Author's Note: Dear Juvia, I'm sorry I enjoy writing chapters where you're unhappy better than ones where you're happy. Sincerely, me. Might be going to a bi-weekly cadence for a bit. Want to do more revisions on these.
CHAPTER TEN
Return of the Rain Witch
The day she returned to Inis Stoirm, it rained.
Of course it did.
It wasn't because of her. It wasn't! It wasn't as though the island was named Inis Stoirm by accident. Storms were a way of life on Inis Stoirm and had been long before she'd ever set foot on its shore.
But it didn't matter.
Juvia stepped onto the docks, rain pattering against her pink parasol, and she felt eyes immediately on her. She saw them, the villagers. Saw their faces. Saw the fear, the anger, the despair. Saw the hate. Professor Jose led her back through the village towards the abbey while she tried to ignore the stares, the whispers, the accusations, but it was a lost cause.
Long familiar feelings smoldered in her, festering like a reopened wound. It all came back. The anger. The resentment. The isolation.
Overhead, the storm shifted and changed, and she knew it was hers once again.
The little rain witch and her oldest friend.
Juvia was running out of ideas.
Apparently, in her absence, some of the other girls had found a number of her hiding spaces and taken them for their own. She had a near miss with one of her textbooks stashed in her favorite alcove the previous night. Eithne had found the textbook while stowing away some letters of her own, but fortunately, it had only been her Herbology textbook. Juvia had managed to sell it as nothing more than a boring botany book, and the other wards quickly lost interest. Now, however, she needed a new hiding space for it and all her other books.
The obvious choice, of course, was the abbess' study, but the Reverend Mother had taken ill as of late, confined largely to the infirmary. Sister Paul had taken over duties for the abbess and was in and out of the abbess' study all day long. Juvia could scarcely keep her supplies there. She even had to sneak into the study and pinch the abbess' wand one morning shortly after her return to Inis Storim before Sister Paul came across it. The wands, the abbess' and her own, she kept on her at all times, but she still needed a place to stow her books, and the abbey wasn't helping her any. All the spots she knew of ran too many risks of being seen. She'd have to find someplace outside the abbey walls.
Bundling up her Charms and Defense Against the Dark Arts books into her little bag and shouldering the pack, she left the confines of the abbey, the rain pattering a steady beat against her parasol, and weighed her options. She started by looking down the path that wound its way to the village below.
Well, that was out.
While there was sure to be a couple of dozen abandoned homes and stores that would serve as a decent bolthole, the last thing she needed was to have someone from the village come across her Charms textbook. She didn't know if witches were burnt at stakes nowadays, but she was in no hurry to find out.
There was the beach below, she supposed. There were a number of rocks the tide never touched that she could squirrel away a book or two. And as much of the Sisters disliked the climb and wouldn't bother to go down the stairs, she could be reasonably sure that the books would be safe from their prying eyes.
She peered over the edge of the bluff and scowled. That was no good either.
It seemed the other girls had taken over the beach for themselves in her absence. She could see littered bits of plastic and glass along with a forgotten basket wedged beneath some rocks on the beach.
Her beach.
The rain pelted hard against her umbrella.
Swallowing her growing irritation, she rounded the abbey until she looked out towards the west, to the fields that extended out around the abbey. From the little time she spent there with the abbess gathering potion reagents, she knew the fields to be nothing more than grass and flowers. What few fences might have served as potential hiding spots were often patrolled by farmers seeking to keep their sheep from going astray. Anything she hid there would be soon discovered.
Beginning to feel the situation as rather hopeless, she rounded the abbey again until she was facing north and a faded path winding its way further up the bluff.
That was strange.
In all her years at the abbey, she'd never taken that path before. Not with the abbess or during her rare solo excursions out of the abbey. She couldn't even properly recall having seen the path before, but she supposed she must have. It had obviously been there for a while.
No other palatable options left to her, she started down the path.
Inis Stoirm was not a large island. Just a few miles one way and a few the other with the abbey of St. Brigid's on its eastern point and the little village of Baile Stoirm to the south. And yet the path never seemed to end. Switchback trails carried her further up the bluffs and then around a mass of crags that climbed out the center of the island, blocking the abbey and village off from view.
