The End:
She had enough. Talent mattered not anymore. She was powerful - she was good at her endeavours - heck! she was the best in some crafts. Witchcraft namely. Magic was her life and her life was for magic. Magic allowed her to escape, it allowed her to think, feel, be anything she wanted. Anything she could not achieve in real life she could achieve in a spell. Happiness? What did that word even mean? Did it ever mean anything? If happiness is a fusion of joy and contentment then she never felt it. Joy, a tad, contentment, a mite. Never both and never either for a very long time.
She could hear their voices around her. 'Constance is this' and 'Constance is that' and 'Constance, Constance, Constance.' She felt like she ceased being a person. She became a topic - something to talk about, something to surmise about and something to use. A thing to pass the blame upon, a thing to spectate over, a thing! She could not take it! If one spoke of her in the correct context, she could accept it, but not inaccurate ascertains. Not the people nodding in agreement without knowing the facts. They were not in her mind! They could not know her! But yet they did! They knew what they saw but what they saw was lies. A thing that they created - created of her. How dare they? She was a person too. Just like them. But no, not that Hardbroom woman, she was different. She was different because they made her different.
The word habit had lost its meaning. It used to mean a tendency, a custom - a common and repetitive trait or action from a person. If she was contemplative she was depressed. That is what they said, so heaven forbid! it must be true! She was depressed all the time, they said. They said, everything in her life became about what they said and they thought. She was sick of them. The other people. She was silent for two days, wishing away small-talk and they called her depressed. If she read a book she was ignoring them, if she cracked a joke, she was trying too hard - what lark! She was depressed but they diagnosed her with fake depression - angst they called it. What had happened to her? Nothing. Other people have it worse. Goodness! For the hungriest person in the world could be told that there is someone more thirsty than they. No one suffered more than another because they suffered differently - minds registered things diversely.
Just because Mistress Broomhead never beat her badly does not mean that somebody had it worse. A beating will cut one but it is the psychological strikes that leave scars. The torture of the silence in that locked room - the sullen stillness -the screaming outside - knowing that all that separated she and the hurt was the woman who wanted her dead. Her talent was a threat to her; she could make her look bad - heck! She might do better than her! She would have to put her in her place - know the talent was there but diminish it - take her love for her craft; her confidence, her potential. She took it almost completely. Like chopping off an arm from the elbow, something was left but only a bare resemblance to what it once was.
And yet somebody had it worse than she had. Sure, they did, in different ways. A hungry girl would have a full and loving family - a bereaved family member might have memories - a traumatised soul might have hope. She had none of that. Someone who once was frightened may not be frightened anymore. She had forgotten her fear, but her dreams never let that go. Just when her life might have some hope, the dreams of her past would rage upon her - she would die again and again and always wake up, having to face it all again with a fresh memory full of memories dark and dreary. Emotions so strong she shuddered beneath them. It was fine when she could cry but she was numb now. There was an agony so deep within her heart and her soul that she could not reach it - it gnawed at her constantly, never resting, but she could not cry! A constant vibration of anguish befell her - those were her tears now. She could not control them anymore.
The elixir of death - her misery, her pained-memories, her banishment - it was never complete without the fatal ingredient. Loneliness. Her family loved her - she had that but she never quite fit in. Other commitments over their heads - the antichrist of her life - the bane of her existence took from her the rituals shared between every parent and child. The stems of her loneliness she could trace back to one single event - learning to ride a broomstick all by herself. Like a mortal child and their bike, a Witch was deigned to learn from her parents. The enchanted broomstick (like a bike with stabilizers) kept the child at bay - giving one a feel for the real thing was her practice. She would ask her mother to come out and help but only after a few seconds the tables would be overthrown and call her away. She was alone again. Relentlessly she would go from the enchanted broomstick to the real one - and she would always fall alone. The tricks, the balance, she would always acquire alone. Her first proper flight, alone. It was not only this - ever after, she never wanted anyone with her. She learned all one needs is oneself to live but it ached to see others so socially prosperous.
Friends they were called, abandoned her. Acquaintances would get to know her and just as a glimmer of friendship presented itself, they ran off with somebody else. Anyone seemed to be preferable to her. She was the best friend, the most loyal friend one could ask for - she had gone out of her way for them. The worst part was that they just did not care. She mattered not.
She had died inside many years ago. A branch of her loneliness grew ever further at a party of a friend. All children played with one another and she approached them. She asked them to play. She would never forget it - they looked at one another and one then spoke - only girls that were seven were allowed play. Thus, she was cast out, for she was still six. She was the only girl in the entire group of twelve that was excluded. For hours. People accuse children of dramatising their feelings - that they cannot feel as adults do - but she felt it that night. A sorrow so overwhelming that she wished to stop existing. Just to close her eyes and be cast to oblivion. What really stuck the dagger in her heart was, after an hour or so, she realised that three of the girls allowed play were younger than she. She approached them, sick of the mortification and told them - then the criteria changed - girls with the name beginning with 'C' could not play. There was another girl with a name beginning with 'C' - then, when no more arguments could be started, they bullied her until she left the room. The dark hall she never forgot - the shadows of the hanging pictures that cast from the light peeking out from the kitchen. The halls frightened her - it was one of the lowest, loneliest points in her life. She felt like she exuded a negative energy because everybody seemed to hate her. For the first time in her life, standing in those halls, Constance wanted to die.
And she never left those halls.