Part 3, Chapter 4_Losing My Religion

Part 3, Chapter 4

 Sophia

 Going to ss on Wednesday morning didn’t alleviate my sense of ostracization at all.

 Now, instead of feeling like I was a human girl in over her head in a world of magic, I was someone trying to escape from my magical troubles by burying my head in the sand of my normal life.

 And maybe, in a way, both of those were true. Amber was right to say I didn’t know anything about magic, but it was also true that I was running away, not helping in the little ways I could, instead hoping Amber took care of everything.

 My insides twisted and protested through my professor’s droning in response to my thoughts, begging me to be responsible, pleading that if anything happened to Amber, it would be my fault, and I was a coward to have run away from her.

 I hadn’t even responded to her text yet, feeling awkward about the fact that she’d sent it about an hour prior, so I’d be respondingte – how did she wake up so early? – and I didn’t know what to say to begin with.

 Was I doing okay?

 It wasn’t an easy question to answer, given the circumstances.

 Or maybe it was; maybe the answer was just ‘no’, simple as that. Maybe I had to ept that I didn’t have anything to fuel my nervous energy towards – no church to takefort in, no rabbit hole of research to climb down. All I had was my schoolwork – which was dull – and waiting.

 Waiting for Amber to tell me everything had been taken care of, waiting for my girlfriend to return, waiting for everything to go back to ‘normal’ – whatever that meant.

 I certainly wasn’t okay when Amber called me and I had to step out of my ss.

 “What’s–”

 “Holy shit Sophia, I think my mom sent someone after me,” she was out of breath.

 “What?”

 “There was a witch, I recognized her– we need to hide,” she belted out.

 “Amber, slow down. Deep breaths.”

 She panted into my ear through my phone.

 “Tell me where to meet you, I’m here for you.”

 She sighed, and belted out an address before hanging up.

 I followed with a sigh of my own. I guess now is my chance to help her…

 —

 I entered the pizza shop cautiously. It was close enough to my college to walk, and – unless I’d gotten the ce wrong – I’d gotten there before Amber.

 Not that I had any confidence I was in the right ce. If she’d told me ahead of time we’d be meeting at a pizza parlor, with the context that we were on the run from angry witches, I would’ve assumed it would be a local ce, something greasy and shady – the kind of ce you half-believed was a front for the mafia.

 Instead, it was a chain restaurant that sold extremely mediocre pizza, held up only by people in suits doing market optimization and supply-chain management. In other words, it was not the ce to stage a dramatic confrontation of witches, nor was it the ce to build atmosphere while talking about the horrible things they’d do to us.

 I sat down nheless, smiling through the waitress taking my order, despite the fact that I didn’t know if I would be staying long enough to eat the couple of slices I asked for.

 A sparse weekday morning crowd chatted, filling the room with barely enough life so as to not seem dead.

 That was, until Amber barged into the room, mming the door open and stumbling through,pletely red in the face. She spun around, finally focusing on me during her second spin, and speed-walked towards me. She stopped, standing in front of my stic booth, but when she opened her mouth to speak, I pulled her down into the seat next to me.

 I wrapped my arms around her, ignoring how her sweat got wiped up by my scarf and sweater. “Amber, unless there’s someone right outside waiting to fling spells at us, we can take a second to breathe.” I drew in an exaggerated breath, and blew it out behind her ear.

 She hesitated a moment before following suit, body going limp as it lost the tension holding it up, “I…”

 I kept my voice calm and soft, despite my own worries. “Take a sip of my water and then we can talk about it, okay? I’m here to help, but I need you to take your time exining so I get the full picture.”

 We both pulled away from our embrace at the same time, me watching her face that was just as red as the moment she’d entered the restaurant.

 She grabbed my water cup and eyed the lipstick stain on it suspiciously before drinking from the other side. Then, she finally spoke, voice much calmer. “I… I’m not actually sure if she was there for me, but I ran past an old rival of mine, someone who my mother could certainly hire to take care of me…”

 I ced my hand on her thigh, much like I had for Lily when she came out to her dad several months back.

