ã€ŠAlmost Like Witchcraftã€‹


 Prologue

    When her clock flashed nine thirty at night, Nellie couldn¡¯t stop herself from smiling softly, even if it was at herself.

    It was finally time.

    What she had just set in motion with the simple pressing of her thumb against her phone¡¯s screen was wholly uncharacteristic of her. No one would ever have expected her to ever do something like this.

    They all deserved to have their worlds engulfed in flame.

    After a lifetime of letting others walk all over her, she had finally had enough. And no one was ever going to step on her ever again.

    Her rage was calculated, measured, and cold. The only people that would truly be personally affected by what she had just put out into the world were the people that had wounded her the worst. Anyone else that allowed themselves to be engulfed in the flames of her revenge would just be the kind of person that would never stand up for her because of their love for the permanence of a status quo; if they knew better than to keep their nose out of business that had nothing to do with them, they would walk away unscathed.

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    Fire was as destructive as it was cleansing; it could be the most dangerous of the elements when unattended, consuming everything and anything in its wake that it could. It was the element that most called to her for this night.

    The candle beside her bed was burning brightly; brighter than she had ever seen in any of the past times she had lit it. And it would continue to burn all the way through to the end. There was not much time left now, the body of wax being barely more than half an inch away from the candle holder.

    All of her preparations, all of her ire, all of the uncomfortable experiences she had undergone in the past year¡­ all of it culminated to this.

    Queen had been right.

    Revenge really did feel right.

 The Devil: Chapter One

    Life was never supposed to have turned out this way.

    As Nellie ripped up the umpteenth picture within the hour, she couldn¡¯t properly stop the fat, ugly tears streaming down her cheeks.

    Some video or another played in the background, but she had no idea what it could be going on about. It had been on an automatic setting to just continue playing video after video from the last time she had indulged in more than an hour of entertainment and she had turned on her laptop mindlessly when-

    The burning in her eyes that had begun to subside became an inferno once again, the tears flowing acquiring even more weight to them. They gushed, she sobbed, and her nose flowed with disgusting, thick snot.

    The life she had known only one hour ago was not one she would be able to continue living.

    It would have been easy, she knew. It would have been so easy to act as if what she had just witnessed was still completely unknown to her. It would have been the easiest thing to do, even to play the part that was supposed to have been her own; to seem like she was still ignorant to what had taken place and that she still had no idea that it could have even taken place.

    Even though she had already written out everything she felt was necessary to be said, word-vomited onto her phone and explained the explicit reason why they were done¡­ she couldn¡¯t bring herself to hit send. Her finger refused to get anywhere near the button she needed to press to officially cut all ties to the person she had once revolved her whole life around.

    A snide, insidious voice within her sneered, ¡°It can still revolve around him. You can just let this go. It was a one-time thing. Be better! Then he¡¯ll never want to do this again. Because, clearly, everything that happened was <u>YOUR FAULT</u>.¡±

    Her breath shuddered and faltered; she shook her head.

    But those horrid sneers were not shaken. As her head pounded with a migraine unlike anything she had ever experienced before; with pressure so tightly built up it felt her skull was about to be splintered and destroyed; all she could truly think of was about how easy it would be to act as if what she had witnessed only a few hours ago had never taken place.

    No one had seen her.

    No one knew what she knew.

    And because no one knew what she knew¡­ she could very easily act as if she still didn¡¯t know it.

    Her life didn¡¯t have to fall apart today. She could pick up the pieces, make it seem like it was still absolutely whole with no fractures or fissures in sight. If she really put her mind to it, she could even make her relationship stronger; but only if she kept quiet about what she had seen!

    Another video started up.

    Even though Nellie had been so trapped within her own mind for so long, every little noise a muted, incomprehensible sound to her frantic mind, the eerie music that began to fill up her room cut straight through her.

    Even as tears continued to bubble up within her eyes and glide down her cheeks, she forced herself to look at something other than the blurred phone screen below.

    Everything in her room was exactly the same way it had been when she had left to surprise Bennie¡­ it was unfair, really, how nothing had changed.

    Here was her life, crumbling all around her, facing the biggest form of upheaval she had ever feared aside from first applying to university and having to leave her small hometown to attend the biggest university in her country¡­ and, yet it seemed like nothing would ever care.

    Who would, after all? If not ever her boyfriend cared enough about her to keep his hands off of her own cousin¡­

    ¡°Merry meet, whoever has chosen to watch this video. As you have undoubtedly gleaned from the title, my name is Ainsley Aimes and I have been a practicing witch for some ten odd years.¡±

    The voice she heard coming from her laptop was clearly tinged with a melodic lilt, perfectly accompanied by an accent that Nellie was not quite able to properly place outside of undoubtedly Western European.

    Admittedly, that voice and the soft melody playing in the background of the video made something within her feel¡­ less tightly wound up.

    How long had she even been crying for?

    She knew better than to look at the clock, even with curiosity trying to convince her it would be a good idea. There was no doubt that she had spent an embarrassing amount of time crying over the ending of a relationship the Bennie had clearly not cared enough about.

    What was it that her mother had always told her? Once a gambler, always a gambler; once a beater, always a beater; once a cheater; always a cheater- a tiger cannot change its stripes.

    She forced her eyes to unglue themselves from staring at her phone- when had they strayed back? Hadn¡¯t she been lamenting how her room was unchanged as she had looked at the much too same walls that surrounded her?

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    This herculean task resulted in her looking at an equally blurred scenery¡­ her laptop, slightly skewed on top of the desk strategically pushed up against the wall directly across her bed, was playing a video with a rather colorful person at the front and center. The colors on the person were particularly striking, considering the relative darkness she could make out surrounding their form.

    She really should put on her glasses.

    But¡­ if she did¡­ and the crying kept up¡­

    With a soft sigh, Nellie forced herself to detach her fingers from her phone. She kept the screen on, which was still resolutely set on the messaging app where she had written what could be the official nail in the coffin that was her relationship¡­ what should be the coffin that was her relationship¡­ she could still, feasibly, not allow it to die¡­ find a way to make it work¡­

    There was no way she could make this kind of decision right now, though.

    The phone dropped onto the mattress, beside her thigh, and she felt as if she had just dropped a ton of weight. The tension in her shoulders was beginning to radiate up to her neck, tendrils of sharp aching going all the way up to her chin.

    Stress would one day kill her, she was sure.

    Still, she needed to acknowledge that she had at the very least managed to let go of her phone.

    Now that she wasn¡¯t obsessively focused on it, she was able to really listen to the video playing on her laptop. And what she heard was¡­ odd, to put it simply.

    ¡°-and you do NOT- I will repeat it just to truly put the necessary emphasis on this fact, alright- you NEVER have to take part in a practice that makes you uncomfortable. Witchcraft is all about intuition. If your intuition, your GUT is telling you that something feels off- it is probably because it is not what is right for you. If ever you get anyone telling you that you HAVE to do something for your practice, please do both you and me this big favor: Run. Away. And fast, while you¡¯re at it.¡±

    The person on the screen seemed to be speaking as if they were talking about witchcraft but¡­ they didn¡¯t sound like they were talking about it as if they were immersed in some weird kind of fictitious roleplay¡­ but, wait¡­ if they were, wouldn¡¯t they sound just like this?

    But there wasn¡¯t any big, well, anything, really, to make it seem like this was some weird roleplay she had somehow managed to stumble onto. The person¡¯s background was relatively normal, filled with all sorts of books to one side and a bunch of anime and comic book related figures towards the other. And their own way of dressing and makeup was pretty down to earth- like any run of the mill person would dress to record a sit-down-and-talk video.

    After a couple more words clarifying the point, the person referred to going onto another video. And then, in the right bottom corner of the screen, a miniature screen popped up and a small video began to play.

    Oh! This was a form of a reaction video!

    Soft, somewhat hippie-sounding, music began to play as a bottle of water appeared in the new, mini-video. Nellie moved forward, shifting ever so slightly on her mattress, in an attempt to be able to read the small text that appeared on that video.

    ¡°Please tell me they¡¯re not about to-¡± the person stopped as a rock, vibrant green and smooth, Nellie wagered from what she could see, was dropped inside the bottle. The person gasped, a shrill, horrified noise, and paused the video with a forceful stab of their keyboard. ¡°No! Bad! Malachite is NOT a crystal you want to put in water!¡± they looked at the camera with nothing short of horror on their face, their wide, dark eyes even seemingly surrounded by the softest hint of red. ¡°Alright, let me be very quick about this in case I have any viewers following this advice- malachite contains copper. Do you know what you don¡¯t want in your body? Copper!¡±

    The person went on to explain the difference between water safe and water <u>un</u>safe gemstones that could be used to create crystal water. They took a moment to acknowledge how the original creator¡¯s information on malachite being a rock that signifies change and protection, along with a handful of other meanings, and so gave a thumbs up to that part of the creator¡¯s research. But they went on to really make a point about how, while crystal water is a great and accessible magical mini ritual for witches to take part in to add magic to their day, they must really be careful over what they place in their water! At the end of the day, they are going to be consuming that water; and whatever goes in must be something that should go in. A safer alternative to creating crystal water without truly knowing if a rock was water soluble or not- if it could bleed into the water or be destroyed by it- was to line the water with the rocks on the outside of it, not within it.

    It was all¡­ so¡­ unbelievable.

    The person was talking about magical properties of stones, how malachite had once been coveted and mined by the ancient Egyptians to create hues for things as unbelievable as eyeshadow- which, knowing about the copper, sounded incredibly dangerous to Nellie- and as jewelry to adorn their bodies. But they also spoke of how most stones ending in -ite were best kept far away from all bodies of water, not just the kind that would eventually be drank.

    It all sounded so very matter of fact¡­ as if they were talking about things that were one-hundred percent sure.

    But.

    They were also speaking of magical properties; of the ways in which different stones could be utilized within someone¡¯s witchcraft, within their magical practice¡­

    It sounded so very unreal.

    And.

    Yet.

    Nellie didn¡¯t stop the video.

    Instead, she inched closer towards the edge of her bed. Once she was about to topple off the side, she decided it would be in her best interest to just make the jump and make her way over to her desk.

