I don't know where to begin. Practical Magic has been a family favourite for years and years and it just so happened that I found two amazeballs friends who love it just as much. I've been wanting to do this for a while and figured I should go ahead and bite the bullet. Why not combine my favourite sisters, OTP and movie into one entity?
First off, a HUGE shout out to my favourite girls Taylor, Manuela and Grace. Without you guys I would have sat on this for weeks. I love all you babes.
Enjoy the prologue! Thanks ever so much.
Prologue
The Mills sisters are like night and day. In every aspect, not just their physical appearances.
Zelena Mills is a fair skinned, sassy mouthed, red head - a vibrant colour that no one else in her family has ever been blessed with - and much like the darkness of the night sky, there is a mystery to her. Her life revolves around unadulterated curiosity and the enduring need for adventure; the constant seeking of the sunlight that should arrive in the morning.
Then there's Regina. Younger by a year and three months, she stands tall with brilliantly sunkissed skin and hair as dark as a raven's feather. She's arguably the shyest of the two girls, but put in the right circumstances she could easily put a person in their rightful place. And while Zelena constantly sought out that morning sun, Regina found herself constantly just out of it's reach. The sun is there, bright in her sky, but Regina is far too timid to let it in; she can't find it within herself to utilise the hope it brings and rather accepts her life in the shadows.
Just before Zelena's ninth birthday, their father Henry perished in a horrific fire at their summer home. A terrible accident the newspaper called it, but the life of a Mills woman is never that simple. Cora, their dear mother, struggled every day with the loss of her true love and she allowed herself to fall to her broken heart, leaving Regina and Zelena alone to deal with the burned seams of their once close knit family.
With their lives in shambles, the sisters return to the root of their ancestry, where their family line began and their fate was sealed: Storybrooke, Maine. It was anything but an easy move. Being a Mills, especially in this town, comes with great responsibility and circumstances. They're blamed for every tiny thing that goes wrong in town, immediately expected to solve problems that they had nothing to do with, and God, the whispering and the taunting rhymes.
It's not that the townsfolk hate them. Their family just makes everybody a little nervous that's all, and one could hardly blame them for it. They are a family of powerful witches, after all. Blessed with the most powerful magic that any sorcerer or sorceress could harbour. Though that very power is what dooms their fate. With their astounding power and sorcery comes their greatest consequence.
A curse.
The darkest of curses, some may even deem it as a price, that has already torn their family apart.
Mills women can never fall in love. Not without severe ramifications anyway, the same ramifications that stole their father away and destroyed their mother from the inside out.
Over two hundred years ago, Rosalind Mills was betrayed horrifically by a man who promised to protect her heart, and that betrayal led to her demise. In an effort to protect her daughter and all Mills women that were to be born in the future, she summoned a powerful spell that would remain in her bloodline for generations to come; never would another witch in her family have to worry about having their heart broken the way hers was.
Every branch of their family tree has suffered through this curse, loved ones dying after having their skin marked by a Wraith - a mystical demon that leads death to its next victim. Only the women can see the marks upon their lover's skin, the victims unaware and helpless. There's no way to stop it, eventually death will come and take the soul of those who are marked, leaving their families to find new homes and start over.
That's ultimately how the girls ended up in Storybrooke again. Their mother's best friend, Ingrid, became their family, their teacher, their everything. She's beautiful, youthful, with hair as bright as the sunshine that Zelena craves and Regina can't seem to enjoy. Ingrid's routines are much more relaxed than their mothers could have ever been; there are no curfews, questionable meal choices (brownies for breakfast, lunch and dinner on some days) and most importantly… magic anywhere and everywhere.
Ingrid explained the curse to the sisters as well as she could , detailing that it was the curse that led to their parents death, giving them anything to help them make sense of it. While neither sister said it aloud, deep down, they blamed themselves at first... then there was this menacing curse. The very thought of it terrified Regina to the bone. Her pupils shrink to a pin and her stomach tangles in knots late at night when her mind stumbles upon thoughts about falling in love. But not Zelena. She challenges the curse, wants to put it through the ultimate test. Zelena can't wait to fall in love.
Regina remains interested in the craft, pushing through her fear everyday, and reads more books than her brain has room for, and there was an evening that a spell caught her eye and even moreso captured her soul.
She's never cast a spell alone before, so she waits until Ingrid and Zelena have fallen asleep, waits for Ingrid's soft snores to be sure, waits for them to sound down the hallway of their magnificent home; the biggest in town, in the centre and the envy of everyone who walks by.
Regina tiptoes through the hallway, down the stairs and out the front door quietly, heading straight into the front yard and stands under the huge apple tree that stands tall and strong. Ingrid had let them plant it last year, and of course, with Ingrid's magical influence, it bloomed overnight. Much to Zelena's dismay, the apples that grow upon the branches are Regina's favourite, delicious, ruby red apples rather than the bitter, glistening green apples that would sprout if they were Zelena's favourite.
Clicking her fingers, Regina conjures a bowl to sit in the grass and she quickly makes her way around the garden, picking a few petals from blooming plants around the garden and placing them inside the bowl.
