Witchwolf

i

"Sweet Goddess below," the dark brunette groaned under her breath as the old, beat-up yellow truck shifted and sputtered over yet another of the numerous puddles and potholes covering the surface of the rough mountainside road. Her braid flounced against her gross neck and her tired backside ached with each teeth chattering rut her clunky old tires popped over.

Of course, I get stuck onto a muddy, swampy, disgusting backroad at this ungodly hour after having to drive for thirteen of them already, she thought. Running a hand through her extremely disheveled hair with an exasperated sigh, she slowed the car down, even more, to compensate for the sharp rain battering the poor windshield.

Perhaps she should've listened to that nice lady at the gas station that kindly suggested she just take up a motel room next door, but where would she be today if it wasn't for her stubborn ways? She was twenty, invincible, she thought. Another roll of thunder boomed through the air, vibrating the steering wheel, which she was already gripping with white-knuckled hands. She looked over at the clock on her dash: 4:02.

She, somehow, resisted the urge to bash her head into the wheel to end her misery then and there. She'd finished her last coffee an hour before and was officially cranky. "Andy, I swear you give the worst directions," she growled. The young witch had left Oklahoma near 11 AM, hoping to get here by midnight or so but, of course, the Gods had decided to let their bounty of rainfall out right when Burney had least needed it.

She wasn't saying that the views that she'd witnessed today weren't pretty, Kore, the Rockies would without a doubt look absolutely beautiful on my canvas, she thought. But she was tired of driving over a muddy road in the middle of a forest in the pouring rain at 4 AM in the morning.

She shook her head and shoved her quaintly oversized circular glasses back up her pointed face, fighting to keep her eyes open and on the road. Lightning struck and the thunder answered back, whilst the rain continued to smatter the windshield and obscure her already crappy vision.

She had stopped a while back at the said gas station before the downpour had started and bought a tarp to cover the boxes of things she had left to pack before heading off, praying it would be enough to save what could be saved.

It's not like she had much anyway, just the bare essentials. Some clothes, spell-books, and miscellaneous artifacts from both of her parents which she'd managed to shove into the remaining boxes. Everything else went into storage, which was paid for with the last of her college savings.

She'd gotten nothing from her parents' death from insurance or of monetary value. The lawyer said that almost all of her dad's money that he made as a professor of Night History at the University of Oklahoma's Night Program went back to a private account owned in this small Colorado town - Crystalline Valley.

The car shook as lightning crackled through the air yet again. She had never felt anything this intense before in her life. Must've been the altitude.

"Take a right on the fork," she said to herself as she neared the unmistakable veer off the abomination to roads everywhere that she was driving on.

She blew her hair out of her face with a huff, as she passed by a small sign that read "Crystalline Valley Rd" in all capitals. She allowed herself a small smile as her left hand rose to finger her mother's twelve-pointed star pendant gracing her neck and breastbone. Saying a small prayer for her mother's soul she turned the truck onto the new winding road. She had said many more prayers for all of them, more often than not, in the past few months than she had ever dared to in her whole life before.

Aunt Andy had been the first of any real family she had ever met outside of her mom, dad, and little brother. Her aunt had come alone and introduced herself after the priest blessed Burney's family's remains, well, with what little remained of them.