    As she did so, she made the conscious choice to leave her phone behind where it had fallen. She had been tempted to look for it; to turn it on and begin to agonize over the decision she knew she needed to make. But she had managed to be strong enough to keep herself to falling for such temptation.

    Instead, she just barely managed to slink over to her office chair and plop down on it. It had been a slow and agonizing process, of course, with the still relative blurriness of her vision and the way her whole body seemed to ache as if she had just finished ten consecutive days of strenuous exercise.

    But.

    She had managed it.

    And once she was in the relative safety of her chair, she was able to sit herself down and focus completely on the video that had begun to play in the midst of the worst day of her whole life.

 The Devil: Chapter Two

    When morning came, Nellie found herself waking up with a painful crick in her neck.

    She found herself yawning as her eyes struggled to flutter open all the while her body refused to move. Even though she was incredibly sure of the fact that she was supposed to have been moving, her body just¡­ didn¡¯t want to. It wasn''t just that it felt as if she weighed a ton, it was also that there felt like there was an odd form of disconnect between what her brain was ordering her body to do and what the body was understanding it was to do.

    It wasn¡¯t all that surprising, really; that much Nellie could admit to herself.

    As she began to truly take stock of herself, she was able to feel how bone tired her whole body felt. Her arms, splayed out on the top of her desk and used as a makeshift pillow, felt as heavy as lead. The dull, somewhat burning, ache radiating from the top of her shoulders all the way down to the tips of her fingers was one she could not easily ignore. The burning was so strong it was almost as if she had managed to finish a week of consecutive arm days without any rests in between.

    With a groan, her eyes closed as her left cheek met with the desk¡¯s cool surface. Her head had moved, sure, but her body still seemed to be much too stubborn to do as it was asked.

    Well¡­ at least the feel of the desk against her cheek was cool enough.

    As Nellie lay there, body slowly beginning to light up with all of the aches and pain of having been allowed to rest in a relatively torturous position throughout the night, her brain was much too focused on attempting to remember what she had been up to before she had unexpectedly and accidentally fallen asleep.

    Crying had always had a bit of an exhaustion effect on her; this had been something she had lived with for as long as she could remember. This wouldn¡¯t be the first time she had wound up incredibly tired after essentially going through a breakdown filled with way too many tears. But it would be the first time that she wound up falling asleep in such an uncomfortable and uncommon position.

    What had she even been doing before she had managed this incredible feat?

    It may have taken way too much effort on her part, but Nellie was eventually able to force her upper body to straighten up. It may have required her to plow through aching arms that wanted nothing more than to go back to doing nothing, but she managed to force them into motion. And as she did so, she was able to see what had kept her at her desk for long enough to fall asleep: her laptop.

    Its screen was off and there was no light coming from the power button- probably, it had automatically gone into deep sleep after she hadn¡¯t touched it because she had accidentally managed to fall asleep at her desk.

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    Like a tidal wave, all of the memories of the past night and the horrible turn her life had suddenly taken came crashing back into her.

    Bennie had cheated on her.

    And with her sister of all people.

    She had cried over it, lamented the fact that her life would never be the same, actively contemplated not letting anything change and instead taking the route of ignorance being bliss¡­ and then¡­ she had gone down a rabbit hole of CaveTube videos that all revolved around witchcraft.

    Quite frankly, she had no idea how much content she had managed to consume. She just knew that Ainsley Aimes was a name that she now thoroughly recognized and understood; she could call to memory the types of witches that had really stood out to her from the long list of various categories she had watched at some point; she knew the dangers of not thoroughly researching the possible health effects of any substance that could be utilized in the craft if it was meant for human consumption; and that she had bought a tarot deck.

    Wait.

    Nellie paused at that, feeling as her thoughts skidded to a halt.

    Her memory was fuzzy in the way it would become whenever she tried to remember anything that took place at a time that she was exhausted. She could be wrong, but she could picture in her mind¡¯s eye the website on which she had bought the deck; the stark white of the background, the bold darkness of the price she was willing to pay, and the vibrant, striking colors of the images of the deck itself. She could even remember the flutter of her heart at having something new to focus on that had nothing to do with Bennie, her sister, and everything they had caused.

    But¡­ there was no way.

    ¡­ Was there?

    It felt like a distant memory, as if it was more dream than proper memory; as reachable as it was unreachable.

    But.

    She had a bad habit of letting her impulses get the best of her at the worst of times; her childhood room¡¯s closet was still filled to the brim with all of the trinkets of unexplored hobbies she had promised her parents she would get into but never followed through on. And there was a sick pleasure she got from buying something new, no matter how illogical or unnecessary it was in her life.

    Nellie closed her eyes, breathed in deeply, and allowed her head to fall back onto the desk. Her arms, the traitors, had already been perfectly positioned to pillow her head''s descent even if she hadn''t called on them.

    As she allowed her eyes to close, she noticed that they burned. It wasn''t the burning sting of tears, though. No, this was another kind of burning that she was far more accustomed to experiencing, a burn she had become familiarized with due to endless nights of intense studies and torturous work on projects. This was the burning of eyes that were sorely in need of sleep.

    With a deep inhale, Nellie decided that there was only one thing she should focus on, that there was more than enough time in the future to handle anything else.

    If it wasn''t sleep, then it would be a problem for future Nellie.

 The Devil: Chapter Three

    Past Nellie, Present Nellie decided, was an asshole.

    Not only had she decided to impulsively buy an item she had no use for and a grand total of zero understanding on how to properly use it, but she had also decided to buy it from a seller online that did not accept cancelations past the first 24 hours of having made an order!

    Nellie glared at the seller¡¯s information for a second longer before turning her gaze onto the item she had bought.

    It was advertised as a Tarot Deck with plenty of keywords in the title itself- the most striking of which were ¡®Guidebook¡¯, ¡®For Beginners¡¯, and ¡®Rider-Waite¡¯. Of those three words, two brought her some form of solace- even if she had been impulsive, at least she had been capable of enough forethought to know to buy a deck that was friendly for those that had no idea what they were doing. The final one, though, the one that was made up of two names; well, at least that¡¯s what it sounded like to her; was a word that she was very unknowledgeable about.

    When she clicked onto the item itself, she was taken to a page where the main focus was the pictures of the product she was buying. To the right of the pictures, there was an information box that was filled with so many words that she needed to scroll down to get to read everything that had been written down and thought of as necessary for a buyer by the seller.

    The main picture at the front and center of the deck box was of a blonde man with one hand held high in the sky, some kind of wand clutched in it as his other hand pointed downwards. The artwork was comprised of bold lines and colors, with a solid background and some flowers on the foreground. The further Nellie looked at this image, the more she believed that this probably belonged to a historical artistic movement she did not know the name of; she could place that it was too cartoony to be renaissance, but had an air of severity that, to her at least, didn¡¯t really mesh all that well with the few contemporary styles she could think of.

    There was lettering both at the top of the card and the bottom. But while there was only a simple Roman numeral at the top, an ''I'', there was a whole name at the bottom.

    ¡°The Magician.¡± she murmured in a faint whisper, voice barely making enough noise, more of an exhale than a proper vocalization.

    The man¡¯s face was set in a neutral expression; his head had an infinity symbol floating over it. His gaze was¡­ Nellie couldn¡¯t quite find the proper word to describe it. Through the screen, he looked like he was supposed to have a disinterested look on his face- his lips were a thin, horizontal line and his eyes were barely more than a dot with lines above to signify the eyes and eyebrows. But¡­ for some reason¡­ it looked like he was looking on defiantly at her.

    Was he determined? Or was he nonchalant? What was he staring at? Was it at the viewer? Or was it at some unseen force he was staring down?

    The further Nellie stared at the picture, the more uncomfortable she became.

    She wasn¡¯t quite able to pinpoint the exact reason why she was beginning to feel uneasy. But there was an ache beginning in her chest that she only ever really got whenever her anxiety really began to kick in. There was a form of fuzziness that had layered over her shoulders that she couldn¡¯t properly explain¡­ it was weird. She felt weird. And she didn¡¯t really like that.

    She felt shaken.

    Nellie couldn¡¯t place her finger on the reason why she felt something so strange; so out of place. But even if she couldn¡¯t quite place it, she had some inkling as to where it may be coming from.

    Maybe that witchcraft rabbit-hole she had accidentally stumbled into the past night had freaked her out in a way she had not quite processed yet. She had never been religious, having skewed towards the agnostic/atheist spectrum for more than half of her life now. But she had been raised around parents that had held firmly to their religious beliefs, which they had also tried to instill into her and her siblings. It would not be all that farfetched to learn that some of their superstitions against magic had rubbed off on her without her noticing it.

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    Her father was the kind of man that would not drive behind a car if the license plate number was 666, after all. It wouldn¡¯t be farfetched at all to have subconsciously adopted some of the superstitious, paranoia-backed concerns her parents had voiced out at some point or another.

    Nellie took a moment to breathe in and compose herself.

    Even if magic was real, she hadn''t shared her parents'' religious beliefs in a very long time, and she hadn''t stopped believing for nothing. Their religion, even if supposedly based on love for all of humanity, was divisive, angry, and vengeful; odds were that everything it had to say about magic, witchcraft, and anything along those lines was born from a need to otherize that they could not control. If magic was real, odds were that the kinds of things that Ainsley Aimes and all that thought like them were a lot more accurate with what it was rather than the religion she had turned her back on so long ago.

    The tension in her body felt like it released, if only a little. And it was relieving to know that taking a moment to rationalize such unfounded concerns was all that had been necessary to make her feel better.

    With a slight push against her desk, Nellie managed to successfully extricate herself from the world of supposed magic that had become a sudden and intense, if confusing, interest within the space of just one night. As she reached her arms up to stretch for the first time in what felt like an eternity, her whole body felt refreshed, even if still notably pained.

    Sleeping at a desk was something she would never recommend anyone to do.

    With a heavy sigh, she swiveled her chair around to look behind her to find that her room looked still very much the same as she remembered it having looked the past night. Her phone still lay on the mattress, exactly where she had left it, untouched and unmoved.

    She found a frown begin to drag down the corners of her lips as everything came back to her from just the sight of her phone.

    Bennie had cheated on her.

    "Once a gambler, always a gambler; once a beater, always a beater; once a cheater; always a cheater- a tiger cannot change its stripes."