An hour into her climb, the air seemed to change. It grew frigid around her, her breath escaping in little clouds, and the bluff ahead was shrouded in a rolling fog. Shivering in the chilled air, she pulled her coat tighter to her and continued on.
A few minutes more, Juvia encountered the first signs of a structure. Or where once a structure stood. Stone fences, now crumbling under the weight of neglect and time, seemed to have been guarding a large empty field. An old farm, perhaps? But she couldn't see a farmhouse or remnants of one, not that she could see much through the mist that swirled out on the bluff. There was nothing here but the crumbling fences and the cawing of ravens whose forms she could barely make out in the mist perched along the bits of crumbling fences.
The road ended as abruptly as it began, right at a pair of stone columns, one still standing while the other had toppled onto the ground. On the one still standing, she spied a plaque, a plaque that bore a family crest. The crest was an ornate sort of thing, as most crests were but was well worn by the same passage of time that had felled the column beside it. The shield she couldn't quite make out, but it was supported on each side by what looked to be a hippocampus. A raven, the clearest image remaining, sat as its crest, its wings outstretched. A motto had been etched below the shield, but all she could read of the motto now were the words maris and patria.
The funny thing was, as faded and incomplete as the crest was, it was familiar. She had seen it before. Hadn't she? Maybe one of the abbey's old books? Surely someone would have written down something about what stood here before. And yet, she was sure she had seen it recently.
Her fingertips had barely grazed the plaque before she drew her hand back again, a shiver running down the length of her spine.
She shouldn't be here.
It was all wrong. This place.
She shouldn't be here.
Her feet moved long before the thoughts could form in her head. She let them take her back down the worn, winding path, but she paused only a few moments later at a marker at the bluff's edge. She approached the bluff and peered down at a beach, far larger than her own below the abbey but no less protected by the steep cliff faces that shielded it from sight. The marker itself stood at the start of a series of steps carved into the bluffs, but unlike the steps at the abbey which were a mismatch of size and shape — a constant threat of a tumble always one misstep away — the steps carved here were clearly well-planned and executed with a sturdy railing framing the entire pathway down.
Glancing around once, half expecting some irate farmer to come charging up the bluff to demand she get away from his land, she started down the steps. More than once, Juvia had to pause in her descent to bite down the wave of panic that hit her. The bluff at the abbey was only a fraction of the height here. The cliffs here towered out of the sea and, rail or no, scaling down them surfaced more than a few fears.
She let out a sigh of relief as her feet sank down into beach sand rather than hitting the hard steps. There was no sign of any human visitors to the beach. No footprints. No tools. Even the steps, proof enough that people were here at one point, were overrun by weeds and vines, left to neglect much as the fences had been, though they seemed to have weathered the weight of time better.
Pushing thoughts aside for the present, she focused on the far more pressing matter. She started looking for spots she could use as a cache. There were a few decent spots that seemed far enough back to keep anything she hid safe from the tide that rolled in and out, but one decent storm brought on by a fight with Eithne or an argument with Sister Paul and she'd be left with waterlogged books and rusted cauldrons. Heaving a sigh, she searched on, looking for anything. A nice hollow in the wall. A good outcropping of rocks. A…
Well, that'd work.
She paused before a little fissure in the bluff, an opening small and concealed that she could hardly see until she was right on it. Eyeing the opening cautiously, rather waiting for the whole thing to come crashing down as she crossed the threshold — that was the standard course of things for little rain witches — she picked her way through the opening only for it to widen out into a large cavern comprised of a single chamber.
The cavern was an odd thing, a mix of wild and civilized natures. It had the natural bits that one would expect to see in a cave. There were stalagmites on the ground and stalactites from the roof, and a little lagoon that formed in the back of the cave. There were even a number of bats that she could see roosting from the roof, Juvia briefly debating squirreling away a couple in her trunk when it came time to return to Hogwarts to hide them in Minerva's things.
There were, however, a number of oddities that had no business being in a damp little cave on a beach. For instance, a small table and chair had been set towards the back of the chamber with a fireplace positioned next to it, not that it had a flue that she could see. There were also torches lining the walls all around the chamber, positioned every meter or so. As she approached each, they crackled alive, casting flickering shadows and making monsters' claws of the stalagmites around them. Further back, beside the table and chair, a number of shelves had been mounted, each holding a number of books and most seemed to be textbooks like hers. One shelf held a number of potion texts. Another, some books on Charms. Herbology books were set on a shelf that rested over a little planter whose occupants out have withered and died years ago.