"What are you doing?" Zelena asks in a quiet whisper from the front door of the house. She must've woken up as Regina tried to slip past.
It's well past midnight and there's a slight chill in the air, so she's wrapped herself in her house coat tightly and has hugged her arms tightly around her middle, but Regina doesn't feel the cold - she's in nothing but a thin nightgown with a mussed braid over her right shoulder. Regina turns with a faint smile made visible by the brightness of the full moon high in the sky. Her hands clutched around that smooth wooden bowl and the few rose petals inside.
"Summoning up a spell to find my soulmate," she tells her sister. "It's called Animae Amicum." Regina walks barefoot around the backyard, not caring if Zelena stays or returns to bed. She reaches high on bushes, low to flowerbeds to pluck the most perfect petals she can find as she wishes for a soulmate.
"His eyes will be as blue as the sea," she grins, pulling at the baby blue petal from a tulip. "And he'll be an archer. He'll never miss his target." Zelena follows Regina around, listening intently and pushing the deep rooting confusion away and allows her sister to finish her spell. "His favourite animal will be a…." Regina pauses to put some extra thought into this one, pursing her lips and tilting her head before she pulls the petal from the stem, "A lion."
"Why a lion?" Zelena asks, pushing up high on her tiptoes to peer over Regina's shoulder into the bowl of petals as the next one is dropped inside.
"Because they are strong and loyal," Regina explains, and smiles sweetly as she decides on her next trait, "Just like he will be. He will be honourable, righteous and good."
"Is that all?"
"No, one more…" Regina wanders back over to the apple tree and notices a small flower blooming at its trunk. She reaches down to the tiny, white petalled beauty and closes her eyes while she makes her final wish, "He will be a wonderful father."
Zelena follows Regina around the garden as she gathers a petal for each of her soulmate's traits. She's undeniably confused. She and Regina are night and day when it comes to wanting to fall in love. Regina fears the day someone tries to touch her heart whereas Zelena is hungry like a wolf. "I thought you never wanted to fall in love?" Zelena asks across the darkness of the garden.
"That's the point," Regina explains, sitting down on the cool grass with crossed legs. Zelena sits across from her with the bowl planted in between them, and Regina finishes, "If my soulmate is someone that I dream up, then he'll never exist." Zelena frowns at her reasoning, so Regina chooses to look away. "And if he never exists, then I'll never have to worry about having my heart broken." It's a sad reason to summon such a spell but it might be the only way Regina can ever live her life without the fear of falling head first into someone's heart just to be ripped away from it. "Will you help me?" Regina asks, stretching both hands to her side, reaching for Zelena.
Her sister nods and grips her fingers tightly, "Always."
…...
As the girls grew older together, somehow they managed to become more and more different while maintaining an alliance as durable as a diamond.
Zelena blossomed into a gorgeous, poised creature throughout her teenage years, her curves bringing with them another wave of confidence, while Regina, undeniably equally as beautiful, tended to shy away from being noticed; wearing baggier clothing, staying silent, living life in the cracks.
Regina, instead, completely blossomed into a magnificent witch. When the school days would end, Regina would walk past the rosemary by their garden gates and become an entirely new entity in the confines of their home, but only within their home. She never could possess Zelena's boldness to cast at school like when she hadn't studied for a test but needed to pass, or on the way home in a candy store when they were short a dollar or two.
Ingrid used to joke that the perfect witch lay within them both, that if there was a way to blend them together as one, that their power would be unrivalled all around the world and throughout history.
Like any sisters, there was always an unspoken jealousy. Zelena struggled to keep it grounded more than Regina, her need to be the centre of attention getting in the way of her learning, but as the years went on, both sisters silently agreed to let each other have their area to shine. Zelena would be the social butterfly and Regina would be the silent sorcerer.
And, for the most part, that's how they lived their teenage years. Though as years passed, Regina began to let the fear of their family curse inhibit her passion to cast and conjure. Slowly, she became virtually dormant, refusing to even light a candle without a match. She slipped further and further into her shadows as Zelena neared morning light and wildly hunted for a life outside their bubble.
That's how they ended up here. In the earliest of their early twenties and still living in Ingrid's home. Not for long, though. At least for one sister.
Zelena giggles wildly and she skips passed a pyjama clad Regina on her way to the front door, her jampacked duffel bag begging to fall from her shoulders on the floor. Regina shakes her head, stifling a chuckle with a soft bite to her bottom lip and decides to follow Zelena out onto the front porch, abandoning her steaming mug of tea inside.
Zelena tosses her bag at the most recent love of her life, all wild laughter and love-sick grinning. "I'll be in the car," he calls out, waving over his shoulder and adds, "Bye, Regina!"
"Goodbye, Walsh," Regina humours with the smallest hint of a smile, crossing her arms over her chest to keep the cold air from slipping through any gaps in her thin navy robe, asking, "What's going on?"
The way Zelena's nose scrunches excitedly and the ice blue of her eyes shimmer in the white light of the moon is the equivalent of her screaming it from the rooftops.
"You're leaving…" Regina realises, slack-jawed and crestfallen.