    Her mother¡¯s words came back to her, a mantra that had been seared into her very soul for as long as she could remember. Whenever her mother had repeated this, it had been due to having recently come across some story that had reminded her of what she considered to have been the greatest mistake she had ever committed; one that she wanted all of her children to avoid.

    In her family, there was no such thing as self-respect when it came to forgiving something like cheating; all her life, she had been taught that the only people that went back to a partner that cheated on them were the people that believed themselves unworthy of proper love, that underestimated their greatness, that were weak and spineless and found their sense of validation only within the words of others. All her life, Nellie had been taught to believe that to go back to someone that had cheated on her would become the one of the worst sins she could ever commit against herself- second only to harming herself physically.

    No one knew.

    But she did.

    With a deep breath in, Nellie made her way towards her bed on shaky legs. As her fingers trembled, she pressed in the familiar, routine series of numbers to unlock her phone.

    There was barely any battery left, a message warned. She swiped it away and found herself staring down at the text message she had written but never sent.

    "A tiger cannot change its stripes", she heard her mother¡¯s voice echo around within her mind. "Once a cheater, always a cheater."

    Exhaling, she felt her fingers become cold.

    She pressed send.

    The message loaded as she continued to stare. Her heart hammered within her chest; it was so loud she could feel it pulsing in her throat, hear it echoing within her ears; her chest once again began to tighten right above her sternum.

    Her breath caught in her lungs when it was confirmed that the message had been sent with two simple, grayed checkmarks at the bottom of the paragraph''s bubble. With that simple appearance of such mundane, commonplace symbols, Nellie was informed that she had successfully sealed her fate.

    And then the phone¡¯s screen went dark.

 The Devil: Chapter Four

    She had made the conscious decision to turn off her phone.

    It had been the right thing to do, she knew.

    But just because it had been right didn¡¯t mean she didn¡¯t feel wrong- her fingers flexed as they yearned for something to mess around with at the same time the traitorous itch in the back of her mind insisted that she needed to keep up to date on everything that was being whispered about her among all of the chats and public social media posts her relationship had any relevancy in; that she needed to know what people that weren''t her friends were telling the people that were and what her friends were saying back.

    They weren¡¯t many, of course, but they were a lot more than they should have been¡­ no, that was wrong.

    Her and Bennie¡¯s relationship had struck a lot of people within their university as intriguing. It only made sense that there now was a notable chunk of people conspiring to figure out why she had broken up with him.

    It was annoying and she hated that there was speculation going around that she might be going through something personal because who in their right mind would ever break up with Benjamin Pryce Sharp? Even if she knew that these people, at the end of the day, weren''t supposed to matter to her... a tiny, impulsive, and stupid part of her wanted to be able to get all of these people talking about her together in the same place to be able to put them in their place, no matter how stupid that was.

    When she had entered this particular university, she had been painfully aware of how similar it would be to her high school. The consensus online about the social media culture that surrounded the university was that it could get toxic. While the education offered was incredible and there was a plethora of success stories that indicated how thoroughly this university prepared its students for their future careers, there was an overreliance on social media by most of the student body that had begun at the dawn of social media and never wavered.

    Nellie¡¯s plan going into this university had been the same one she had ascribed to back in high school- never use social media unless it was 100% necessary for a class, have only one page that could be found by searching up her name, and stick mostly to herself and what little friends she managed to make. Things had mostly worked out for the best through this plan¡­ until she had begun to date Bennie.

    And now there were more than twenty posts on various social media pages philosophizing about the reason why she had been insane enough to leave one of the best men to ever enter the school- all reasons that had ranged from the mundane to the impossibly extreme.

    The last thing Simone had ordered her to do had been to completely distance herself from any and all updates that had anything to do with social media and all the chaos it entailed. Before that, she had told her to not look at any of the messages that Bennie had sent her. And before that, she had had congratulated her on finally growing a spine and kicking the piece of trash known as Bennie Sharp to the curb.

    Of her friends, Simone had always been the most vocal about how little she approved of the relationship she had been in¡­ not more than two weeks ago¡­

    With a sigh, Nellie glanced down at the package that had sat on her desk, patient in its wait to be acknowledged, for as long as she had been sat at the chair.

    It was a small, yellow thing; rectangular in shape and unimpressive in almost everything. There was a white piece of paper taped onto what she assumed to be the top of the package; in little black letters, there was her address as well as the direction where it had come from. The shop name was printed in the same fine print as the rest and should not have stood out to her; and yet it did: SnowmanCovenInc.

    It was a silly name. That made sense, right? All humans had the capacity to have a sense of humor, after all. And there were a bunch of shops online that had quirky, odd, and kind of try-hard names that attempted to come off as amusing. It was completely common for this kind of name to have been decided upon by a shop owner online¡­ it felt weird.

    Weren¡¯t the people that believed in this form of¡­ magic supposed to be serious?

    That name wasn¡¯t very serious.

    With lips slightly pursed, Nellie shook her head at her own absurdity and irrational need to judge everything as soon as she first came into contact with anything. She grabbed the package and began to attempt to rip it open at the edge closest to her; all the while she chided herself for her illogical and, quite frankly, overly judgmental thoughts. Just because someone was selling tarot cards online, it didn¡¯t mean that they were witches or pagans or wiccans; just because someone was part of any of those groups, it didn''t mean that they weren''t allowed to be comedic.

    She had learned that, while these three terms were used interchangeably by a lot of people, they actually weren¡¯t. Two of those were religious in spirit, while the former didn¡¯t require any form of religious thought or action to be part of it. It could, if the witch really wanted to include it, but you didn¡¯t have to be religious in any way to practice witchcraft. To be a witch didn''t inherently mean to be a pagan or a wiccan; to be a pagan or a wiccan didn''t mean to be a witch; but there was also no rule against one being a pagan witch or a wiccan witch, there were just a lot more nuances than Nellie could have ever expected.

    It was really fascinating to have learned so much from just one CaveTube channel; she had to admit, though, that Ainsley Aimes had been the only content creator she had found that had managed to publish videos that were both interesting and informative enough for her to finish every single one she had found. Part of all she had learned through the practicing witch, though, had been because she did a great job of infusing education in the videos in which she reacted to preposterous and/or harmful content posted online on different social media sites that all touted the same badge of ¡®INFO FOR WITCHES! COME HERE TO GET THE SCOOP!¡¯.

    Her fingers scrabbled and scratched for purchase, but the way the package had been sealed up with packing tape had been just about expert- there were no chinks or weak spots to find that she could tear into. She frowned softly but admitted defeat; she found a scissor inside of the drawer towards her left and fought some more to be able to cut into the package.

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    Some struggling later, she found herself with the gutted insides of the package mournfully staring up at her from its spot on the desk and a bubble-wrapped box within her hands. It had a notable amount of weight to it.

    Tarot decks were generally composed of more than seventy cards and the version she had bought was supposed to come along with a deck-sized guidebook- it would make sense for the box the deck came in to be relatively heavy. She just¡­ hadn¡¯t thought it would be quite that hefty.

    Her chest felt marginally tingly.

    She forced herself to ignore that sensation as she unraveled the bubble-wrap and touched the box for the first time.

    It felt¡­ cold. And smooth. The weight that it had was much more noticeable now, somehow, even if it was supposed to have lost some of it due to no longer having any additional packaging surrounding it. And there was a tingling sensation starting up in the palm of her hand that she could not quite understand, much less explain.

    Maybe she was just sleep deprived- that would have been enough of an explanation.

    The box was a bright yellow color, with a picture of The Magician as its front cover. That particular card design was bordered with thick white lines, the title in big, bold letters at the top, while the name of the card was at the bottom, black words contrasted on a gray strip. ¡®THE RIDER TAROT DECK¡¯ it read, and the name was repeated on both sides of the box, along with the usual written paraphernalia that was probably a requirement in publishing and selling these kinds of decks.

    As she opened up the box, the tingling sensation moved along from her palm over to the tips of her right hand¡¯s fingers, all the while it slowly began to appear in her left hand¡¯s palm.

    Wow, that sleep deprivation really was affecting her, huh? It was making her feel like there was actually a tingling sensation going on in her hand!

    When she peered inside the contents of the box, it was to find that there was, indeed, a guidebook squished in, behind the cards. She began to chew without much force at her inner bottom lip, then she tilted the box over her left hand. The cards slid out without any real complication; they made the softest sliding noise as they went, eventually landing mutely inside of her palm. The book tumbled off and onto the desk, landing flat on its back cover.

    The cards were held together by a broad and thin strip of plastic that was even cooler to the touch than the cards themselves. It scratched the skin of her palm ever so slightly before the cards settled at the very center of her upturned hand.

    She placed the box down beside the thin the guidebook and wondered for a moment, marveled, what she should begin with.

    In these past few days, she had learned more about what tarot meant and how it was supposed to be read. Granted, most of what she had learned had been from quick, general summaries that Ainsley Aimes had offered in videos that weren¡¯t specific to anything that had to do with the art of divination. But, still, she knew 100% more information on the way the tarot worked and how people utilized it within their lives than she had before¡­ before It Happened.

    That information she did know wasn¡¯t much, she had to admit. But¡­ it was something.

    It would make sense to parse through the guidebook first to gain some understanding over how it had been constructed and maybe learn a little bit about what each card meant. But it would also make sense to look over the cards to actually get to see what they were composed of and maybe attempt to find any symbols that drew her eyes.

    She chewed at her bottom lip for a little longer before eventually plucking the plastic up and away from the cards. She pulled it off and then marveled at the smooth sensation the cards elicited when they began to fan onto her palm.

    There were tingles all along her left hand now, reaching all the way up to her fingertips- and maybe she needed to go to do a doctor because wasn¡¯t that a symptom of poor circulation? She wasn''t a perfectly healthy individual by any stretch of the imagination, but she had never experienced anything like this before!

    But... well... she had been under a lot of stress, recently. She hadn''t been eating right and sleep eluded her at night, only to ambush her at the most random hours of the day. Her modest workouts had completely halted and she wasn''t trying her best to take care of herself anymore. And she knew that she needed to get back to doing the things in her life that her body most needed but... well... She just couldn''t force herself to. Not yet. She couldn''t find the strength inside of herself to get interested in almost anything other than witchcraft. Even the simple task of getting up and taking care of her hygienic needs in the bathroom had become Herculean.