She paused before a shelf with what seemed to be Defense Against the Dark Art texts and pulled one, Advanced Counterspells and Counter-jinxes, from the shelf. It wasn't one of the texts that she had seen used in Hogwarts, and Professor Jose had them reading all sorts of texts for the Phantom Lords. The book itself seemed rather old, its pages faded and yellowed, and the binding well cut and frayed. Some of the books further back on the shelf seemed far older still, nearly set to crumble to dust if she touched them.
She returned the book to its place. Fetching her own Defense Against the Dark Arts text from her pack, she paused before the shelf, debating if she could add her own to the shelf as it seemed well-laden as it was.
Click, click, click.
Juvia turned to look to the source of the sound, a few inches away from the shelf. A peg that she knew certainly wasn't there a moment ago now waited level with the shelf, holding on to nothing but air. She cautiously reached for it only to just miss the shelf as it whizzed by, extending out until it passed the newly added peg. Now left with plenty of room for her own text, Juvia set the textbook onto the shelf.
"Ummm… thank you?" she said quietly, waiting for some house elf or other creature to appear and take credit for the deed, but no such creature appeared. After a moment's pause to be certain she was still quite alone, she pulled out her Charms text next and attempted to add it to the newly extended shelf. As soon as she had set it on the shelf, though, the book shot straight out again, knocked away by some unseen hand. Juvia let out a little shriek and ducked down while the textbook flew by overhead. It landed behind her with a thud, echoed by another clanking sound elsewhere in the cave. She turned to see the shelf that had contained the other Charms textbooks had extended to open new space of her textbook.
"Well, fine," Juvia muttered, fetching the book from the ground. She set the Charms textbook onto the newly extended shelf, ready to dodge another flying textbook that never came. The book rested comfortably on the shelf.
She moved on to the Potions textbooks and pulled down the one that looked the least beaten by time and exposure. She flipped through the pages of the book, taking care not to jostle the book more than necessary, but she found no markings inside. No name on the cover. No notes in the margins. It looked just as if it had been taken straight from a store to be stashed away in this damp cave on a little island in the middle of nowhere. She checked a few other books, but all were the same. Nothing offered any clues as to who had built this little witch's den.
Maybe the abbess would know.
"Thank you, dear," the Reverend Mother said as Juvia handed the abbess' wand back to her. "I forgot to lock it away after I made that last batch of potions. Glad that Sister Paul didn't come across it before you spirited it away. I hate having to wipe her memory. Gets rather messy after a while." The abbess returned the wand to its case and locked the case with the key she wore around her neck. "I am sorry, little one, that I did not greet you properly when you returned."
"Juvia understands. You've been ill," the girl replied as she helped the abbess back to her chair, the older woman struggling for breath at the slight exertion of energy. Once the Reverend Mother had been returned safely to her chair, Juvia busied herself with pouring the tea brought to them by Sister Adele for the abbess and herself.
"The dangers of getting old, my dear. I suppose its the climate. It just doesn't suit me as it used to."
Juvia winced, pangs of guilt joining all the other festering emotions that added to the storm. "Juvia's sorry. Her rain —"
"Isn't what made me ill. I caught a chill weeks before you returned. Inis Stoirm has never been a favorable place for those with weak constitutions. Now, enough of that. Tell me, how have you found Hogwarts? Are you enjoying it?"
"Very much so, Reverend Mother."
"That's good. What's your favorite class so far?"
"Potions, though she also likes Herbology and History of Magic."
"Oh Lord, you'll be the first person to ever say that with a straight face, I wager. Never known anyone able to get through a full year of History of Magic without falling asleep in class at least once. Hopefully your professor is more entertaining than mine was."
"Professor Jura is very interesting."
"And how about Professor Precht?"
"Juvia likes him. Some of the other students are rather afraid of him, but Juvia thinks he's fair."
The abbess smiled. "Yes, he can be rather daunting, but there's very few people that know more of magic than Professor Precht. Have you met Professor Makarov at all?"
"Yes," Juvia nodded. "He taught Juvia how to get rid of her storms. Not that you can tell now," the girl muttered.
"Peace, my dear. The rain will be gone soon enough," the abbess said as she patted the girl's hand.