 Amber didn’t shake it off. “But I think… I think we should stick together, and unless there’s a ss you really need to attend, we should stay out of sight.”

 Our conversation was interrupted by the waitress bringing me my food, a couple of slices of veggie lover’s pizza. I thanked her, while Amber eyed it hungrily.

 Iughed, letting my hand drop from her leg. “You can eat as much as you want, I can order more.”

 She looked into my eyes for reassurances, holding my gaze for a moment, before nodding thankfully and digging in.

 “So, is there anything else I can help you with?”

 She chewed for a moment and then swallowed. “Um… I’m mostly going to be working on spell stuff, so…” Her eyes lit up, “Oh my god, you can read Demonic, right?”

 “Slowly, but yes.”

 Her palm pped her forehead. “I’m so stupid, you could’ve been helping me with my spells this whole time!”

 “Oh,” I let out. I didn’t know how to respond; I’d assumed Amber knew more than me on the subject.

 “That would be really helpful,” she took another bite and her eyes scanned across the room, “I do have one more request, but it’s kind of weird, and I would totally understand if you said no.”

 I remained silent, watching her intently.

 “It’s kind of a stress-relief thing, like it would just help me rx…”

 I nodded – stress relief seemed important.

 “It’s just– you know that letter?”

 Nod.

 “It would really be a burden off my back if I wasn’t worrying about what was inside it. I was thinking about it, and I really don’t think Lily would want us to stress over it, she probably just didn’t think about what the uncertainty of it would feel like…”

 An inexplicable sense of anticlimax washed through me, “Yea, sure, that seems reasonable.”

 She turned to smile at me, reaching her hand out to rest on top of mine on the table, “And if there’s anything you need, just let me know.”

 I smiled back, “I’m sure I’ll take you up on that offer…”

 Maybe I can use this chance to get her to teach me magic!

 Lily

 I waspletely disoriented when I woke up, surrounded by a sea of fluff. I reached my arm out, searching fornd, only for my hand to find Katie’s face rather ungracefully.

 My brain quickly filled in the events of the previous day.

 Hell. Katie. Kelith.

 I sat up, throwing off the nket and yawning

 Katie grumbled at me, “Good morning Lily…”

 “Sorry about smacking you… How are you doing?” My tail wiggled out from under me, protesting after a night stuck under my body.

 She sat up as well, rubbing her eyes, “Other than getting woken up, I’m fine.”

 My mouth twisted, “You’re still feeling tired?”

 “Yea…” she sighed, “Don’t worry about it.”

 “Katie…”

 She turned away. “You can’t force it. I understand you’re just taking care of me because Amber told you to.”

 I scooted towards her on the bed, sitting behind her and wrapping one of my arms loosely around her shoulders. “Katie, I do care about you. I want to protect you and learn about you and spend time with you – I just don’t know how to express that because the only family I’ve ever known is my dad.” I brought my free hand up to pat her on the head, focusing on the space between her horns.

 “I’m not a little kid,” she grumbled, making no attempt to move my hand from her head.

 “I know you aren’t, but you’re still my little sister.”

 She finally rxed, leaning her head back on my shoulder.

 I continued patting her head.

 One day down, six to go…

 —

 We left our room shortly after, feeling slightly refreshed after our hug. I still had a long way to go with Katie, but I hoped that eventually we would have a solid rtionship outside of our mutual connection with Amber.

 I’d manifested some cozy pajamas, while Katie, who was still struggling with her magic, got dressed with an extra change of clothes she bought in her backpack.

 Kelith’s kitchen/dining room was awash with activity, the one woman army cooking up a storm of tantalizing aromas set to the beat of oils crackling and popping.

 We exchanged pleasantries, Kelith refusing our offers to help, and everything was as expected: delicious – if strangely human – pancakes, roast potatoes with veggies, and fresh fruit, until Kelith’s daughter arrived.