    With a soft huff, she forced her thoughts away from her body and over to the novelty in her hand.

    Nellie lifted her right hand to begin to handle the deck, and as she began to get a feel for the cards and how they maneuvered, she could not stop herself from thinking that the backs of the card were much more boring and plainer than she had expected. It was composed of a white background with a bunch of lines in different hues of blue crossing diagonally over one another. She wasn¡¯t quite sure what she had expected¡­ but it certainly hadn¡¯t been something so simple; she had expected something with a little more flair, maybe.

    The deck felt just the tiniest big for her hands, but she knew that she just wasn¡¯t very accustomed to handling decks of cards. After a couple of times of handling it, the feel would only become natural for her. Or, at least, that''s what she had read online.

    She focused first on seeing what each card depicted, turning the deck over so she could see the fronts of the cards. The first card in the deck was one called The Fool, who was a foolish young man blindly making his way over to a cliff with a dog at his side. It was¡­ very yellow.

    If the box, Magician, and Fool were anything to go off of, yellow seemed to be the most important color in this deck¡­ and that would get annoying rather fast, seeing how Nellie wasn¡¯t particularly fond of the color. There was nothing inherently wrong with it, of course. It was just¡­ garish when overused.

    She moved the Fool to the back of the deck and then found herself face to face with the card she had already become somewhat familiar with, due to its sheer popularity. The Magician.

    The tingling sensation began to radiate up both of her arms as she looked at the card, found herself entranced by the stern gaze of the man in the middle of some kind of magical ritual.

    The further she stared, the more the tingling rose up until eventually it reached her shoulders; it became hard to breathe.

    With a gasp, she dropped the cards onto her desk, making a mess as they flew out every which way.

    Tingling was something she could plausibly explain away with some kind of undiscovered medical condition.

    But burning?

    Nellie stared at the still hot tips of her fingers, reddened and seemingly abuzz with quickly cooling flames and then glanced down at the chaos of cards she knew would be a hassle picking up.

    Amongst disorder, the Magician lay at the very center of her desk, face up and defiant.

    <hr>

 The Devil: Chapter Five

    ¡°Should I meet with Bennie?¡±

    Her hands felt like they were on fire, so she was quick to pull out the topmost card of the deck and place it down on her desk face up. As soon as she could see that there were no positive images or symbols to be found, she knew the answer she had been given.

    THE DEVIL, the card¡¯s bottom read. There was a big, well, devil as the focal point of the card, with hairy chicken legs, bat wings, goat¡¯s horns, and an upside-down star centralized just above its narrow forehead. There were two people chained to the column it stood over, one a woman, the other a man, and while the man seemed almost content with where he was, the woman was looking back at her¡­ and all she could feel was the judgment radiating from her.

    This was the second time she asked this question. She hadn¡¯t received a better answer the first time around, but she had thought that maybe she had just shuffled the cards erroneously, because she had received it reversed: the Two of Cups.

    She had really hoped for something she had known deep down wouldn''t change when she drew a new card.

    One didn¡¯t really need to be an expert at tarot to know that this particular card held absolutely no positive connotations. Just the image alone was enough to be able to tell what kind of message it sent; the name was incredibly on the nose. She had yet to look up the meaning on the guidebook, but she felt like¡­ like the card was symbolizing her and Bennie¡¯s relationship.

    There had been times in which she had felt chained to him, even if not by him. And she had accepted it because that had been what was right; what she had allowed herself to accept as simply being her lot in life.

    As she chewed at her bottom lip, worrying it between her canines, she reached over for the guidebook. She had to flip through a few pages, but she eventually found the page on which The Devil¡¯s meaning was offered.

    <blockquote>

    Upright: Addiction, depression, obsession, dependency, materialism, abuse, assault, violence, hopelessness, cheating.

    Reversed: Detachment, freedom, defeating addiction, hope.

    </blockquote>

    The sound that she made did not feel as if it came from her mouth, for the rest of her body was cold and frozen; petrified.

    Bennie had asked for them to meet at a coffee shop they had visited once before; they had liked it well enough to say that they would eventually return but not enough to have actually followed through after. It had been as neutral a place as he knew she would be willing to go to and, damn her weak, wretched heart... she had been tempted to go.

    Simone had told her it would be a bad idea and not worth the hassle. Her sister had texted her to let her know that she thought it would be good for at least a little bit of closure for all three of them. Her parents had insisted it would be good to go back to Bennie, explain herself, and ask for forgiveness from the best man she had ever met in her life.

    She had blocked Bennie everywhere she had been able to think of. She had made sure to block him as soon as she had been able to on the sites she had easy access to and then she had thought long and hard and gone about the grueling task of blocking him even in places she didn¡¯t, just to really force herself to stay away from the temptation of reading anything sent by him.

    But she hadn¡¯t blocked her sister. And she had just known that it would only be a matter of time before he took advantage of that fact to get through to her.

    And, because life was cruel, she wouldn''t be able to block her sister, either, to get rid of Bennie as absolutely as she knew she would have liked. She couldn''t block her sister because she had yet to admit what she had witnessed to anyone; not even Simone, who was her friend that knew the most about the situation.

    Bennie would have undoubtedly known all of this- she had always been too willing to speak far too freely about the fragmented relationships she shared with her family members... she hadn''t been surprised to find out when he had tried to communicate her by using her sister''s phone.

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    And because her sister couldn''t leave well enough alone, she had gone ahead and told their parents.

    And now she had to wait with building anxiety for her brothers and cousins to get involved to either ask what had happened or demand for her to go back and stop being so dramatic. Because¡­ well¡­ if she gave a reason for the break-up, it would be a lie. She couldn¡¯t just admit to the fact that she hadn¡¯t been good enough to keep a man she had always been told was too good for her. It would be too much of an embarrassment.

    The deck was more than clear, in her opinion, over what she should be doing. In a way, she even felt like it was¡­ insulting her? There was a feeling of being attacked that she couldn¡¯t really shake, even though she couldn¡¯t quite explain why she felt such a way.

    Still¡­ deep down, she knew that she wanted to see Bennie again, even if she knew it was wrong.

    Bennie had been good to her, yes. But she couldn''t look past the fact that he had cheated on her. With her sister. Even though he had known everything she had told him about her relationship with her sister.

    Nellie had always known that life was cruel but this? This was just a new low she wished she could be surprised by but... in truth... she wasn''t.

    Her sister had always been the kind of person to steal anything that belonged to Nellie. When they had been younger, Nellie had done her best to write such actions off as her little sister simply wanting to be like her older sister. But, by now, Nellie knew better.

    As long as her sister was around, she would never be able to have anything that was truly just her''s.

    She had been stupid to think that Vanessa would be incapable of stooping so low. Well, no, with the way that she was taking all of this with relative ease, it was clear that she wasn''t too surprised by what had happened. Instead, she had just hoped that Vanessa would be better than that.

    But, really, this was all on her. She had been a fool to hope such a thing. From birth, their parents had basically raised Vanessa to think that she had a right to everything that belonged to Nellie. Not even her preferred nickname had been safe from her younger sister.

    Yes, it was petty. But there was still a dagger in her heart because ever since Vanessa had been born, Nellie had felt like she wasn''t enough. She may laugh at family gatherings when people remarked how cute it was that their preferred nicknames rhymed so perfectly but... Nessie and Nellie had haunted her heart for far too long.

    With a sigh, Nellie forced her mind away from such thoughts and back into the most important matter at hand. She couldn''t really do much to handle the situation with her sister other than just accept it for what it was: her life.

    Bennie, though? She could at least get away from the new brand of toxicity he had unleashed in her life; she didn''t have to lie down and accept this.

    She looked down at the card once again, focusing specifically on the blonde woman. The further she looked at her, the harsher her contempt became; Nellie felt a hollowness begin to appear deep within her chest before she tore her eyes away with a groan.

    After she had unlocked her phone and entered her sister¡¯s messages, she wrote a curt ¡®No thank you. I love you but if you play middleman for Bennie again, I¡¯m blocking you too.¡¯

    The words were harsher than what she usually would have resorted to; she had sent the message before she had allowed herself to attempt and change them into something much less straight-to-the-point, into something much gentler. The harshness of the tone would probably cause friction with the family but... well... she could handle that when the time came.

    Her fingers began to tap against her thumbs without her even noticing it; her foot began to tap against the ground.

    There were a million thoughts bouncing around her head and most of them were not very kind. As she focused on the one about her sister being a better fit for the athletic social media star than her own reserved, isolation-loving self, another one about her parents being disappointed over having to say goodbye to their prized future-son-in-law forced its way to the front. One about being crazy for even thinking that there was sense to what cards she had pulled crawled at the very bottom, mostly quiet, but ever present in the mess that was her mind.

    When her breathing became noticeably hollow, Nellie decided it was time to distract herself with some more videos on witchcraft.

    She needed to stand strong because Bennie was a lying cheat, even if only she knew the truth. Her sister was also deserving of being blocked, but if she didn¡¯t press too hard, Nellie was willing to grin-and-bear-it for the sake of family harmony. They were both assholes that she wanted absolutely nothing to do with because they had betrayed her and broken her heart; but one of these assholes was family and she couldn¡¯t just cut her out full stop.

    She deserved better than a guy that lied about how much he loved her and then turned around and fucked her sister when her back was turned.

    She did.

    She just needed to keep repeating this until she started to believe it.

 The Devil: Chapter Six

    The first day of classes back from winter break was not an easy time.

    Nellie, for as long as she could remember, had been the kind of person to worry over the most ridiculous things that were fully out of her control.

    When she had been younger and yearly classes had ended, she could remember with way too much detail the way in which child-her had laid awake at night, mind so focused on all the different possibilities that had popped up before her over what summer camp she would be sent to that she had been incapable of a proper night¡¯s sleep. Every year, for way too long a chunk of her life, the uncertainty of being taken to a new summer camp so her parents would have somewhere to drop her off while they worked had rendered her devoid of rest. That had only really stopped when she had reached the age where she could take care of herself at home during the summer; not because she had managed to somehow grow out of the horrible habit.