"Can't Juvia just use her spell?" she asked, looking hopefully to the Reverend Mother.
The elderly woman shook her head. "I'm sorry, dear. No spells outside of Hogwarts."
Juvia looked down to her tea, letting the warmth of the cup chase away the chill of the rain, something it did very poorly. "Reverend Mother? Have there been other wizards on Inis Stoirm before?"
"Possibly," the woman replied. "There are the previous abbesses, of course. The abbess of St. Brigid's is always a witch."
Juvia frowned. "All of them? Why?"
The Reverend Mother shrugged. "Tradition, I suppose. It's why most things that don't make sense are still done. It's just the way it's always been."
"But why Inis Stoirm?"
"I couldn't say. I'm sure there was some perfectly reasonable explanation for it at one point, but if there was, none of my predecessors saw fit to write it down. Why the interest in other wizards on Inis Stoirm?"
Juvia paused a moment before proceeding, not sure she wanted to give her away her hiding spot. "Juvia found a cave on a beach to the north. It looks like someone had been studying there. There are textbooks. Some look very old. And torches that light on their own. And shelves that expand when they need to."
The abbess frowned. "What beach is this?"
"It's just off the path north of the abbey. There's a stairway that goes down the northern bluffs."
The abbess appeared thoughtful a moment. "Well, I suppose one of the previous abbess' might have had a witch or two at St. Brigid's. My predecessor never mentioned any such cave, though. Still, it may be useful to you. I dare say you'll be safer there than closer to the abbey. Just be cautious when you're around there," she said as she poured herself another cup, the pot trembling slightly under her unsteady grip, "particularly with the steps. She damn near broke her neck going down them after a storm."
Juvia stared at the woman whose focus had shifted entirely to keeping her pot from spilling everywhere. "Who, Reverend Mother?"
The abbess returned the pot to the desk and looked at Juvia quizzically. "Who, dear?"
"You said she nearly broke her neck going down the steps. Who's she?"
The abbess frowned, her brow furrowed. "Did I now? Oh, don't pay me much mind, dear. My memory, I fear, is not what it once was. I must have been thinking of Sister Adele. She nearly slipped last month trying to fetch little Erin from the beach for her lessons."
Juvia didn't press the abbess further. She merely drank her tea and wondered what other secrets Inis Storim still hid.
The trouble with her cavernous hideaway was that the sea was never far away. Studying was damn near impossible with the sea singing out for her all the while. She started every day dutifully pouring over her texts, but eventually she would be lured out to sit by the beach for the remainder of the day. Professor Jose wouldn't be pleased. He had been insistent that she and Gajeel were to continue with their studies over the break, but she couldn't deny the sea.
Nearly a month after her return to Inis Stoirm, she was once more on the beach, her parasol sheltering her from the gently pattering rain while the tide lapped at her bare feet. So lost in her song, she never noticed that she was no longer alone.
"Don't you ever catch a chill sitting in the rain?"
Juvia tensed at the voice that was most decidedly not the abbess nor any of the Sisters of St. Brigid's. She turned cautiously towards a dark-haired man standing behind her, a black umbrella in his hand. Pale skin, dark eyes and black clothes, he looked rather like a specter or a vampire. She shrank down.
"Not the most talkative child, are you?" There was no reproach in his voice nor malice in his manner. He merely smiled at her. Soft. Sad. Small. It mirrored his eyes. She relaxed slightly.
"Juvia doesn't have many people to talk to," she replied.
"And yet you have an entire village and abbey of people to speak with."
"They do not want to speak to Juvia," she replied, not bothering to mask the bitterness in her voice. "Juvia does not want to speak to them."
"For the best, really," he said as he took a seat beside her on the beach. "Muggles never say anything worth hearing."
"Are you a wizard?"
"I am. Are you a witch?"
"Juvia is. Are you here to see the abbess?"
He shook his head. "No. I'm here to see the witch who calls the storms."
"Why?" She asked with a frown.
"I've acquaintances among the Ministry. They've taken an interest in you. They want my opinion."
Juvia, whose tension returned the moment the Ministry was mentioned, regarded the man with curiosity nonetheless. "And? What opinion did you form of Juvia?"
He chuckled. "I've scarcely met you. How can I have an opinion? Will you allow me to sit with you for a while to form one?"
