Secrets of the Sea

i. witches and blasphemy

Calypso Hydale was quite peculiar.

To say "quite" was an understatement, really. There really was no way to describe her strangeness, or so her former townsfolk claimed. She was cunning and intelligent, ambitious but shy. She was a very good friend to those she trusted. But on her time on earth, there weren't many she did.

On the occasions of anger or negative emotion, many things went very, very wrong.

Of course, nobody really liked her. She was rumored to be wicked and dangerous, and everyone had listened when the nuns warned that abnormal flowed through her veins, that an evil spirit, a demon of a sort was possessing her. And they had once tried to perform exorcism upon her, but they soon learned from that mistake.

After being ambushed and abducted into an abandoned warehouse, the naturally warm temperature of the blazing hot summer day had slowly started decreasing within the room to a freezing state, to the point where delicate frost began to creeping up the the broken lights that flickered over her taut body, strapped and restrained as screams ripped from her throat, slowly absorbing the light until the room had descended into darkness.

The nuns fled in fear, leaving her behind.

Every night, Callie dreamt of the blood chilling screaming of pain in torture of her mother, the desperate pleading and devastated sobs from her father within her nightmares, haunting her as she awoke to the sound of her own screams.

It was a known fact parents were dead. They were murdered in broad daylight when Callie was only the mere age of innocent 5. That all happened around 7 years before, and the night she was sent to her father's distant third cousin twice removed, who was now, to her, Uncle.

Not a kind grandfather who would shower her in love and care, not an aunt who would love her as if she were her own child. Just Uncle. Callie often wished she was perhaps sent to a nicer, more accepting relative than Uncle.

Because he was often in her nightmares, too.

Along with the fear of being burned at stake or killed by the mob, named as a traitorous, evil witch. Only a few centuries ago, Salem and many other witch-inhabited countries took no hesitation to killing the witches. So why wouldn't they hesitate to kill her?

The mobs in England were as bloodthirsty as a pack of lions searching for a perfect prey to snack upon.

In this case, the lions were hunting for her.

꧁꧁꧂꧂

"Callie! Get up you good for nothing witch girl!" Uncle's nasal voice cut through, ringing inside of Callie's ears as she was startled awake, her chest heaving with heavy breaths. "Right now, you good-for-nothing freak!"

Callie bolted up, a light sheen of sweat trickling down her forehead as she choked out her reply. "Y-yes Uncle," Callie replied meekly, clenching the raggedly blankets into her fists as she fought to catch her breath, knuckles whitening under the pressure of her grip. Like usual, she had been once again plagued with nightmares.

"Disgusting cursed girl," Uncle muttered in a tone of revulsion, the sounds of his footsteps fading in the distance as Callie took a long, shuddering breath.

Callie stood from the ripped mattress and thin rags of a blanket that she called a "bed" and walked several feet in the cramped space to retrieve a pair of too-large, worn out clothing, the only ones she possessed. Luckily, the baggy shirt's sleeves were large enough to cover her wrists, so Uncle, Aunt, nor her cousin would be able see the shimmery twin bracelets  encircling both her wrists.

Because if they saw them, they'd take it away, claiming it was too precious for a simpleton like her to have. They'd take away the only thing she had left of her deceased parents, the thing she'd kept secret for seven entire years, the thing most precious to her. They were crafted out of delicately carved alloyed white gold, one embedded with lustrous white pearls and the other encrusted with beautiful diamond-like gemstones.