    So, it wasn¡¯t like she had been surprised by the time 3 in the morning had hit and she had not been able to think of a single moment in which she had been able to get anything similar to rest. Her mind had been so focused on the contemplation of how many disasters awaited her returning to society after having spent the tail end of her winter vacation cooped up within her apartment that she had been incapable of closing her eyes for longer than a minute before it was ravaged by images of classmates jeering and pointing; pitying her over her rash decision making; whispering behind her back over how much of a fool she must have been to have let a good thing like Benjamin Pryce slip through her fingers.

    Eventually, she had given up on any attempts to sleep. With a heavy sigh, she had tossed her covers off her body, stood up, and stomped her way over to her laptop.

    The rest of the much-too-early-morning had been spent at her desk in a valiant yet ultimately disastrous (as generally went, unfortunately) attempt to get some answers from the tarot deck that had arrived for her not more than a week ago.

    Quite frankly, she wasn¡¯t sure if she had done something wrong with the deck.

    When she had gotten past the cleaning-up stage of dealing with her first encounter with the tarot deck, she had made quick work of opening up her laptop and searching up the best way to cleanse a deck of cards. She had scrolled past a couple of articles, taken notes, and then returned to her most trusted source of information on anything occult to make sure that what she had found could have been viable. With a quick search on CaveTube, she had wound up watching an Ainsley Aimes video in which they had explained the top ways they enjoyed cleansing just about anything; there had been no video dedicated specifically to divination decks, unfortunately.

    Seeing how she had no crystals nearby and would probably get kicked out if she set the smoke alarms off with incense or other such smoking paraphernalia, didn¡¯t think running water would be particularly useful for something that could get destroyed by it, and many other suggestions had just been flat out of reach, Nellie had decided to just wait for nighttime. The moon¡¯s beams were supposed to be enough to cleanse the deck, especially if she made sure to make her intention clear before leaving it there, and so she had.

    Once morning had come, she had attempted to pick the deck up and found that the odd feeling of buzzing was still in her hands as she attempted to handle it.

    Ever since, no matter how much she shuffled the deck, breathed on it to clean it, no matter how loud the music she played to cleanse it was, no matter how much she salt she dumped on the whole thing¡­ she couldn¡¯t handle the deck. Well, she could. But after a couple of seconds of her skin being in contact with the cards, there would come a time that her arms would burn and she would need to put it down.

    On this particular ungodly morning, she had attempted to ask a simple question to the deck: How is my day going to go?

    No matter how much she had shuffled, how many times she had checked that all the cards were standing upright in the deck before she shuffled, and how careful she had been in handling the cards¡­ every single card that wasn¡¯t negative in its upright state had appeared upside down as she had pulled it.

    So, with only omens of a horrible day filled with betrayal, heartache, obsessive delusions, and other such wonderful things and with deep, dark rings beneath her eyes that let everyone know she had not slept at all, Nellie had made her way down to campus to just¡­ get the day over and done with.

    Moscow Northwestern University had been a campus that she had fallen in love with as soon as she had seen pictures of it in the brochures that had been handed out in the innumerable college fairs she had been forced to visit in her time in high school. It was ¡®small college in not quite sleepy but clearly not over busy town¡¯ brought to life- from the cozy but large-enough campus all the way to the form of architecture all buildings were built with.

    Technically speaking, this wasn¡¯t much of a university by itself. It was a branch of the much larger University of Idaho, but specialized for all that were looking to make a career in the social sciences or humanities- absolutely perfect for someone like Nellie. But that was precisely what had made it so attractive to her when she had been researching places to go and make a new life in, far away from the constant noise and buzz of the city she had grown up in; good old Austin, Texas.

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    Today was a windy day, with winds so harsh that her hair had come out of its lazy ponytail and whipped behind her- once she went inside a building, she would redo the hairstyle, but she had learned very quickly that there was no styling hair in this kind of weather. There were only clouds in the sky with no sun in sight, the sky so gray that it would be no surprise if it began to rain at any moment and kept on raining for the rest of the day.

    Even if the beginning of this day had been the worst, at least the climate was perfect.

    This was the kind of weather her family would complain about; the exact type of weather that Bennie insisted was horrible, dreary, and it was odd of her to so enjoy. But, in truth, this had been the exact weather to reassure her that the big move from a place like Texas to a place like Idaho was the right choice- this was the kind of weather that made her the happiest.

    With a small sigh, Nellie¡¯s hurried steps lost their quickness. She slowed down as memories of Bennie¡¯s positive interactions with her family began to flood her mind.

    It was cruel.

    Life was cruel.

    She had always known about this nature of cruelty, of course, for she had grown up in the kind of family that had made her pay for any form of innocent gullibility. Her childhood had been the kind in which she had been forced to rip off the wool over her eyes unless she wanted to be swallowed up by the messed-up family dynamics her parents and siblings all insisted were just ¡®unique¡¯ to them. Said dynamics had consisted of the kinds of behaviors she had been led to believe were normal for much too long in her life; she had only begun to deconstruct the patterns and meanings behind such things when she had begun to open up to her friends about her family life and learned how her family¡¯s dynamics weren¡¯t at all similar to those of her friends¡¯ families.

    She couldn¡¯t believe that this was what her life had become.

    In the past, when she had finally broken through the long trek to the campus and caught sight of the wind buffeted, clouded wonderland that surrounded the Humanities building, she would feel a lot of happiness. Now, all she could think of was Bennie¡¯s particular way of calling out her oddities because who in their right mind enjoyed a cloudy sky over a sunny one?

    <hr>

    She could feel eyes on her.

    Even if she wanted to turn around and attempt to find who in the world was so intrigued by her, she knew that such actions would only make her look weird. In the library, everyone was either focused on their own work, whichever friend or companion they had come in with, or their own despair. Why would anyone be looking at her?

    Because you broke up with Bennie like a complete lunatic. You¡¯re a walking freakshow. You should hurry up and curb the market; start charging people to be able to gawk at you. At least then you¡¯d get something out of this.

    She did her best to ignore such horrible thoughts. Not only was she tired, but she also acknowledged that she had a very real issue with paranoia and assuming the worst in people. For as long as she could remember, she had just expected the worst to come; that had been yet another thing about Bennie that her family had loved about him and disliked about her¡­ well, now she could see that she had been right to get to expect only the worst in people. She had believed at one point that Bennie would be the man she would marry; the man that would become the father of her future hypothetical children. And then he had gone and cheated on her.

    With a sigh, Nellie attempted to focus on her laptop¡¯s screen, rather than on her own mind.

    The first class had come and gone without any true fanfare. The professor had handed out the syllabus and explained it, her fellow classmates and her had been subjected to the torture that were first day¡¯s introductions, and a group chat had been made on the most popular messenger app they all had access to. Within half an hour, the professor had given them their first assignment and told them they were dismissed.

    Now Nellie found herself in the library, hidden away in one of the dozens of cubicle shaped, private tables that had three other spaces in its structure, but sectioned off to allow all four people that could utilize it at once the same luxury of not having to see the complete stranger they shared a space with.

    It wasn¡¯t like she wanted to be in the library¡­ but it also wasn¡¯t like she wanted to be anywhere else.

    When she had chosen her classes for this semester, she had done her best to take courses that would leave her with free time during the afternoons. She had been lucky enough to get am classes to fill up most of her schedule; all electives to give herself a semester of ¡®chill¡¯ after having worked so hard to the past two and a half years on getting great grades on core courses. Much to her misfortune with recent developments, the way she had built her schedule meant that she couldn¡¯t really leave campus grounds on days when she left one class early; she had to stick around because her next class would be set to begin in less than two hours.

    She was sure that the whispers she heard behind her had nothing to do with her. Why would anyone even care about her, anyway? Now that she was no longer dating one of the most well known students on campus, the only interesting thing about her was the fact that she had dated one of the most well known students on campus. Aside from that, there was a grand old amount of absolutely nothing that would make her interesting to anyone around her. She was average; and she was proud of that.

    Did her understanding that she wasn¡¯t the center of the universe change anything, though? Of course not. She was still going to worry over the fact that someone had managed to look over her shoulder and read the title of the video she was focused on, which would then lead to them ridiculing her to their friend.

    With a sigh, she attempted to force herself to pay attention to the video she had put on. It was, as all of Ainsley Aimes¡¯ videos were, informative, well put together, and would have kept her entertained if not for the fact that she kept becoming distracted by the possibility of someone watching and ridiculing her.

    Just perfect, she frowned to herself as she barely listened to what Ainsley Aimes listed off in the video. A perfect first day, huh, Nellie?

 The Devil: Chapter Seven

    Monotony.

    Her life had become an exercise in nothing.

    Every day it was the same old routine, with no hope of a morsel of variation in sight: wake up, agonize over the cryptic message offered by the deck, go to school, masquerade as a proper student, make sure to eat something to at least feed herself once a day, return to her apartment, do whatever schoolwork she needed to do for that day, go to sleep, and repeat.

    The only thing that ever varied was the kind of food she ate when she remembered she was a human that needed dietary sustenance and the cards that she received for the daily spread. It was all repetitive droll.

    If there was at least one good thing about this routine, it was that it left no space for her to agonize over social media. Whatever was occurring within Bennie''s life was unknown to her. And considering that there was nothing truly important occurring within her own life, she was more than happy to remain ignorant towards whatever fascinating, fun, and exciting things her ex-boyfriend was undoubtedly filling his own life up with.

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    Even though she was aware that the phrase misery loves company existed for a reason, she was more than happy to fester within her solitude. There was even a sense of freedom finally being alone gave her; trapped within her own mind, relishing within her own sadness, swallowed up by all the uncertainty, fear, and anguish as she may have been... At least everything that she was feeling now was hers only. No one was here to dictate what to do... How to feel... How to get over Bennie''s betrayal.

    She knew that eventually she would have to claw her way out of this prison of her own creation. Eventually she would have to respond to her family''s messages with more than just meaningless replies of promises she would never fulfill; eventually she would have to give her friends more than just ¡°I''m OK I promise please just give me space I''ll text you when I''m ready¡± as a response to their messages of concern; eventually she would have to face the world again and step out and back into the real world.

    But she was on her own timeline now. And her timeline said that she was not going to leave her loneliness until she was well and ready.

 The Fool: Chapter One

    The first time Nellie received a positive spread from her deck was when she asked it about the idea of buying a new deck.

