Little Witch

Chapter One

"How was your week, Raven?", Dr. Hutton asks me after I take a seat in his office.

"My week was the same as always.", I mumble, not really wanting to be there. Even though I am over 18 years old and legally an adult, I still force myself to go to my weekly session with my therapist. Maybe I do it to please my worried parents or maybe I do it to talk to someone freely about my life. I bet the doctor could tell me the answer.

"Did you encounter any creatures?", he asks calmly. He doesn't believe in any of the things I'm telling him every week, but after our first sessions, in which he adamantly denied the existence of magic, were not successful at all, he started a new approach in talking to me. "Playing into the illusion", as he would put it.

"Not more than usual.", I reply, "I saw the usual group of werewolves at the gym and the witch that works to the coffee shop, but otherwise I didn't meet anyone." This was not completely true. Every time a creature is in the same room as me, I have a shiver down my spine into my fingertips, which happened a few times every day. Most of the time the environment I'm in is so crowded with people that I don't know who activated the shiver. But telling this Dr. Hutton would make him be even more concerned than he usually is. He pretends to understand me, I don't make him too scared of my mind.

We have been meeting for over four year now. He was there when my friends began to think I was too weird to invite to parties, he was there when I had my final exam and was so stressed that I couldn't help myself to telling someone my secret, resulting in a meeting with the head master, a school counsellor, my parents and him and he was there when I had my first days at university, meeting so many new people, a few of them being creatures. If I would tell him that he is in fact my only friend, he would most likely dismiss it, saying that you couldn't be friends with your therapist.

"And how is your study going?", he asks me, holding his note book in his hand, but not writing down a single word yet. His focus is solely on me, something that never happens in my normal life. No one even talks to me when they don't have to. Sometimes I hear people whisper behind my back.

"She is the weird one I told you about.", a guy told his buddy at an university event where I was selling muffins to donate it to an animal protection organization. I smiled at them, pretending not to have heard them. They grinned back in a strange way that reminded me of children smiling at monkeys in a zoo.

"I get all my work done on time, if that's what you mean.", I answer, knowing that's not what he meant. A stern look from him makes me talk some more. "My history classes have been very informative lately. At the moment we are covering 17th century USA."

"Are you referring to the witch trails that happened in that time?", he asks. He did his homework. I can't help myself but to give him an approving smile and nod.

"Even though we are not covering the trails in particular, it is very interesting how the people in that time thought of the world.", I admit.

After a moment of silence, I ask: "And how has your week been, Dr. Hutton?"

"These sessions are not about me, they are about you.", he replies strictly. It's always the same. After more than four year I know nearly nothing about him. I know that he doesn't believe in magic. That's all. Well, I did google him and found out he studied Psychology at Aberdeen in Scotland and graduate as one of the best in his class. Oh, and that his first name is Leo. I do think Leo Hutton is a fitting name for the man sitting in front of me. A human in his early 30s, with ash-blond coiled hair, diamond green eyes and turtle neck sweaters in every shade of grey there is.

We talk for exactly one hour, just like always. This hour in Dr. Hutton's office is both painful and freeing. The first because I can see in his face that he doesn't believe a single word I say, the latter because he is the only one who I can talk to about this. Because I know he doesn't believe me, the chance of him breaking the patient confidentially and telling someone else about our sessions is extremely slim.

Nevertheless, after every session I tell him: "Don't tell anyone about what I told you."

And just like always he answers: "Of course, Raven."