by Aetherias Moon
The little witch had to come into her power. Kora didn’t have much time, once it hit 3:33 on her thirteenth birthday she would become like anyone else. Every witch had to learn who she was, learn what made her magic stir. She knew witches who were bonded to the moon or an owl, and her mother was attached to their hearth. They had grown up pulled toward something they said. It was inevitable.
Kora knew she was a witch.
Her mother had baked her a birthday cake, her eyes all mushy like she wanted her presence to be a hug, a comfort. She was a late bloomer, that’s what they always said, and they would be right. She blew out her candles and ran out into the woods. She knew the tangled roots she had to skip over. The trees that bowed upwards like raised eyebrows. Why couldn’t everyone believe in her?
Kora stopped at the bramble wall obscuring a murky forest beyond. Never go beyond the thorny fence. The words echoed in her head but that wasn’t what made her pause, it was the memory of a caressing shadow on her face, a whispering call that made her bones tingle. After her single visit, a moment in time that played across her mind in dreams but never in her waking memories, she never went back. But it never left her. Was that a pull? The fear, the temptation to know more? She ripped aside the brambles, thorns slicing her hands, and stepped through as blood seeped into her black dress. The shadows clung to the moss and dangled off curling branches. Everything seemed to be covered in algae. A green haze mixed with darkness, making her hesitate. The forest was silent except for the hovering wind and the sloshing of water in the distance.
Her shadow seemed tangled as she stepped up to a stream with cascading stones. Here the darkness pooled against the violent blues. It was electric, frightening, like the kiss of a battery on her lips. A song tinkled in the distance and the wind made her ears shiver.
Her shadow twisted around her legs like the roots of a tree and grabbed her hand and looked into her eyes. The shade smiled even though it bore no face. It was different than her mothers glance, it wasn’t comforting, it beckoned.
Was this the pull? The thing that would make her a witch? Something to let her keep her magic?
She didn’t back away, her fear subsided as excitement bubbled. She let it tangle into her hands as brambles slid around her sides. With a slight nudge she slammed into a rock in the stream and tumbled down the mini waterfalls. Water turned her dress into lead weighing her down until she finally stopped in a crumple between the rocks. Blood trickled down her forehead and mingled with the cascading stream.
Within her broken body a spark flared.
If you liked this dark fantasy tale, you might enjoy my other dark fantasy story: A Midnight Noon
Aetherias Moon 
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