    April came with a flourish of life to Moscow, Idaho. The snow that had blanketed the landscape during the wintertime had completely dissipated at this point, leaving behind only small clumps of slush in select areas. When she walked around campus, Nellie could now see birds flying, even though spotting them could be sporadic. There were budding signs of new life everywhere she looked; proof that the cold winter was being left behind and a bright summer was their ultimate destination.

    She now knew that she found herself in between the celebrations of Ostara and Beltane. What that meant, exactly, she wasn¡¯t completely sure. There was a lot of information that the Wheel of the Year encompassed that she doubted she would ever be able completely understand. What she did know, though, was that winter was long past and the Wheel of the Year marked this time as one for rebirth; the snow was melting, the wildlife was slowly making its way out of its slumber, and, much as nature was doing, it was time for her to begin to live once again.

    In a way, she could feel the change of the season affecting her too.

    Subtle, miniscule shifts had begun to pop up inside of her.

    At first, they had been so subtle that she had not managed to really notice them. But, eventually, she had managed to catch on to the fact that there was something fundamentally different within herself. Now she knew that, even if the soothing comfort of loneliness still pulled at her, she now found herself slowly but surely inching towards opening herself up once more to a world she had decided to escape from, if only for a moment.

    Nellie now found herself smiling more often than not when she managed to see a bird flying high above her head. She had found herself capable of noticing the lively shift in the atmosphere and wildlife around her and that, in turn, had made her begin to feel like she was in the mood to try again.

    What that meant in practice, she wasn¡¯t completely sure. She just knew that she had this overwhelming feeling that had begun to consume her that begged her to do something with her life; to begin to find ways to seek out variation from the monotony she had fallen into.

    There was this inexplicable buzz of energy within her, quiet and lazy as it still was, that was slowly building up into something real. And Nellie was fascinated by it.

    As her environment changed, Nellie found that it was easier to dust off the weight that had remained over her shoulders from the moment that she had witnessed her ex-boyfriend on top of her younger sister. It was still there, just like it would always be there, she guessed, because this was a betrayal that she just couldn¡¯t walk away from. But she felt¡­ lighter now. Her eyes didn¡¯t feel as heavy anymore and she didn¡¯t feel as drawn to remain in the comforts of her dark bedroom to the same degree.

    One afternoon, as she made the conscious decision to ignore her coursework and instead indulge in a craft she was not even sure may even be real, she had decided to pull out her tarot deck. In the background, yet another video from Ainsley''s bountiful collection had played. It had been a video on tarot, so it hadn¡¯t been as if this decision had come from nowhere. But it had been a video walkthrough of the vast collection the English witch had at her disposal- not one about how to read or understand the card system.

    ¡°Oh, this deck¡­ it hates me.¡± even though she had been listening with only half an ear, that statement had stood out to her; she had begun to pay more attention to the deck that was on display at the moment and Tempest¡¯s words.

    After an explanation of the kind of horrible things that had happened to the witch in the past as they had stubbornly attempted to make things work between them and their first deck, Nellie¡¯s mind had begun to turn with a question that had made her marginally uncomfortable at the same time she had begun to feel the faintest licks of hope appear within the depths of her mind.

    And so, that¡¯s how she found herself seated with the deck she had impulsively bought. It lay before her, sat on the bed as an unseen chasm distanced them. It loomed before her, no matter how silly she felt over being intimidated by an inanimate object that, realistically, couldn¡¯t look down at her.

    It still felt as if something looked down at her, though, and it felt like it was coming from the deck¡¯s direction.

    Nellie breathed in one final fortifying breath before she finally asked the question that had formed within her mind as she had watched Ainsley''s video: ¡°Should I buy a new deck?¡±

    She was still wary about anything to do with this world of magic; there was still much to scrutinize over and be skeptical about. She had no proof other than a few posts on the internet to rely on for assurance that this was real. And, quite frankly, it wasn¡¯t like she could even say that she was trying hard to figure any of this out. Sure, she had a tarot deck and knew a few important tidbits about how to care for crystals, how to make moon water, and what was truly supposed to matter in casting a spell, but that was it. She really didn¡¯t know more than such bare simplicities.

    This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

    Her hands did not burn as she shuffled the cards this time around. Her fingers did begin to ache somewhat as she tried to pick out the card at the very top after she had asked her question, so she instead continued to shuffle and hoped the burning would subside.

    She knew that most people picked out three cards for any given spread. So, she went ahead and after a few more rounds of shuffling, she grabbed the three at the center of the deck that caught her eye. They had been slightly raised up from the rest¡­ if she believed in this kind of thing, she may have even thought that they had specifically been separated to call her attention.

    Once she had flipped them over and left them laid out before her¡­ Nellie felt something deep within herself tug.

    The first card at the very left of the spread belonged to the suit of Swords and held a man seemingly rowing away from something, a collection of swords at the front of his boat. The one in the middle held the simple image of a hand that materialized from a cloud, holding on to a stick- it was the Ace of Wands. And the final card, the third one from left to right, was packed with such an intense yellow color that, for just a moment, it felt like the card shined bright, especially in comparison to the rest.

    THE FOOL seemed to ignore her as he faced in the direction of the Ace. It was almost as if¡­ Nellie breathed in deeply before she shook her head. There was nothing wrong with thinking deeply about this kind of thing. Associations between cards were correct to make, even if they felt silly.

    And she felt more than just a little silly at just the idea of thinking that, even if for just a moment, she thought that these cards were telling her something.

    It was associations, she knew. Taking the question she had asked as a base, she was trying to find ways to create an answer through what little she knew about the cards she had drawn and the positive imagery they could convey. Sure, she felt a tingling sensation along the tips of her fingers, but she was very sure that she would need to go to a doctor to figure out what might be behind it if it kept up.

    With a sigh, Nellie reminded herself that no one was inside of this room to judge her. She had, in essence, cut herself off from everyone in her life- or done as close to that as possible. No one would barge into her room unannounced and catch her seated with these cards, analyzing them; no one was around to question her actions and accuse her of the kinds of things that would probably get her disowned by not just her parents, but her whole family.

    Skepticism wasn¡¯t unhealthy, and a little hint of precaution could go a long way. But there was a small voice inside of her head shouting for her to ignore that skepticism and just look.

    She was allowed to be silly and hope that these cards were talking to her, if only within these walls. And even though it may feel just a little bit preposterous, the more she looked at the cards, the more she felt like what this deck was telling her to do would involve spending more money.

    <hr>

    Advice online about how to get a tarot deck was, much like with everything else that dealt with the world wide web, far too much. There were dozens of different kinds of schools of thought she had managed to find with just a superficial search with the phrase ¡®best way to get tarot deck¡¯. Sources consistently contradicted one another: where one person said that there was an undeniable need to be gifted a deck by someone that had been working within this craft for years, another stated that such an idea was archaic and based on crumbling foundations.

    From the videos she had managed to watch that Ainsley Aimes had published on the topic, there really didn¡¯t seem to be a consensus, either. At this point, they were the number one expert Nellie resorted to in order to get the most complete yet concise information that pertained to witchcraft. But even their video on tarot was a guide on how to read tarot, not a summary of the history of tarot and the best way to go about acquiring a deck. Granted, in their video, the knowledgeable witch did acknowledge that there were an endless amount of ways in which one could come about becoming the owner of a deck and, at least in their experience, there was no right or wrong way to get a deck.

    But from the way that Nellie¡¯s deck actively harmed her- even if, admittedly, very minutely- whenever she attempted to do any kind of reading, she could attest that there was a wrong way to do it. What she couldn¡¯t understand, though, was precisely what she had done wrong.

    No matter how many times she had attempted to cleanse the deck and no matter how many different types of cleansing techniques she had utilized, nothing had changed. She had exhausted all of the easy to access options she had managed to find on the internet and the deck still hurt her now as it had at the very beginning. No amount of cleansing had aided; and she had not been able to get many intelligible answers from the deck whenever she had been directed and asked it why it seemed to not want to work with her.

    Nellie frowned to herself as she looked down at the spread before her. The cards, for the first time since she had gotten them, had given her a positive reading. Her hands still felt as if they had been marginally stung, though, which was just about par for the course when it came to dealing with this deck.

    So¡­ she was supposed to get a new deck.

    Nellie breathed in deeply before she began to clamber out of her bed.

    She clearly needed to do a bit more research on the best way to get a new tarot deck before she made any further ill-thought-out financial decisions. The last thing she needed was to mess up again and have two tarot decks in her possession that hated her very guts.

 The Fool: Chapter Two

    ¡°Not that I¡¯m going to get annoyed with you or anything but¡­ are you sure you wanna start messing with these kinds of things?¡±

    Nellie pursed her lips as she glanced around the shop she had mustered up the courage to finally walk into.

    Quinn was a few feet away from her, his voice barely above a whisper so as to not disturb the stillness that surrounded them. His dark eyebrows were slightly furrowed- his face was pulled into a look of soft concern, complete with a barely perceptible frown beginning to appear in the corners of his lips.

    Even though she could understand why he felt this was something to ask her about, seeing how it was incredibly out of character for her to do something quite like this¡­ it still kind of annoyed her.

    ¡°I¡¯m not messing with anything.¡± she responded in a quick whisper, then turned her eyes fully on the products laid out in the table before her.

    It wasn¡¯t a lie, she told herself. It couldn¡¯t be one, after all, when she really didn¡¯t mean to do anything more than just buy a new tarot deck. She wasn¡¯t interested in looking at the other paraphernalia housed within the dark shop that she knew had a variety of uses within any and everything that pertained to witchcraft. Not at all¡­ well. It wasn¡¯t like Quinn knew she was interested in it, even if he was right.

    ¡°Uh-huh.¡± he replied in a voice that dripped with only sarcasm, slow and disbelieving. ¡°So, is there any great, big reason as to why you¡¯re suddenly interested in stepping foot into a shop that used to give you the heebie-jeebies the first time I invited you to come along?¡±

    Quinn had only invited her to join him on a trip to this store once; back then, it had been the first time he would have ever visited a spirituality-based shop that advertised itself as occult and had not wanted to go alone. That time, Nellie had admitted that she did not feel particularly comfortable heading into a shop that might dabble in things that her parents wouldn¡¯t approve of. Quinn had been disappointed but accepted that reason as good enough and invited another one of their friends to accompany him. After that, their conversations had never gone back to talking about anything spiritual or occult, even though it wasn¡¯t a grand mystery within their group of friends that Quinn was very much into these topics.

