The Keepers' Evil

Diary Seven: I am a more powerful witch

Song- You're somebody else: flora cash

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A butterfly.

There was a butterfly. It landed on the top of my hand. It was like a peace offering from the universe to say I'm sorry.

Its glass wings fluttered for a moment to let us see how the blue faded into purple, how its tiny body was as fragile as the one of my father. It was like a reflection from the universe to say I'm sorry.

It had long feelers that sprouted from this tiny body, a way to let this defenceless creature make sense of the world. They tickled my hand and made me laugh, as if the butterfly was a friend of my own to play with. It was like laughter sent from the universe to say I'm sorry.

But the butterfly wasn't happy. The butterfly wasn't here to stay. The butterfly was thirsty, desperate for peace. The butterfly was dying inside.

The butterfly's glass wings shattered and its body toppled from my hand.

There was a butterfly. It landed on my hand. It was like a peace offering from the universe to say I'm sorry.

There was a butterfly. It taught me that the universe was harsh and the world was cruel. It taught me that the most innocent creatures would be the first victims that death claimed. It taught me that the universe was unforgiving.

It taught me that I should be too.

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I had promised my father that I would be the one to bring him peace, that I would hold this world steady as it rocked from side to side as he tried to adjust back into what this life had become whilst he had been asleep. Sometimes I wondered what my father had seen whilst we had existed around him; had he noticed me here? Had he noticed that I had even left at all?

Now that he had returned and his consciousness had been pieced back together like the missing piece had only been his voice, it was perhaps more evident that the void could not be brought to peace, because my father could speak, he could tell me how to fix it all, but he wouldn't.

Vacant stares met my brother's ghost, and together they reminded him of everything that he had to learn to live without.

It confused me, and the confusion whittled daggers of used hope into my mind as my own reminder of magic that seemed to have worked on every other subject that had reached the end of my wand. My student had not missed a single lecture, a single class, since the black cloud has been blown away from his heart, and he had smiled his gratitude back to me at the end. But my father, though his voice was steady and his eyes unglazed, remained as though the amount of pain that I had taken had never been enough yet.

I watched him shuffle around the space that my brother and I had once seen as a circus where we would perform silly performances of dances and repeated rhymes of poetry, I watched him sit upon his own bed and let the memories of my brother's frantic crawl to find me in the space underneath the bed before he had finished counting to ten control him, I watched him consume himself with what could no longer be remembered without pain.

It was as though my father was replenishing the pain, no matter how much I took, he could not help but plant the dark seeds back into his heart. I would never win against the storm in his body, because it grew using the empty space where his strength once was, it used his soul to leverage itself to his heart, and it took his mind as quickly as a butterfly's wings could snap.