Chapter 6
Ineptitude Comes in Many Forms
Witch
The oaf was in my woods again, and this time it was even later at night. I was blissful in my human form again, fully enjoying all that long legs and opposable thumbs had to offer, but I couldn't even focus as I sat on my porch and wrote the results of the day's tests in my journal. He was at a great enough distance not to be a dangerous distraction, but his presence was still a nuisance like a bug buzzing in my ear. My thoughts were consistently beginning and then getting cut short or growing muddled with the prickling of my neck that he was causing. I had ignored it well enough when I was working, but now that I was attempting to reflect it was becoming simply insufferable.
He had been in the woods often lately, but this was the longest he had stayed yet and he didn't seem to be moving about anymore. I wondered if he might have even fallen asleep again. This situation was really completely intolerable! How dare he not take the warning I gave him at our first meeting seriously! Unable to take it anymore, I got up from the porch, forgetting my journal and quill, and took off to give the bug buzzing in my ear a piece of my mind.
It really didn't take very long to locate him; my spell just kept him walking circles in the same little block of forest anyway. He was high up in a tree and, although he didn't appear to be sleeping, he was looking pretty spacey. Not that I was always particularly clear in the object of my actions but I had decided over the course of my many years that idleness really brought little other than pointless rumination. "Hey!" I shouted from the base of the tree, a glare firmly fixed on my face and my hands on my hips.
Maybe I yelled too loud or I had approached the tree too quietly, but the aftermath of that shout turned into a spectacle that I will likely never forget. Luke let out this little yelp and tilted off of his tree branch on the side further away from me. Before he had a full grasp of what was occurring, he was tumbling off of his perch and down towards the earth. He reached out towards the branches but couldn't get a grip that would let him right himself and he continued his unorthodox descent. In true Witch Princess form, I panicked.
I was never really very good at letting people get hurt. I was also never really very good at saving them. So the choice I made in the moment of mental confusion, as Luke plummeted towards branches and the hard dirt floor of the forest, certain to break bones or worse, might not have been the best one. I threw my arms up and a great ball of yellow-orange energy rushed to meet him. It slammed into his body before engulfing him. His descent arrested, he floated awkwardly between branches – knocked out cold.
"Shit!" I hissed quietly, secretly liking the feel of the modern curse on my tongue and wrinkling my brow as I tried to figure out how to get the boy down. The going was slow as I pulled him away from the trunk and down towards the ground, contorting my hands and muttering magic words as I maneuvered his gangly body. I dared not use magic to bind his limbs to him, lest I break them or run the risk of muddling the two spells in such a way as to drop him. I wished he wasn't such a distraction and I wished him out of my woods, certainly, but I didn't really wish bodily harm on him. When the body was finally free of the tree, I dropped him to the ground a little harder than I expected too. I was tired; managing that kind of body weight wasn't easy. "Of all the things…" I grumbled to myself irately as I observed the mess that I'd made of all this.
Another snap of my fingers later the boy was levitating just a few inches off of the ground, a bit of magic I hoped would last long enough for me to get him back to the swamp. I didn't feel up to the task of tethering him to me magically, so I grabbed his arm around the wrist and pulled him along. He was grimy. Lord knows how long he'd been running around without a bath. His arm had a certain residue of sweat, dirt, sawdust, and the particular dry particle that breaks from tree bark. I was so put off by his lack of hygiene that I nearly tossed him into the swamp for an impromptu bath and wake-up call when we finally got back, but I decided against it when I realized I wasn't sure if it would actually wake him up. Not in the mood for gambling with the likelihood that I would accidentally drown him, I pulled the blue haired boy behind me into the cottage and got to work trying to figure out what damage I caused with my panicked burst of energy.
Author's Note: Hey, look! Something happened! This chapter gets the ball rolling on some interaction between Luke and the Witch, so stay tuned for next week! I've started outlining things into the future and I've got a vague idea of how things are going to go up until Ch 18, but be sure to let me know if there's anything in particular you want to see! I'm contemplating finally writing up a story detailing what I imagine the Witch and Wizard's past to be like, but I'm not sure when I'll find the time to get it on paper. I also promised that I'd work up that sister story to Stardust, so that's hanging over my head (but I'm in the middle of revising Stardust already so I don't want to finish that until I've decided how drastic any changes I'll make will be...)
Sorry that this chapter is short, but the two I post next week will be a pretty hefty update. Please review!