"If you like," she replied. "Juvia is not very interesting company, though."
"Ah, ah." He wagged a finger at her. "Let me make the opinion, if it's all the same to you. No sense in you doing my job for me."
In spite of herself, a smile crept onto her face. "What's your name?"
"You can call me Tristan, if you like."
"Is that your real name?"
"No, but I liked it once. I would not mind hearing it again." He watched her intently a moment, Juvia squirming slightly under his stare. But unlike Professor Jose who seemed to be picking apart his faults when he stared at her, Tristan seemed to be searching for something when he looked her. Something he didn't seem to find. His smiled faded, his eyes full of remorse or pity. She couldn't tell which. "Do you not get lonely here? Sitting alone? Would you not have been happier at St. Rowena's? Among your own kind?"
Juvia couldn't contain the scoff that escaped at the thought. "If not for Gajeel, Juvia would have been lonelier at Hogwarts than she is at Inis Stoirm, even among her own kind. The Slytherins want nothing to do with her because she's a mud… Muggle-born. The other Houses want nothing to do with her because she's a Slytherin. At least Muggles have the excuse of ignorance. If they understood, they'd lose their fear, the abbess says."
Tristan's almost kind demeanor contorted in an instant, becoming cold and severe, jaw clenched and dark eyes gleaming with resentment and anger. "Muggles won't ever understand," he nearly spat, every word short and harsh. "They aren't capable of understanding." Then the anger passed as quickly as it came, replaced by the sadness and regret. "I had a younger brother once. He was killed by Muggles who could not understand."
Drown the bitch. The red face of the fishmonger flashed across her mind. She shivered.
"They aren't capable of understanding," he repeated, without the same venom as before.
"Juvia's sorry about your brother."
He turned to her and smiled. Sad. Soft. Small. "I'm sorry, too."
The pair went quiet, watching the sea that rolled in and out. At length, when the sky began to darken with the setting of a sun they couldn't see, he stood again. "Well, little Lockser, I think I'll take my leave for the day."
"Have you an opinion of Juvia yet?"
"Not yet. Would you mind if I came out tomorrow to learn more?"
She shook her head no.
"Very well. Until tomorrow, little Lockser," he said, ruffling her hair. With a smallpop, he apparated away, leaving her alone to the singing sea.
She pulled her knees up to her chest and returned to her song.
For the next few weeks, Tristan appeared on the beach, taking a seat next to her. Sometimes she'd talk about Hogwarts or about the island or about the people she'd met at school. Sometimes he'd do all the talking. He'd talk about places he'd seen or monsters he'd encounter. Sometimes, he'd talk about his late wife. Juvia didn't like when he did. It always made him sad, but still, he spoke about her often. He said Juvia reminded him of her.
About a month before she was to return to school, she and Tristan were once more on the beach, Juvia's knees tucked into her chest and head resting on them while she stared out into the rolling sea. Tristan leaned back onto the beach, staring up at the sky that raged at the island, retaliation for Grainne throwing her latest teru teru bozu doll into the dormitory fire. Juvia seethed and the storms raged. The little rain witch and her oldest friend.
"Why don't you send it away?" Tristan asked from beside her. She glanced over at him, and he gestured with a wave of his hand up at the weeping sky. "I had heard from my Ministry acquaintances that you had learned how to."
"Juvia's not supposed to use magic outside of Hogwarts."
"Tch," he scoffed. "They don't keep that close an eye out. And you're with the abbess of St. Brigid's. Everyone knows she supplies half of the potions to all the hospitals in the Isles. Any magic done would just be attributed to her. What spell do you use to get rid of the storms?"
"Meteolojinx Recanto."
"Well, that won't do," he said, sitting back up. "Far too flashy a spell. That would get you noticed." He appeared thoughtful a moment. "Besides, it's the wrong spell."
"The wrong spell?"
"It's treating the symptom of your problem. Not the root of it. Your emotions."
"How does Juvia treat her emotions?" She asked with a frown.
"We get rid of your negative emotions. No negative emotions, no storms."
"And how is Juvia meant to do that? She's tried not being angry or sad or jealous, but that's not easy."
"Of course it's not. I wouldn't expect it to be easy for anyone, least of all a child. It's not about avoiding having them. It's about removing them when you do. We just need to pull it out of you. Would you like me to show you how?"