    Because of the way she had been raised, Nellie had been anxious about the possibility of things going very wrong for Quinn once he got more and more involved in a world she had not understood. Back then, she had only known the version of this world that had parents had painted for her.

    Now, though, that she was beginning to dabble into it herself and was actually learning about it from people that were of the culture, not outside of it¡­ she could very clearly see that she had been an idiot to have thought so negatively about it.

    The shop owner had been so nice with the way she had greeted them too! Nellie wasn¡¯t sure if this was normal within these kinds of circles, but it had been the first time she had ever had any employee within a store she visited offer her tea and biscuits to enjoy while she looked over the items in the store.

    ¡°Let¡¯s call this a simple change in perspective.¡± the collection of decks currently on display was vast, every single deck unique and particular in comparison to the rest. ¡°I¡¯ve¡­ you can keep a secret, right?¡±

    Quinn and she had never been particularly close. For the two years they had known each other, he had been a friend of a friend to her; she had been the same to him, after all. They got along well enough and did very well in having superficial, easy conversations. But even with the friend group they had in common, they ran around different circles and focused their lives on incredibly different interests. The only reason Quinn had invited her along initially had been because he had thought she might get a kick out of visiting, seeing how they had managed to bond so well over spooky themes in fiction and a shared love for certain horror movies.

    It wasn¡¯t really normal for her to ask so much of Quinn. They weren¡¯t close enough to share the kinds of secrets that were supposed to be kept from other, much closer friends.

    But.

    Quinn was a bit of a wildcard within the friend group; he did as he pleased and no matter what anyone thought of him, the only person that was capable of convincing him about what he should do in his life was himself. In a way, Nellie had always admired that about him. In another, she had feared him, just a little, over how little he seemed to care about what he chose to do with his life could affect those around him.

    She was not supposed to be like him, though. And what she was thinking of doing¡­ what she was actively orchestrating to be able to accomplish¡­ half of her friends would call her crazy and probably start pushing her away while the other half would try and convince her that this wasn¡¯t her, there were other ways to get better, why not go into therapy?

    Her friend group was big and filled with people that cared about her. But there was the monumental drawback that they cared enough to be far too vocal. And, to be perfectly honest, they just wouldn¡¯t understand what was going on in Nellie''s life. None of them had ever had to find their baby sister in bed with the person that was supposed to have been the love of their lives.

    Quinn¡¯s steps were light as he stepped up beside her. Nellie kept her gaze on the decks, feeling her heart rate begin to speed up. She knew that his eyes were on her; it made her want to fidget.

    ¡°Nellie, if there¡¯s someone that¡¯s hurting you,¡± his concern was so palpable that it made her want to turn around and hug him immediately.

    ¡°That¡¯s not it.¡± she took just a second to glance at him, only to find that his dark eyes were narrowed in clear worry. She breathed in deep and did her best to form her lips into a reassuring smile, ¡°Well, I was hurt. Still am. But that¡¯s not what this is about.¡± with a few taps of her thumb against her index finger, she turned back to look over the decks. ¡°I think I want to learn about being a witch. And I want to try and use tarot in my practice.¡±

    The silence that settled between them didn¡¯t last nearly as long as she had worried.

    With a simple ¡°Oh,¡± tumbling from his lips, Quinn then moved on to be the absolute best person to have confided in about this whole thing. ¡°How about this one?¡± he reached over to a box at the very back of the table, over which a label read in bold, cursive print Used, Cleansed, And Seeking New Owner, in smaller letters below, a quick note had been added in a hot red ink, and a little bit of love wouldn¡¯t hurt.

    Quinn pulled out a tattered box that had undoubtedly seen better days; unlike the newer decks, there was no shrink-wrap to protect it from the elements. There was white fuzz along some of its edges, most visible in the corners of the top lids. The font on the length she could see was suffering from slight chipping, but the letters were more than whole enough to be able to fully understand what it read: The Runaway Tarot. Whereas all of the box was in a mostly dark blue color, the font was in a gray so light it could have easily been confused for white.

    It looked¡­ interesting.

    She reached out for it and Quinn placed it gently within her palm; when she moved to close her fingers around it, she felt this sudden, inexplainable desire to not obscure the deck in any way. It was odd, yes, but instead of closing her hand, she was careful to move it closer to herself. She glanced down to find that the cover art was comprised of a person with a grin so wide it took up most of their face, their wild mane of red hair flowing in the wind as they ran away from a dark and gloomy silhouetted city.

    Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

    This person was¡­ beautiful.

    And most importantly: this person was free.

    The longer she looked on at this person¡¯s exhilarating liberty, the more she felt like her fingers began to buzz. But, unlike with her deck, this sensation didn¡¯t burn and pain her. Instead, it almost felt like the glow of a peaceful afternoon¡¯s sun- warm, present, and grounding, but not such a blaze that it could burn her.

    With wide eyes, Nellie caught herself as she wondered if this was what it was supposed to feel like to find a deck that was meant for her. She blinked and found that she needed to work to look away from the deck. When she finally managed to tear her gaze away from it and back to Quinn, it was to find that he was back to looking over the rest of the decks; Nellie didn¡¯t know if he had meant to and, really, it didn¡¯t matter. Without her having to ask it, he had given her what little privacy he could.

    They had never really been that close. And, yet¡­ he seemed to treat her with more consideration than Bennie ever had.

    ¡°Maybe this other one?¡± he pulled yet another box from the rest of the used decks, but Nellie took just one look at the pale blue design and immediately knew that she had no interest in it.

    With a quick shake of her head, she made sure to lift the deck Quinn had first picked out with the care it undoubtedly deserved, ¡°I think you already found the winner.¡±

    <hr>

    ¡°Ah, I understand now.¡±

    It had been years since she had last felt the compulsion to open up a brand-new item and ignore the rest of the world as she got to explore absolutely everything about it. This had been the kind of feeling she most strongly connected to memories of Christmas; to having a good time with family and getting to open well-meaning presents. There was just something indescribable in the kind of fun she had not given much thought to in years; in the exhilaration of having something unknown to her right in her hands at the same time she had the promise to eventually get to know it.

    It had been years since she had felt quite like this.

    ¡°You don¡¯t have to go through this alone. I know this kind of journey is a very personal thing, but personal doesn¡¯t need to mean isolated.¡± she could hear the concern in his voice, clear as day.

    With a deep breath in, Nellie looked away from the cup of coffee she had busied herself with swirling around. She kept her left hand¡¯s fingers coiled tight around the ceramic spoon. She didn¡¯t understand why, necessarily, but she knew that it felt nice to keep her fingers like that.

    ¡°I¡¯m not even sure what journey I¡¯m on.¡± it didn¡¯t feel right to admit this out loud¡­ but, at the same time, Nellie could feel as if a weight began to lift from her shoulders. ¡°I feel like an idiot.¡±

    Quinn¡¯s pale lips formed into a small, soft smile. It was a small, crooked thing, awkward from lack of practice because Quinn had never really been the kind of person to use his face all that much. His facial expressions tended to remain in the most neutral space allowed, only ever really showing obvious variation when something was important.

    Because she knew this, she understood just how much it truly meant to see this kind of smile; just like she knew how important his small frown back in the shop had been.

    ¡°You¡¯re not an idiot.¡± he leaned to the side, a good piece of his body disappearing beneath the table between them. She heard the sound of a bag rustling before he returned to sitting normally; he held a book in his hands now. ¡°I got this for you.¡± as he said this, he offered the book over to her. ¡°I know it¡¯s kind of weird to give it to you now and not in the shop but¡­ uh¡­ I guess I just wanted to make sure it¡¯d be a good idea, I guess.¡±

    The book¡¯s cover was the common, sturdy plastic that had a soft finish- it was pleasant to touch, but unimpressive in just about every way. It had a good weight to it, admittedly, and the cover, while simplistic in that it was just solid black with only a framed outline in white to center the title and author¡¯s name, seemed interesting enough to her eyes. In large letters, above a black and white image of a witch on a broomstick, Nellie read:

    SEEING THROUGH THE VEIL:

    A CONCISE GUIDE TO WITCHCRAFT FOR THE MODERN WITCH

    by Esme Shadowmend

    To her, it didn¡¯t really seem any more or less outstanding than the other witchcraft related books she had managed to learn about in the research she had taken part in over the last few months. If anything, it looked a little on the older side with the main illustration- a lot of the more recently published books she had found tended to utilize more minimalist or modern approaches to decorative motifs. The older, slightly ugly witch utilized here, along with the black cat, was something she had come to understand came from a time when people still perceived witches to be more crones than anything else and believed them to be aligned with much more villainous intentions than were necessarily real.

    As she took in the name of the author, she heard Quinn clear his throat. ¡°This came out like two decades ago and some of the info needs to be updated, but I found that this was the best book to go to at the start of my journey.¡±

    Those words shocked Nellie.

    My journey?

    Did that mean-?

    When she looked up from the book and over to Quinn, she found that his small smile had lost some of its shine. His eyes had taken on an uncomfortable glint, narrowed as he glanced around the mostly empty coffee shop around them. There was distrust on his face that read to her as wariness. He was scared.

    It didn¡¯t feel right to see him like this. Especially not after what he had just confided in her.

    ¡°Thank you.¡± those were the only words she could think of as appropriate. What else could she say, after all? Even though Quinn had just acknowledged being incredibly aware of what she may be undergoing, he hadn¡¯t said as much out loud. This could be a big secret he wanted to keep under wraps. Just the fact that he had said this much spoke volumes. And having said so little also told her that she needed to be mindful of this, handle it carefully and quietly.

    He nodded and she hurried to hide the book away inside of the bag that held her brand new tarot deck. Part of her was curious to see what was inside of this book- what kind of amazing knowledge it held within if Quinn had been willing to buy her a copy and gift it to her; what it was about this book that made it a great resource for properly embarking on her journey into becoming a fully-fledged witch. But with Quinn¡¯s obvious discomfort, she felt it more prudent to leave satisfying her curiosity for when she was behind closed doors, and no one was around to see the kind of book she was learning from.