 When she’d mentioned her daughter would be visiting the previous night, my mind, struggling with conceptualizing the age of demons, had filled in a woman somewhere between Katie’s age and Amber’s.

 Edith, Kelith’s daughter, was not Amber’s age – in fact, she looked about the same age as her mother, leading me and Katie to stare at her with raised eyebrows. She, like her mother, had pink hair and deep blue skin, with Edith’s being slightly more purple, and her eyes being an orangish pink. Both women were on the taller end, closer in height to Amber than me or Katie, but not inhumanly tall.

 Edith started the conversation, sitting down across from me at the circr yellow wood table, eyeing me curiously, “Hey, you look–”

 But her mother interrupted, sitting down next to her daughter, holding a hand up, “Sorry honey, they’re from the human world, and if they look confused, it’s not their fault.” She nodded at us, giving us a chance to exin.

 Edith pursed her lips and crossed her arms, but stayed silent.

 “Why do you look like you’re the same age?” I asked.

 Kelith answered, exining patiently, “We’re shapeshifters, although we aren’t as powerful as you two, meaning what we look like is pretty immaterial,” she tilted her head, wincing, “Your parents did exin shapeshifting to you, right?”

 I blushed, embarrassed instead of annoyed at having that question asked to me for a second time, “Kind of? I got a pamphlet from Hell about puberty, but I thought my true form was static.”

 “What, were you raised by hellhounds?” Kelith seemed to be unable to decide between pity and indignance.

 Katie, the traitor, nodded enthusiastically, while Edith flinched, her expression growing more and more pained.

 Kelith continued, “As far as age is concerned, most people will continue growing up and changing their body until they’refortable, and they mostly stick to the same body. But nothing about your form is necessarily static, if someone asks you for a true form, they’re just asking for a form that you believe represents you – something that doesn’t take magical upkeep.”

 The information slowly sank in. For some reason, I’d thought that being short, feminine, and curvy in my demon form was something I’d never had control over, thought that this was what I’d been born with and that was it.

 Looking at my body with my new perspective, however, didn’t reveal anything that I wanted to change. Just like with my human form – which was very simr – I didn’t even feel an urge to experiment – other than with the asional longer tongue.

 And that was its own revtion, to look back on my journey and realize that it had been me pushing myself forward the whole time.

 While I was thinking, Edith had been fidgeting more and more in her seat, looking distinctly ufortable about something.

 “What is it?” her mother asked.

 “Well… before you interrupted me and made this a hundred times more awkward, I was going to tell Lily that she’s the striking image of my wife…” She sent me a pained smile.

 I stared at her, unfazed and uprehending, “Why does that matter? I thought you just exined that how we look isn’t static.”

 A moment of silence passed with Katie and I looking at each other, confused, while Kelith examined my face and her daughter looked ufortable.

 Kelith, having clearly caught on to the implications, swallowed nervously and adopted a dire, wide-eyed stare. “It’s true that the way you look is static, but it isn’t arbitrary…” She trailed off, unable to say the rest.

 Edith’s pale face snapped to attention, breaking herself out of a stupor. “I’m so sorry, Lily. She– We didn’t know…”

 I leaned forward slightly, almost a slump, and felt my mouth hang open. “Your wife… Her name…”

 A tear escaped her eye, and she scrunched them shut, covering them with her fingers, “Zamira Victory…”

 What the fuck?

 My hands held my head up, elbows anchored on either side of my nearly finished meal. I stared emptily at the potatoes, my vision spinning and blurring to create an abstract masterpiece, one that was about to be puked on before it ever got to be appreciated if I didn’t immediately leave.

 I stood, my chair screeching behind me, and pointed towards the room I’d slept in, mouth soundlessly pping open and closed as I rapidly blinked, fighting back tears.

 Kelith nodded at me, “If there’s anything you need…”

 But I was already gone, Katie on my tail.

AliNovel

Part 3, Chapter 4