The rain went cold and hard as Juvia thought it over. After a moment, she nodded.
"Great," Tristan smiled, no longer sad and soft and small. There was something in the smile that unsettled her. It wasn't like Jose's smile, conniving and predatory, but there was something strangely triumphant in it. "Have you ever heard of a memory extraction spell?" She shook her head no. "It is a spell that some use to store duplicate memories to be relived or even shown to others at a later point, but it can also be used to completely remove unwanted memories as well. I know a spell that's a variation of that to extract unwanted emotions. The first thing we need is something to store your emotions in. It can be anything really."
Juvia reached into her blue woolen coat and fished out one of her older teru teru bozus. She held it out to Tristan who eyed the item critically before frowning and shaking his head.
"No. Never a good idea to use something easily destroyed with a spell like this. How about that?" He pointed at the amulet around her neck. "Keeps your emotions close to you in case you need to retrieve it at some point."
Juvia clutched her amulet reflexively before nodding slowly.
"Good. Now, the idea here is you're going to transfer you emotions from you to your amulet using your wand. There's no incantation. No potion. You simply need the will to do it. Take your wand and point it at your heart."
Juvia pulled her wand from her robes and did as she was told.
"Good. Now, I want you to focus on the emotions you want to remove. Focus on one for right now. Don't try to take more or you may pass out from this. Focus on one that you can feel strongly.
Juvia closed her eyes. She knew which to focus on. She still felt the burning embers of anger from earlier that day. The storm turned violent, rain whipping at them, wind slicing, thunder calling out. The little rain witch and her oldest friend.
"Good." She scarcely heard Tristan over the roar. "Give your emotion a form in your mind. See it before you. Take it in your hand."
She saw her anger, bright and red, before her. She twisted it. Gave it a form, or tried to anyways. It ended up nothing more than a bright red ball, blazing, shifting, fighting the constraints she'd made for it. Straining to break free. She reached out for it. Imagined taking hold of it, but imagined or not, it scorched her as she touched it. She cried out and withdrew.
"You have to hold onto it. It'll hurt, but this spell requires will. You need to be determined enough to hold on to it," she heard Tristan, his voice calm. Even.
She reached for it once more, allowing only a whimper to break free as the ball burned.
"Do you have it?"
A nod was all she could manage in reply.
"Alright. Now pull it away from where it is now. Best pull it quickly. This part won't feel much better. Best not to dwell on it. If you do, you'll just lose it. Rip it out."
After taking one long breath to prepare herself, she pulled. There was no throttling back the scream that rushed past her lips. She felt every tear, each seam of her heart sever as it broke open, like splinters of a board torn apart as the whole was broken. Each new tear brought a wave of nausea and pain that threatened to send her back to the dark that swallowed her when the lake nearly drowned her.
She knew the whole event only took a matter of seconds — she had done just as Tristan had told her, pulling it straight away without pausing to dwell on the pain — but still every second seemed to linger, stretched to days, weeks where all that existed was the sound of her heart breaking open, the pain of each severed heartstring as her heart fought to hold on to that which was being stolen from it.
Eventually, her heart relinquished its hold on her anger, stitching itself back together as best it could without its missing part.
"Very good, little Lockser. Eyes open now." The light that hit her eyes as soon as she opened them, dim as it was, sent a fresh wave of nausea through her. She turned to lose what little food she had eaten that morning, but Tristan pushed back to keep her upright. "Not yet, little Lockser. Plenty of time for that in a moment. You need to get rid of that first," he said, pointing to her wand and the thin glowing strands of blue clinging to its tip. "Tap it on your amulet."
Her hand trembling, her eyes blurry from pain, it took her a moment to point the wand at the nautilus shell, but eventually the tip of the wand clinked against the amulet. The strands of blue light sought out the safety of the spiraled shell, pouring out into the opening and winding down the spiral. When the last light disappeared, Tristan removed his hands from her shoulders. She fell to the side, nausea winning as she retched, blood and bile spilling out onto the beach
"That's a girl. Get it all out." He waited until her heaving was reduced to sobbing gasps for breath. "Come now. Drink this," he said as he helped her to sit back upright. He held a bottle to her lips, and she drank without question, the liquid tasting of strawberries and ginger pushing back the nausea. When he pulled the bottle away, she leaned back, taking long deep breaths of salty air. She was dimly aware of him waving his hand and the beach clearing of any evidence of her illness. "You did very well, little Lockser. Rather surprised you held on, to be honest. Better wizards than you have failed that particular spell, but you certainly aren't lacking in determination."