"Yes," Zelena sighs out happily, bringing her hand over her heart.
Regina shakes her head again, trying to find any words that can manage to crawl through the thick sludge that's building up in the back of her throat. "With Walsh?" She asks, meaner than initially intended, but she's lucky she managed to spout any words at all.
"Sure, he's a little… strange," Zelena agrees, plopping down to sit on the front steps on the porch. She pats Regina's bare leg, encouraging her to follow, and they sit closely side by side, thighs pressed together and their hands clutched and pulled over into Zelena's lap. "He's my ticket out of here, Regina. And he loves me."
Zelena never once lost her need for adventure, it has always bubbled away like the variety of potions and spells they've learned to conjure over the years. Regina tries to understand, she always has, but the concrete walls she has built, high and sturdy, to confine her heart in a safe place prevents any of Zelena's wondrous confidence from weaselling its way in.
"Where do you even want to go?" Regina asks. Her voice cracks sadly, torn between trying to be supportive and her desire to be selfish; she wants nothing more than for Zelena to follow her heart and acquire every dream no matter how big or small, it's only right that one of them have the courage to do it, but her heart can't take another loss.
Zelena throws her head back in thought, her gorgeous red hair falling down to her mid back, thick with curls and as much fire as her personality. "Everywhere," she answers, though quick to amend to, "anywhere."
"Storybrooke isn't all bad," Regina sighs. Sure, the people in town are temperamental but it has served them well.
"I want to end up over the rainbow, Sis, where no one has ever heard of us," Zelena sighs with a tight squeeze to Regina's hand. Though her grin fades away when Regina's complexion drops as her lips curl downward, creating an anguished frown. "Hey…" Zelena coos, reaching to cup Regina's face softly, and something hits her, an idea that sparks up behind her eyes. "Come with us."
"What?!" Regina outright laughs. "With you and Walsh? Talk about being a third wheel."
Pressing her forehead firmly against Regina's, Zelena assures, "The only third wheel in this situation would be Walsh and you know it."
The snort leaves her nose before she can do anything to stop it. "He'd love that," Zelena smirks with her, "but I can't, Zelena. You'll have to conquer Oz without me."
Breathing out a sad laugh, Zelena smacks a kiss on Regina's forehead, just as Walsh honks the horn twice. She stands straight up and yells at him to stop ruining our moment, but it's all in good fun. He chuckles loudly and she sticks out her tongue. "He wants to get away before Ingrid gets back."
Regina stands and takes a moment to memorise her sister's face, every curve of it, the shade of her hair, her eyes, not that Regina could ever forget it, but she takes the moment just incase. "Why do I feel like I'm never going to see you again?"
Zelena moves firmly in front of her, actually closer to her height now because Zelena's standing on the lower step. "That will never happen. You can always check up on me, you have your little mirror trick." Regina nods sadly, muttering I know. She's been able to watch through mirrors since she was fifteen, a self taught trick that Zelena can't quite grasp, but it doesn't ease her mind.
Then Zelena takes one quick look around the garden, on the street to make sure there is nobody passing by, and out nowhere her hand plunges deep into Regina's chest, only for a short moment, until she's gripped onto her sister's beating organ and pulls it out to hold in front of them. It's pure and a whimsical red, beating strongly. "Your heart," Zelena mumbles, ignoring Regina's grunt and expletives at the discomfort, then reaches into her own chest for her own heart, the words falling from her lips, "my heart."
Zelena holds them close together as Regina peers down between them as small wisps, bright shades of pinks, reds and oranges travel from one heart to the other, a connection being formed that is, in every respect, indescribable.
"Our heart," Zelena professes, giving Regina back the heavy muscle that she has quite literally gone to the extreme to protect.
With tears welled up in her eyes, Regina presses the beating heart back into her chest and inhales deeply at the sudden surge of unfamiliar feelings, comfortable and welcoming emotions. She can feel the smallest hint of Zelena's excitement flowing around her own arteries now, so she tells Zelena to, "Go. Now. Before I change my mind and curse you to stay in this town forever. Go and find the sun."
Zelena doesn't spare a second. She hugs Regina in close, squeezing her so tightly that Regina almost can't breathe, but it's welcomed, and she heads for the car, leaning into Walsh's open driver's window and kissing him happily.
Sparing Regina a final look, Zelena turns and calls out across the lawn, "I love you, Red," and she squints her eyes to Regina's left, down by her bare feet, and conjures an apple as red as the blood that keeps them alive next to Regina on the porch.
"I love you more, Green," Regina smiles sadly as she reaches down for the fruit. She repays the favour, winking playfully to conjure a crisp, green apple, making it appear on top of Walsh's car.
Zelena smirks madly, taking a hearty, crunching bite out of the bitter fruit that she loves and climbs into the car. As it speeds away, Zelena stands up to hang out from the sunroof of the car, something Regina would never have the guts to do, and with fruit in hand, Zelena blows a kiss her way. A small, sweet gesture that Regina makes sure to catch in her hand, clutching a fist around air before bringing it to hold tightly against her chest.
I hope you enjoyed it! I can't wait to bring you more!