Hi everybody! This is my first fiction. I hope You all kind of enjoy it. Please keep in mind that I'm no native english speaker.
Chapter 1: Her way out of hell
6 months after ‚The Seven Wonders'. Misty Day is still trapped in her own hell.
Even though her soul didn't occupy her body anymore, she felt sick. She didn't know how hell managed it to let her keep on vomiting every tenth time she cut the frog beneath her shaking hands. Her eyes burning from the endless flood of tears she shed. The same tears and that certain liquid exiting her stomach through her mouth mixed together at the skin of her chin, leaving red stains as a reaction of her skin to salt and acid. It reminded her of the fire that melted her skin once, as she again screamed her already familiar 'No!' and her skin cracked open under the mimic.
And maybe it was this physical pain that caused a sudden change of thoughts in her mind. There was no desperation anymore, no sadness. There was anger. Unanswered questions like why did it hurt her skin, when there was no body anymore? Or was there a body? And if there was, why doesn't it collapse after such physical torture? Misty remembered several occasions as a young woman when she just fainted. Getting up from bed too fast had made her feel dizzy more than once. Sitting in the consulting room of a physicians' clinic, watching a needle being pushed under her skin, she fainted. She was healthy and fit and in any way underweight but call it a layer of her character, her body just did react that way when something happened, that it couldn't cope with. She took the scalpel again and looked at the blade, clean and sharp as new, although used countless times. She only thought a couple of seconds in with her jaw clenched, the muscles visibly contracting in her face. Her right fist hovered over the frog ready to cut the animal again. She felt sweat forming on her face, her neck and in the palms of her hand. That was the last proof. She was physical. She managed a satisfied grin when she moved both of her hands, the left one palm up just above the frog, the right one just doing the same movement that it did only one minute ago.
Misty felt her wristband loosen as it was cut through at the same moment she felt a relieving pain. She looked down on what she did, watched her blood well out of her body, bright red and warm. Her smile grew when she felt her fingertips and lips getting numb, her skin turning a greyish light blue and then the lack of blood and there with oxygen finally hat consequence on her brain and body functions. Her vision became blurry at once, then suddenly black. The last thing her senses realized was the thud, with which her body made contact to the floor.
She was ready for eternal darkness.
"Well, I'm not ready for you, yet!" Cordelia Foxx said, when she approached the group of young girls and boys standing near the door to the greenhouse, which was locked as long as there were students in the house during the day.
Since the number of students grew this was one of the necessary rules Cordelia had to make. She kept the keys in her office and every student who wanted to go into the greenhouse had to ask for permission and tell the Supreme (as well as headmistress) why and how long they will be in the greenhouse.
"Give me another ten minutes to prepare something, then I'll get you in" she added, while pushing herself through the small crowd. She was annoyed. Sometimes she thought that this must be the way a common high school teacher must feel. Bored students sitting on the floor, leaned against the wall in the hallways, tapping their feet to the music in their ears which was also heard by everyone else in the room.
"When can we come in, Miss Foxx?" a girl asked, chewing bubblegum noisy. Cordelia already unlocking the door turned around and looked at that girl, who was blowing a bubble now and let it pop. Cordelia rolled her eyes. "Ten minutes" she said again, slipping through the door and locking it behind her. She let her front rest against the cool wood of the door and took a deep breath. She didn't feel as if she locked herself in. It was more as if she locked the whole world out. And then the tears came again. "Oh, Misty" she cried quietly. Soft sobs exiting her mouth. She held her hand over her mouth, not wanting any of her students outside the door to hear her.
There was not a single day, when Cordelia shed a couple of tears and some regretful thoughts about the beautiful young witch she longed to get to know more, but who lost her soul and was gone forever. It was so very unfair. Misty never wanted to be supreme. Cordelia herself insisted, that she might take part. Myrtle changed the order of tests. Maybe Misty would be still alive, maybe she would have failed in any of the other tasks so she wouldn't have had to attend Descensum. Maybe, maybe, maybe…..
The tears dried. Cordelia adjusted her sleeves, took a pile of paper out of her bag and placed five pages on each workstation. She swallowed and cleared her throat, turned to "her" workstation and mixed some fluids together, poured some of them in to smaller Erlenmeyer flasks, put them onto a tray, walked over to her students' workstation again and placed on f the flasks on every table.
She was done.
She blew a strain of hair out of her face, taking a last look at her work and nodded satisfied. Then she turned around to let her students in. She smiled bravely while unlocking the door to welcome her class, but when she took a step beck, to let them in, she looked into an empty space in front of her. They were gone. Cordelia shut her eyes for one second, opened them again, but her sight was still the same: no students. She took two steps forwards to look around the corner, left, right nothing. She turned around confused once, twice. Then she heard a terrible scream: " Oh my God! Do something! She's bleeding!" Cordelia started into a sprint onto that direction the voices were coming from. She recognized the voice as one of her students', so she assumed that one of them was hurt. She entered living area, worried about that injured student in the middle of the crowd. "Let me through!" She shouted, pushing her way free, maybe too roughly. Then she saw her, her hair damp and unruly, her skin pale as chalk but still so beautiful. One of the girls in the room kneeled beside her, pressing a piece of cloth onto her left arm. Cordelia guessed it was a kitchen towel, but she couldn't tell, because it was reddened and soaking from blood. She collapsed on her knees, clutched the chest of the woman lying in the floor as if to find out, whether she was really there. She took her head in her hands, it was heavy and fell from one side to the other, lifeless. "Get away from her, let me handle that!" Cordelia said to the girl, who was trying to stop the bleeding. The girl moved and Cordelia switched positions with her. She took the towel away, put her palm carefully onto the deep wound and closed her eyes. She let her magic work. She felt a small amount of her own life and strength leaving her. The room became silent. Seconds turned to minutes. Cordelia felt weak, but she knew she had to keep on trying. She couldn't let her go again. And finally she felt the skin under her palm get warm and dry. She opened her eyes and looked down and took her hand away from the woman's arm. No sign of injury, no scar. Cordelia smiled, her eyes wandering up to the woman's face. She was back. "Misty!" Cordelia whispered before she lost consciounsness.