Chapter 16

Forget Me Not

Witch

A week passed. Luke visited every day, as was our agreement, but I couldn't bring myself to torture him with requests the way that I had been intending to. Instead I found myself behaving like I had when he presented me with the mushroom. If he arrived before I'd finished breakfast, I invited him in for tea again. I charged him with stupid tasks like helping me clean the dust off of the shelves in my kitchen that were too high to reach myself or to bring me some oddly specific snack. One evening I saw that he was particularly tired and I told him he was testing a potion for me; instead I made him drink a stamina potion that I already knew was perfect. I still snapped at him and called him an idiot, but I never ran him into exhaustion or put him in dangerous or embarrassing situations like I'd originally planned.

Am I going soft? I asked myself as I waited for him to arrive, eating the blackberry pie that I'd cooked earlier in the day. I repeated the question as I wrote the day's research in my journal, still waiting. I waited and waited, the sun descending below the horizon and the moon hoisting itself up among the stars. My patience wore thin and I grew frustrated. We had an agreement that he would visit every day. A promise. Kasey and I had no such promise but he still visited every day with a stupid question or to chatter in my ear about what the town was up to. He was like the morning news, and he arrived on my doorstop with startling irregularity. This was the first time Luke had failed to show, and it stung. It stung like rejection or like disappointing someone important. I hadn't realized how routine my loneliness had become, a routine I wished I'd never broken now that I had to deal with the side effects. These were feelings I hadn't felt in years, not since the last friend I'd allowed in stopped visiting.

Oh but this wasn't like that. Luke couldn't just walk away from me, he'd entered a contract with a Witch, and I was going to make good on it. No, this wasn't like that at all. I stomped over to the door, snatching my staff up on the way, and stormed out into the night, having worked myself into a fit of rage. Who did he think he was! He'd entered a contract with the Witch Princess and he would be honoring that contract, willingly or not. I took a slight running start before throwing my legs over my staff and lifting up into the air, streaking over the tops of the trees and following my senses to Luke's energy.

My breath caught in my throat and I nearly stumbled upon landing. I couldn't help but scold myself slightly, this was something I should have been expecting. The carpentry was only logical, he did come to the forest to cut trees. I pushed my feelings of trepidation at the familiar building into the back of my mind, ignoring the questions that had reared their ugly heads. I stalked around the building, clutching my staff tightly as I approached the window Luke's energy was closest to. I peeked in and, seeing that the room was dark, waved my hand over the latch to open in.

I see better in the dark than most people, even better than Gale, however much of a night owl the man had become. It was a close guarded secret of mine, and I'd never published the spell that gave me my ability. So when I poked my head through the window and looked around before climbing over the sill, the situation became quite clear to me.

Luke was quite obviously sick. His sheets were tangled around him and the scents of sweat and bile were heavy in the air. I walked quietly to his bedside, the click of my heels muffled by a hasty spell, and leaned over him. His breathing was labored and when he attempted to breathe through his nose the off-putting sound of sucking snot back into the nasal passageways was short to follow. I cast a divination spell over him to determine his ailment and before I knew what I was doing I was back in my kitchen brewing a remedy. I could argue with myself all I wanted, but I'd already forgiven him for his absence.

Less than a half hour passed before I crept back through the window into Luke's room, a jar of potion tucked under my arm. I roused him with a hand pressed over his mouth. "You didn't show up today." I hissed, putting on a superficial display of anger while Luke took a few moments to realize that it was me leaning over him, his eyes adjusting to the darkness. I released him when his eyes had changed from panicked to just confused and sat down on the edge of the bed. "Don't let yourself get sick, doofus." I whispered harshly while I spooned the potion slowly into his mouth. He tried to speak but I shushed him at the hoarse noise that came from his throat. It would take a little while to work, but the potion would have him healed by morning. I set my jar onto his night stand and took a deep breath.

This was everything I was trying to avoid. Literally everything. There on his night stand was a picture of my most recent friend, with a tiny Luke propped in her hip. "No…" The word escaped my lips as a sigh. The picture showed everything I remembered about her: those kind eyes and her general exuberance, her light blue hair in a sloppy French braid and that orange bandana she always wore. The boy on her hip was grinning wide, his dark blue hair tucked under a flame bandana. They didn't really share much in appearance aside from her light eyes and that crooked smile but as I looked at that picture I had to remind myself how many years it had been, and how hard I had been trying not to think about her.

I glanced back at Luke, who was wheezing through his congestion in a somewhat dazed state, and then around the room. That picture and a few taken prior to it were the only evidence of his mother in the room. "Luke…" I said softly, my voice shaking nearly as much as I realized my hands were. "Luke, what happened to your mother?" I knew, in my heart, and it was the only thing that had kept me from a true depression over the past years, but I needed to be told.

The silence was broken only by Luke's strangled breathing.

"Luke…" I whispered even quieter this time, trying to hide the cracking of my voice. "What happened to your mother? ... What happened to Cara…" I turned and looked towards where he was still lying down. I fisted my hands in my lap and drew my lips into a thin line. It was too dark for him to have any chance of seeing my budding tears, but I still felt uncomfortable.

"She… She died. Her heart gave out." His voice was soft and little hoarse, but it didn't waver like mine. He'd come to terms with this long ago, I was sure.

"When?" I prompted, closing my eyes and biting my lip against my impending breakdown. Immortals take longer to mourn than most, and I'd hardly mourned properly these past years. When she'd left I'd told myself over and over again that she must have just gotten sick of me; I didn't want to remember how she'd been sick and kept it a secret. How she'd never let me run a divination on her because she thought I didn't know. I didn't want to remember how she'd been sick and I hadn't been able to save her.

