What Could Have Been

(Lilac Pt. 2)

After sweeping up the mess and drying the unfortunately stained floor, I headed into my office.
When I entered, the man was sitting stiffly in his seat as if uncomfortable with his surroundings. I followed where his eyes were so firmly planted to see them focused on a cluster of spiders in the corner of the room.
Ah, yes. The part I'd been avoiding...
When a witch comes of age, they all must choose a familiar. My sister, Tey, had chosen a sparrow out of spite since otherwise, it would have been chosen for her, like mine was. If you haven't pieced it together yet, Arachne means spider... It's our family name, thus it was chosen that my familiar would be a spider. The things you do when trying to make your parents proud, am I right?
I looked over to my spiders, which I had grown to respect and trust, and waved my hand at them, beckoning them to leave.
I cleared my throat, "Sorry, I forgot to mention that there are often spiders in here..."
He finally blinked once the spiders had left and shook his head, "No, it's fine!" He said all at once, well, more yelled.
"I-I mean... Its not your fault... There aren't anymore in here, right?" He said, his eyes shifting around the room.
"Ah... Yeah." I fibbed and sat down in my seat. It wasn't likely that another spider would be lurking about considering I had shooed them away, but the young ones tend to be poor listeners.
I looked down at my messy notebook, "So, your name is Walter Webb, right?"
He leaned in, "How did you know?"
I blinked, suprised. I wanted to joke and say, My all seeing vision, of course, but I knew better.
"Well, you did make an appointment earlier." I laughed awkwardly.
"O-Oh, yeah I... R-Right." His entire face once again turned a bright scarlet.
"It's okay, I'd make that assumption too if I'd never met a seer before. We all specialize in different things, some can actually do that but, not me. I can only see visions of people's lives."
He nodded slowly in response.
"Anyways, are we doing a normal session or are we focusing on a specific topic?" I asked, keeping my smile as light as possible.
"Oh, well I guess I hadn't thought about that..." He started.
And that's when I saw it. A spider sat calmly on Walters shoulder. Not just a normal spider, no. An elder spider, one I had recently been taking care of since it's vision had worsened. Worse still, this spider in particular was about the size of a half-dollar.
This comically large spider with poor eyesight has wondered onto the shoulder of someone clearly freaked out by the sight of arachnids.
Oh, boy...
My eyes refocused on Walter, trying my hardest to keep my composure and act like nothing was wrong.
"W-Well, while you think it over, read this contract." I smiled a bit too brightly this time, but he still didn't seem to notice and took the sheet from my hands to read it over.
I slowly got up in my seat and adjusted my dress, trying to act as if I was going to grab something behind him.
He briefly looked up at me, then blushed, and looked back down at the sheet.
I swallowed, feeling slightly self conscious, but had more pressing matters to attend to. I shuffled around my desk and started to pass him by when he turned abruptly to say something to me.
"What does this-" was all the poor guy could get out before the heel of my shoe caught on the corner of the rug and sent me forward into his chair, but more specifically, into him. My knee had slid right between his legs, and if I had fallen any quicker I couldn't imagine just how much pain he'd be in. My chest was in his face, I couldn't help but curse my figure on this particular day, the poor guy was drowning in cleavage. I was lucky enough to shoo the spider off of his shoulder while being stuck in this position. I could now quickly-
"Hey, Mal, sorry to barge in-"
I turned to see Tey looking in the doorway at my... positioning, wide-eyed. All of the color drained from my face.
This could not have been happening.
"Oookay, nevermind." She quickly shuffled out of the room, shutting the door sharply.
"W-Wait, Tey!" I jumped off of him but couldn't catch the door before she shut it. I held onto the door handle, my face burning up. I couldn't ever face Tey again. Hell, I couldn't ever look at this client again.
There was an awkward hush over the room.
I heard the placement of papers on my desk and I turned around to see what he was doing.
The man sat stiffly, more than he was prior to the... incident... as he placed the contract onto the desk. He had signed his name at the bottom, too. Walter couldn't meet my eyes, and his face was so red I was worried he'd explode. Not that I blame him for avoiding eye contact, though.
I sat back down in my seat, just looking over the contract. Neither of us could utter a word.
"I'll have the normal session." He spoke first, his deep tone cutting the silence of the room.
And without saying it out loud, we both agreed to pretend it never happened.