Title: I'll cast a spell on you
Prompt: Prompt 12—picture of hands and constellations
Character/Pairing: Ada
Summary: She tries to remember this dream, this memory that is her brother.
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Oz has been gone for seven years. Seven years and still Ada is no closer to the truth than she was two, four, six years ago.
("What happened?" she asked Gil, "Where's brother?"
"What happened?" she asked three years later, remember the haunted look in his eye, the defeated shrug of his shoulders. Of the way he flinched from her hand and how no one could tell her just why her brother was cast away, how he was banished. "Please tell me."
"What happened?" she asked last year. What was so bad that he had to move away, join the Nightray family? What was giving him hope, that there was a spring in his step still, that she heard whispers of his training and of the deaths at his hand?
He never answers, not even once. Just apologizes and disappears and she thinks she might have lost two brothers that day and not one.)
The book of spells tells her that seven is a lucky number, the combination of two lucky numbers. What she couldn't do before, she can do now—there is luck on her side and luck is important for magic.
Ada dons her witch's hat, her long gloves, her black dress. The candles are lit, the mood set, for magic is as much about imagining and envisioning the future as it is enacting it.
It's hard to imagine her brother. She has no pictures, no paintings. Her uncle Oscar once bemoaned that he never used his camera on his favourite nephew.
There's no end to the photos he takes of her and Gil to make up for it, the images that line up the walls and wallpaper his guest room.
But there's still nothing of Oz but her memories, however weak they are. His hair was brighter than hers, his eyes a shade darker. Always full of smiles and winks and a mischievous expression that Gil swore he'd never forget.
(And did he? She doesn't know, he won't answer her questions, won't help her paint the picture that is her brother. She has holes, gaps, entire chasms in what she knows and he doesn't fill them in, give her the bridge to cross from one side to the other.)
Oscar told her that Oz was dandy in the making, but then should she imagine her brother as Oscar?
She doesn't know. She doesn't. Will her brother be older when he comes out or the same? Will he be changed? What is he feeling right now—is he even conscious in that other world, that dark world?
Her magic tells her nothing. Gil tells her nothing. Oscar only sighs and rubs her head, promising that one day the answers will come.
All that's left is for her to try the spell and make a wish.
Taking out the ingredients, she stirs them into a cauldron slowly and carefully. "Oz, Oz, Oz," she repeats his name, trying to picture this blurry boy, this half-baked dream.
"Please come back."