"I was six so… Thirteen years ago?..." Luke's tired voice hung in the air and I didn't respond. There was nothing to say. She had visited me right up until the end, just like she always said she would. When she stopped visiting, I couldn't bring myself to leave the forest and confirm my fears and no one came to give me the news I was already aware of. I wasn't even sure if she'd told anyone else about me. "Did you know her?"

My grief crashed over me like an avalanche. I had to swallow the lump in my throat before I could speak. "She was… My best friend." I said simply, in as strong a tone as I could muster, before standing from my spot on the edge of Luke's bed and tucking the potion jar back under my arm. When I ducked back through the window I heard Luke's voice but couldn't quite make out the words. It didn't much matter, I wouldn't be able to respond to them in my state anyway.

I stumbled into the forest at the back of the carpentry, pushing through the underbrush to get deeper under the canopy. I desperately needed to get away, before my heart turned to fire and ash in my chest. I collapsed against a tree and took a deep, shuddering breath. "Fuck…" I whispered, scrubbing furiously at my tears. "Fuck!" I picked myself back up and gripped my staff and the potion jar tighter, forcing my way further into the forest and further away from the carpentry. The only thing I knew was that I couldn't stand there fighting off memories of Cara anymore. I couldn't sit next to her sick son and think about how much they were alike and pretend that nothing was wrong. I missed her like hell and I was finally admitting to myself that she really was gone. I couldn't pretend that she just got sick of me and went on to live her life without me.

"Why are you crying my child?" a mellifluous voice asked as I stumbled over the threshold of the Goddess Pond, the toe of my pointed heels catching on the ruins that I hadn't been watching for. The translucent form of the goddess stood next to her tree, framed by the night sky. I cursed my luck and it was all I could do not to collapse right then and there and give into my sobs. Instead I tried to get angry.

"Because she didn't deserve to die!" I shrieked, throwing the potion jar down and watching it shatter into a thousand shards of sparkling glass in the moonlight.

"No one deserves to die, Vivi, and Cara –"

"NO!" I cut the Goddess off. I couldn't listen to her talk about Cara, not in this state. In the back of my mind, I couldn't help but blame her. "No you can't make excuses for this one Goddess. Every single time I love someone they get taken away from me." I scrubbed futilely at the tears in my eyes.

"Oh my child... You must accept your lot in life. I have a plan for all of you, but nature is more cruel for some than others." The Goddess walked towards me, her wings and hair fluttering softly in the eddies of magic that surrounded her.

"Too cruel... Too cruel to her... To Cara, who deserved it the least..." I walked towards the Goddes and collapsed at her feet. It was too much, I couldn't channel my grief into anger. I was falling apart here, in the prensence of the deity of life and growth. My best friend was gone. I couldn't hide from it, I couldn't keep running away. "Why Goddess?" I cried openly now, not bothering to pretend that I was strong in the face of grief that I had denied for 13 years. "Why..."

The Goddess touched an ethereal hand to my shoulder and drew me into her arms. "I'm sorry, dear Vivi. You've felt more loss than any one person should. But it was her time. As untimely as it may have seemed, she still made her mark clearly on all of you."

"It wasn't!" I cried out, my hands scrabbling desperately at the Goddess's robes. "It wasn't her time! It couldn't have been! There was so much left for her... Her son.. Me... How can you say that it was her time!" My voice caught in my throat and I pulled back from the comforting arms of the woman clad in nature's robes. The expression I presented to her showed how lost I felt, and the look of peace on her face only served to break me further.

"You can't have all the answers, as hard as you may try. The shortest lives often burn the brightest." The Goddess's voice broke slightly, her own eyes looking somewhat watery as I stared at her with only slightly restrained passion. "You must learn to accept that which you cannot chance, child. All mortal life must end in death, at one time or another." She offered me a kind, maternal smile and raised a hand slowly, as if to caress my cheek.

"I can't. I just can't believe you, Goddess." I took my staff in hand and pushed past the Goddess, diving over the cliff at her back and taking to the skies.

Despite the moon shining brightly overhead and my impeccable night vision, I flew home nearly blind. I stayed high above the trees and followed my own trail of magic home, eyes too clouded with tears to be worth much of anything. Oh I was used to losing people, that's just something that comes naturally when your life is so much longer than everyone else's. I'd lived among people for centuries, making friends and losing them as time saw fit. It was never easy, but it was the price I paid for taking my bonds of immortality at the end of my apprenticeship. This, this was so much different though. I had hidden myself away to avoid that sort of thing, and she had found me still. It hadn't been Cara's time to go, I just couldn't accept her heart failure as natural. I'd been running from my failure for 13 years because if I could have done anything for my best friend I would have been able to save her life. I could have kept her alive, for her family, fer her son. And if I told myself the truth? I loved her. I loved her and I wasn't ready to admit that she was gone. Other people in my life were like stars in the night sky; they were born and shone number of years before slowly fading away. Cara wasn't like that; she was bursting with so much life and energy all the time, she outshined everyone around her. I thought she was a comet, but she was a meteor heading straight for me. Naïve as I was, I hadn't expected her to burn out so quickly. I hadn't expected her to crash right into me and change me forever. And how dare I pretend that hadn't happened.

Author's Note: Tada! I finished this chapter sooner than I was expecting to, it'll probably see a revision before next week though. Ok guys I have a really serious question for you. What pairings are you hoping to see coming out of this story?! Because things are gonna start snowballing really really fast and there's like three distinct directions that it could go – some involving a lot more drama than others. Please review, and give me your opinions! (If you don't chime in, I'll just do whatever I want, and I don't want to hear you complaining about it later!)