The air in Esmeralda's attic crackled with a strange energy, the scent of lavender and old books thick as Luna traced her fingers over the brittle pages of a leather-bound volume. It was unlike any other in her grandmother's collection – filled not with Esmeralda's spidery handwriting, but with faded ink and cryptic symbols that seemed to shift before her eyes.
"What is this place?" Luna whispered, her voice hushed in the presence of something ancient and powerful.
Esmeralda, perched on a three-legged stool, her silver braid gleaming in the shaft of sunlight filtering through a dusty window, smiled knowingly. "This, my dear, is where the whispers of our ancestors echo the loudest. This book holds the prophecies of the Bellweather line."
Luna scoffed, her skepticism momentarily overriding the prickle of unease crawling up her spine. "Prophecies? You're going full-on mystical fortune teller now, Grandma?"
Esmeralda chuckled, her eyes twinkling. "Don't be so quick to dismiss the wisdom of the past, Luna. These prophecies are more than mere predictions. They are echoes of possibilities, threads of fate woven into the very fabric of our lineage."
Hesitantly, Luna turned a delicate page, her fingers brushing against a faded illustration of a crescent moon nestled between two willow branches – the very symbol she'd seen in her dreams, the one that pulsed with an energy she was beginning to recognize as her own.
"This symbol," Luna murmured, her voice barely a breath. "It's been appearing everywhere."
"As it should," Esmeralda said, her voice taking on a rare seriousness. "For it is the Bellweather mark, a symbol of our connection to the moon's magic, to the ebb and flow of power that runs through our blood."
Luna's heart hammered against her ribs. The room, usually cluttered and comforting, felt suddenly small, suffocating. The weight of her grandmother's words, the strange energy thrumming from the ancient book, pressed down on her, threatening to suffocate the last vestiges of her disbelief.
"There's a prophecy," Esmeralda continued, her voice softer now, "that speaks of a Bellweather descendant, a witch born under a blood moon, who will either restore balance to Willow Creek or unleash a darkness it has never known."
Luna's breath hitched. A blood moon. The night her powers had awakened, the night her life had tilted on its axis, had been bathed in the eerie red glow of a lunar eclipse.
"It speaks of a choice," Esmeralda said, her gaze piercing Luna's. "A choice that only you, Luna Bellweather, can make."
YOU ARE READING
The Reluctant Witch of Willow Creek ( Book 1)
Spiritual( BOOK #1) In the quaint, whisper-thin town of Willow Creek, where secrets bloom like wildflowers and magic lingers in the morning mist, Luna Bellwether lives a life decidedly un-magical. Surrounded by her eccentric, spell-casting family, Luna prefe...
