible different colors and to make it even more confusing, some parts had multiple colors twisting around each other.

I wanted to pull out. It was overwhelming, and I felt certain that I would get lost. But I collected myself and concentrated on one particular spot.

It was nothing like what I had ever experienced before. I got sucked into the string and the view shifted. I was in a street. There wasn't anything particular about the street in itself to make it stand out, but it was as if I looked at it all through red glass. There was whimpering from a dog and I turned in that direction. A group of kids threw stones at a ragged-looking black dog. The dog tried to get away, but it could barely walk.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing!" I heard a scream and Alex ran past me towards the kids. It was her, but she looked much younger. The surprise of seeing her made me pull out from the scene.

I could feel my heart beating fast as I looked at the mess of colors again.

Memories. They all had to be memories.

I concentrated on a few more to make sure. I watched Alex playing hide and seek, dancing at a club, packing boxes.

Memories. It definitely had to be memories. But what did the colors mean then?

I found one that was distinctly blue and went in.

"It's over," a young man said and walked away. Alex was on the ground, crying.

I went into one that was yellow and watch Alex sitting next to Felix, talking and laughing.

Next was an orange one, in which Alex took a deep breath before going onto a stage. A soft red, which I left almost immediately as Alex was having sex with someone in it. Green, she was on the couch reading a book and drinking tea.

It was emotions. The emotions connected to the specific memory and in the cases where several colors were twisted together, it had to mean that there was more than one emotion she connected to the memory. Once I had realized that, I looked at it all with new eyes and felt astonished. I could access all of Alex's memories and her emotions connected to the memory.

But healing it, as she had suggested. That seemed impossible. If nothing else, because I hadn't seen anything that was broken. There were, of course, memories that she held negative emotions for, but that didn't make them broken. It was natural.

I shifted through the strings some more, just walking along and taking different paths. Mainly because I was in such awe of it all. But then I found what I didn't know I had been looking for.

One path split into several and one of the new ones was in the red that I connected to anger, but it was twisted with a type of thread I hadn't seen before. It was gray, but seemed to have another color at its core. Curious what it meant, I dived in.

I stood outside what I guessed was a school building. Alex was there with a bunch of girls and they were happily talking to one another. By the looks of it, they were young teenagers.

"I love your hair," one of the girls said to Alex.

"Thank you. My mom cut it," Alex answered.

"That's so impressive."

And that was it. The memory went back to the beginning and played again. I watched it five times because I was sure I was missing something. Why did Alex connect the memory to anger?

I went out of it and looked ahead. Like all memories, it split into several different ones. But there was one that also had red twisted with the weird gray and I went for that one.

It was a similar scene. The same girls, the same place. This time, someone complimented Alex on her clothes. I moved to the next with the same combo of threads. In that one, Alex was told that her make-up was good.

I shifted through a few more of those before I came to a halt. In front of me was a thread that was glaring red and also had the weird gray thread, but there was something different about the gray. I looked between that one and the one I came from several times to figure out the difference before I realized. I couldn't make out what the color in the core was in either, but the one ahead of me had a different one.

Hoping that explanations would be given, I entered the thread.

Same place, same girls, different scene. Before they had all stood together. But this time, the other girls stood as one in front of Alex.

"Did you really think we liked it?" one of them asked.

"You're adorably stupid," another said.

"As if we would like you?"

"It's funny how clueless you are."

The girls laughed a menacing laugh that echoed in the memory.

"Was it all a lie?" Alex asked in a small voice and as an answer, the laughing just got louder and louder.

I pulled out of it to think. It would be understandable that she afterwards would feel angry thinking back to that. It also explained why the other memories were connected to anger. But what was up with the gray thread?

I wasn't sure. I thought and thought and the best answer I came to was that the anger had repressed whatever other feeling that she connected to the memory and because of that it had gone gray. But I also realized that there was an easy solution to it. When I healed physical aspects, I simply made what was broken whole by picturing it clearly. So if I pictured the gray falling off those threads and the core color to come forth, that ought to fix it.

I took a deep breath and concentrated on the last one. Concentrated on the gray thread and pictured the gray giving in to the color underneath, and it did.

A blue for sadness showed up. I looked behind to do the same again, but to my surprise, a chain reaction seemed to have happened. The threads behind me no longer had the gray thread. Instead, the red was twisted the with sad blue and the happy yellow.

I felt panic gripping me. What would it actually mean for Alex? How would it affect her? I had to know. Had to find out the consequences of my experiment. I had been too focused on understanding and trying that I had momentarily forgotten that it all belonged to Alex.

I pulled myself up. Left the messy labyrinth of colorful threads. Saw her life energy shining brightly and then opened my eyes to look into Alex's. She gave me a weak smile and I could see a tear falling down her cheek.