She scarcely heard him. All she heard was the dull thump of her heart. The hollow ring of each beat. The chill of her blood as it left the mourning organ.
"Come now," he said. "Look at me." He placed his thumb beneath her chin and forced her head towards him as he knelt before her. He studied her intently, searching for something in her pallid face. He sighed, the triumph in his expression giving way to the regret she so often saw when he spoke of his brother or his wife. "It'll hurt for a little while, but it will get easier. And meanwhile, you have your sun," he said as he smiled. Sad. Soft. Small. He tilted her heads up towards the sky, patches of blue starting to peer out through the gray. "Not as dramatic as your other spell, but it'll do the job and it'll keep the storm at bay."
She couldn't respond to him. Her eyes stayed skyward.
"I'll leave you to your sky now. I'm afraid I won't be around for a while. I'm called away to the continent. I will see you next summer perhaps, little Lockser."
She couldn't respond.
"Goodbye, my girl." She felt his hand on her head briefly and then he was gone, leaving her alone to the singing sea and the hollow echoes of her heart.
The next three days, the sun shone down on the island of Inis Stoirm for the first time in Juvia's days there, but she felt nothing from the sunlight. No warmth. No joy. No peace.
Nor did the sunshine change her standing with the Sisters or the other wards. The Sisters still regarded her with distrust, and the wards regarded her with contempt.
The only difference was Juvia's reaction to them. She felt no anger towards them. Not when Sister Paul spent half an hour berating her for her "ingratitude" to the abbey that had done so much for her. Not when the other wards put her Slytherin scarf to shreds.
She did, however, get into a fight with a couple of the wards over the latter. Slight though she was, she easily knocked down the elder girls, which she attributed to Gajeel's influence. The altercation did not go unnoticed by Sister Adele but fortunately for Juvia, there were a set of codes the wards lived by that extended even to her. Chief among those rules was never tell the Sisters about ward business. It kept her from being singled out for punishment by the Sisters, but she did have to spend her nights sleeping with one eye open for a while.
She had given up all pretense at studying. There was nothing else she could be bothered to do other than sitting on the beach, the sea singing to her. For her. While her heart ached for what'd been taken.
She felt nothing.
Empty.
Hollow little girl.
The amulet pulsed, reaching for her heart. She felt the now long familiar pain of her heart splintering open, reaching for its missing piece.
Before, she had just ignored the pain, keeping her anger contained. But…
She was tired.
Tired of the sun that couldn't warm. Tired of the blue sea that brought no joy.
Tired of the pain.
The sea sang, soft and gentle.
-Sink with me, my love. Down with me, my love. To the sea. The loving sea.-
She clutched the amulet.
-Be with me, my love. Safe with me, my love. With the sea. The loving sea.-
The anger contained within its seashell prison rushed out. Her heart splintered further to call back its missing part. She clutched the amulet tighter and bit hard on her tongue until she tasted the blood that filled her mouth, as the anger scorched every part of her it encountered before returning to her heart where it became whole once more.
Overcome by pain and nausea once more, she heaved whatever little she'd eaten that past day back onto the beach a moment later.
Turning her eyes skyward with panting breath, she watched the storms roll back into the sky. She couldn't even muster the strength to feel disappointed. All she felt was relief. Whole once more.
She pulled herself up off the beach to trudge back to the abbey, not looking forward to the response to the latest storm that was brewing overhead. She paused, however, just short of the steps. There, tucked in one of the crevices, was a flower. She hand't noticed it before, not that she was likely to notice any flower. There were dozens around the bluffs as it was. What stood out about this one, though, was that it was thoroughly blackened. Flower, stem and leaves. Not burnt. More like it was rotted through.
Cautiously, she reached out and touched the flower, but when her fingers grazed the petals, the entire flower dissolved into black ash.
Resolving to warn the abbess at the first opportunity in case it was the start of some disease among the flora of the island, Juvia pushed aside the worry moiling inside as she watched the ash scatter to the wind, too relieved to be feeling anything at all.