Modern Witches

Chapter 2: Back to Normal

The next morning when the first of the diurnal women awoke, she started her morning the way every aviary Wiccan often does, with a tune from her heart. Jessica stretched as she rose from her bed and began to hum a light song, signaling she was in a decent mood after the events that transpired the night before. She gracefully swayed about her room releasing her precious pets from their cages. Her birds sang to her hum as they flew out of their enclosures and to their favorite spots around the expansive brightly colored room. Readying for her day included using the wind of her fan in her favor. She had the ability to twist and blow the wind through her hair to create an effortless beach wave look out of her ordinarily pin straight dark hair.

After completing her morning routine she headed towards her life long friends room, Amy. Knocking before walking in and sitting on Amy's bed, Jess was prepared to pay the price of awakening this particular witch. Amy squinted in Jessica's general direction but refused eye contact before stuffing her face back into her pillow.

"Amy you'll have to get up sooner rather than later, the troops are gonna wake up hungry and you know how they get." Amy groaned before conceding and flipping the blanket away from her. She didn't have to worry about any morning chill in her room because she kept it at a warm 75 degrees year round. Her reasoning being her love of botany. Vines covered her bedroom walls and succulents hung in planters from the ceiling. Her lights were UV and helped her indoor garden to flourish. Before getting herself ready she watered and spoke kindly to each of her beloved plants. To her, these would be her only babies, and her words provided love and encouragement to grow to their fullest potential. She gave special care to temperamental or injured vegetation, her mastery in botany meant she could heal anything she grew.

Amy's morning routine was considerably less elaborate due to the fact that she often wore her pajamas for most of her morning. After a quick adjusting of her short quiff styled hair, she was ready to get to the kitchen.

Making her way down to the kitchen on the first floor Amy spotted a tired Marianna watching reruns of Archer on the plush second-hand couch. She smiled at the memory of finding the couch with Vicki, how Vicki loathed the obnoxiously vibrant stripes that spread across it. They argued for some time before buying it for their first home with their friends. She could recall wishing one of her many magical friends had the power to create beautiful upholstery.

Every morning Amy made breakfast, and a bit of dinner for her night loving pals. She used her home grown herbs, fruits and vegetables for all of her cooking. Her chicken coops often provided the eggs they would eat and Bailey's cow, Bea, provided their milk each morning. After Jess had come to wake Amy she had given a visit to Bailey and then to Vicki. Bailey clumsily banged her way through the creeky metal storm door that led to the mud room off of the kitchen. She slammed down a nearly full bucket of milk and one full carton of eggs on the counter beside Amy with perfect timing. Within an instant supplies for pancakes zoomed through the room, cabinets opening on their own accord, plates and utensils setting the table without any physical contact from a live being. Amy had the ability of telekinesis on top of her botany skills.

Moving things with little effort of her mind make her life much easier, but sometimes harder for her housemates. There were often times when they would fight over the tv remote and Amy had the advantage of the remote coming to her. The only downfall of this particular power is that, historically, over time witches with mental abilities start to lose their stability. Meaning they often end up with memory loss or low functioning mental faculties; she tried not to abuse this power too much in fear this might happen.

Rosa chatted away about how torturous it was to find each of her tarantulas that had scattered around the house, yawning between sentences. She waited patiently while Amy cooked for her, Rosa knew her own cooking skills were subpar at best. Her eyes widened when her kitchen witch bestie added chocolate chips to her batch of pancakes and she could feel her mouth start to salivate. She was too busy watching as the plate of flapjacks floated towards her to call for Marianna to tell her their dinner was ready. Conveniently enough, Marianna had already passed out, draped across the colorful couch without a care in the world, though at some point she did take the time to surround herself with every available pillow.

As the rest of the house mates took their seats at the kitchen island, Amy served them one by one. There was an unspoken rule in the house that because Amy did the cooking the rest did the cleaning. This was Rosa's least favorite rule, she was by far the messiest, most unorganized of the bunch. Vicki not following far behind.

As breakfast ended the calm chats continued while each witch began to clean their respective mess. Dishes were washed, garbage thrown out, and surfaces were sponged of their stickiness. It was when all was back to normal that the sounds of monstrous thunder began.

Vicki looked out the window "Marianna  didn't mention she sensed a storm for today, would've been nice to know." A second crackle of thunder woke the sleeping storm witch, she looked around with a curious eye.

"What was that?" Marianna asked dramatically.  The rest looked at her as though she had lost her mind, in unison they called out the word 'thunder'. Marianna looked around again and spoke softly "there's no storms coming our way today, that was definitely not thunder." While most of the girls looked out the window in disbelief, thinking Marianna had read her forecast incorrectly, Rosa shrugged and headed down into her cave to get some much needed rest, she knew the sounds thunder would help her to sleep.