    It wasn''t all that surprising, really. Unfortunately, even though times were changing and more people were coming to understand that witches weren''t the monstrous, vengeful beings that most works of fiction depicted them as, there was still a lot of distrust for anyone that utilized such a label for themselves. In a place like America, where most of the population held some kind of Christian belief as their religious foundations, there was a distrust for any that practiced magic.

    Or, well, the wrong kind of magic, if Nellie''s analysis of her upbringing was correct. She may not know much about many religions, but she did know that there were plenty of practices that were common to many religions that, when observed as an objective outsider, could easily be categorized as magical practices. Her parents took part in the eating and drinking of the body and blood of Christ because, at least to them, it symbolized a way to get rid of their sins. And if that wasn''t some spooky stuff they were taking part in, Nellie would never know what spooky truly meant.

    Nellie watched the way in which Quinn used hands that trembled ever so slightly to slurp quietly at his drink. His eyes were darting around with clear discomfort.

    He had done so much for her...

    Nellie smiled softly as she decided to ask him about what he had been getting up to in his life- successfully moving the conversation away from a topic that seemed to be important to the both of them, even if it wasn''t the most appropriate to speak about in such a public space.

    Besides, she could admit, it would be a good idea to leave exploring her new deck and book for later. She had Quinn right in front of her and it had been far too long since they had last managed to hang out and share more than just a few words in passing.

    She could leave reading for when she was alone.

 The Fool: Chapter Three

    Quinn had not been exaggerating when he had mentioned that the book needed updates. This was the second and last edition to have been published and that had been in 2008; it had initially been published in 2000- more than two decades ago.

    Nellie had read through the whole beginning at this point and found herself staring at the title of the first official chapter. There was a cute, little, and simple image of a bubbling cauldron right below the title of this chapter, that read CHAPTER ONE: What is a Witch?. From what she had gleaned from the introduction, this chapter would be all about dispelling common myths about what a witch was while educating about the different kinds of magical practices that could be found all throughout the world.

    She found that she was unable to move past the first sentence, though. No matter how much she attempted to will her eyes and mind to work in tandem to be able to understand what was written in the book as they had done only a few minutes ago¡­ they just weren¡¯t willing to come together and work with one another. Whereas her eyes seemed to give their all to transmit images to her mind, her mind just¡­ refused to cooperate. She had words she needed to analyze and understand and her eyes were doing an excellent job of allowing her to see.

    But was her mind doing its job? Of course not! Instead, it was focused on reminding her of the existence of the deck that Quinn had helped her pick out; kept quietly but insistently trying to convince her to move away from the book with all of the knowledge she needed to absorb and onto the fascinating new tarot deck.

    With a sigh, Nellie glanced away from the book.

    To her right, only a few inches away from said book rested the brand-new tarot deck. In all honesty, maybe it hadn¡¯t been her best idea to have left it right there, where it could taunt her silently from the corner of her vision. But it wasn¡¯t like she had ever really had this much trouble focusing on reading something before¡­ well, yes, she had faced some issues when she had been forced to read things for classes that hadn¡¯t interested her. But this was a topic she was invested in. The difficulty in reading didn¡¯t make any sense.

    No matter how much she tried to get her mind to focus on the words in the text, all that it seemed interested in was the deck.

    With a quick inhale, Nellie put the book down and closed it. Her hand wasted no time moving over to the deck, swiping it up to bring it close to her.

    She wasn¡¯t sure how to explain what she felt when she looked upon the deck clasped in her hands. She just knew that it felt¡­ nice. Where the first deck she had gotten had made her hands tingle in a painful manner, this one emitted a warm glow. It was like¡­ getting offered a hug, in a way, but a hug for her hands.

    If her parents could see her, they would be well beyond disappointed- they would be livid enough to threaten to disown her, if not full on just kick her out of their lives. If her friends could see her¡­ they would think she was going through something so terrible that she would probably get better use out of a therapist than this set of cards.

    Nellie found a small smile worming its way onto her lips as she began to open up the simple carton that housed the deck. Quinn was her friend. And Quinn had not just helped her to get this deck, but he had also given her a book he had believed could help her. Even though most of her friends would think that she may have been going crazy, at least Quinn was on her side.

    The deck slid into her hands with no friction whatsoever. It seemed to dance onto her palm, gliding until it was neatly stacked; in a perfect position to be able to utilize. The design on the back was that of two birds in mid-flight, both of them seemingly making a full circle at the very center of the card. They were colored in and had been drawn in a similar cozy illustration style that had been used for the rest of the cards; the background was a simple solid dark blue without any real embellishments. Much like with what she had seen of the deck and its cover, the people that had created this deck had wanted to keep the backgrounds in the cards simple and had instead focused most if not all of the detail work on the characters.

    The cards felt smooth in her hands; they slid with much more ease than her first deck. As she looked down at the cards, she felt like she needed to look through them; get to see what this deck contained and what differences may exist between it and the one she had initially gotten her hands on.

    And it wasn¡¯t like there was anything that truly stopped her from doing just that.

    Yes, she wanted to read up on witchcraft and actually get serious about taking part in it. But she was her own boss; she had the freedom to decide on her own timeline. If she couldn''t find the will to read right now, there wasn''t really anything forcing her to do so. There was no deadline, after all; no one was expecting her to read her to then be able to discuss all of it.

    It was... an odd sense of freedom. Small, ultimately meaningless, and yet... this felt like it was important.

    With a small smile beginning to pull at her lips, Nellie made herself a bit more comfortable in her desk chair, propped one foot up on the edge of the chair as she pulled her knee up to her chest, and settled in. Then, card by card, she began to get acquainted with the new deck.

    <hr>

    Witchcraft was supposed to be about listening to yourself, to that quiet voice in the back of your head that you usually dismissed as illogical, instinctual, or plain old annoying. From what she had learned up to this point, Nellie had understood that the way most people practiced the craft was based on intuition- on paying attention to what the inner self deemed necessary to do or not, on listening to the inner knowledge that was so easy to dismiss as simple superstitious thought that had no place in the modern, scientific, oh-so-objective world they now lived in.

    Most of her life, Nellie had not allowed herself to listen to that inner voice- at least, not listen to it and actually do what it asked of her. With the way she had been raised, she had been taught that she needed to think about everything she was about to say and do, needed to make sure that the course of action she wanted to embark on was not just right for her, but right for her whole family.

    Whenever her ¡®inner voice¡¯ had tried to speak to her, she had ignored it because, often times, what it wanted her to do would lead to issues with her family.

    Or, at least, that was the conclusion she had eventually landed on.

    The worst thing about trying to listen to her intuition was how silly it made her feel. After a lifetime of having to repress these kinds of thoughts, of brushing off every ridiculous, ludicrous thing that came into her head as just that¡­ well¡­ it made her feel like she was giving in to silly, childish impulses that weren¡¯t supposed to be given in to, seeing how she was no longer a child.

    Which was precisely the reason why she felt the tiny sparks of the burn she had come to recognize as shame warm her as she sat in the very center of her bed with her new deck in front of her. Her old deck sat at the edge of the bed, in the far-left corner, where it was a part of the occasion but still far from it.

    It hadn''t felt right to leave the old deck far away from her new one... but she also hadn''t wanted to handle it too much; hadn''t wanted it too close to her.

    Beneath her, she could feel the soft yet faintly scratchy texture of her comforter on her bare feet- a reminder that she needed to wash her bedding at some point in the near future. She wriggled her toes even as they were constrained between her legs and the mattress, and the texture of her soft pants were a subtle contrast against the specific not-quite-soft-but-not-rough-either one of the comforter.

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    She had already made her questions to the new deck, just like it had given her its answers. And so, she looked down at these answers, feeling the swirl of conflict begin once again within herself.

    Who are you? What are your strengths? Your weaknesses? What¡¯s your name?

    Queen of Coins. The Star. Knight of Swords. Queen of Wands.

    This time around, she had looked up ¡®questions for a new tarot deck¡¯ on the internet before she had attempted to ask it any questions. The articles she had found that all dealt with this kind of topic had all shared a lot of basic questions, which had been the four she had decided to focus on this time around. There had been plenty of other questions she could have focused on, but Nellie had found them to be just a bit too dependent on actually knowing the ins and outs of tarot to be able to answer to really be able to wrap her head around them.

    The idea of asking a new deck how it believed that the past was impacting her future seemed just a little daunting when she mostly just knew the most minor distinction between the Major and Minor Arcanas.

    But, even with her lack of knowledge and understanding of this branch of witchcraft, Nellie was sure of at least one major thing: handling this deck hadn¡¯t hurt her.

    As she had shuffled the cards, she had felt a slight tingling sensation but that had been more akin to a kind warmth when she compared it to the inferno of blazing pain she had become accustomed to when handling her first deck. Whereas there was always pain with the first deck, this time around, she had only really felt an odd sense of calm wash over her as she had shuffled and drawn cards from this new deck.

    Nellie pursed her lips as she looked down at the cards. She knew that every single one of these images meant something, even if she wasn¡¯t quite sure what, exactly, they meant.

    Even if she didn¡¯t know what these cards were supposed to mean, though, she was certain of one thing: The Queen card felt like it meant something even more. And the fact that the card had been given to answer the question about who the deck was¡­ a visibly strong-willed woman that was knelt on grass, in front of a flowered, strong tree with her hands suspended just above a hole she appeared to have dug. Inside of that hole, Nellie could see the upper edge of something golden- a buried treasure.

    The way that the woman¡¯s face was pulled into a determined glower; the roughness of the clothes she wore and the darkness of the background, especially compared to the incredible brightness surrounding her¡­ it was more than obvious what this scene was about. Within a deck titled Runaway Tarot¡­ well, it was more than just obvious what this scene was about: a person in a tough situation now having the monetary power to finally escape it; but, more important than having access to money, it was about a person having the confidence within themselves, the security within their own mind, to finally make a move.

    She couldn¡¯t stop but wonder¡­ could this card be representative of where she was? That the deck understood that she had been in a terrible situation and was only now beginning to really start digging her way out?

    With a slow rolling of her shoulders, her mind offered an alternate, just as logical explanation behind such a card. The deck was second-hand; this meant that it had very possibly been kept at the shop for a long time. Maybe¡­ just maybe¡­ the deck was telling her that it felt as if it was now free; as if it was the treasure that had been buried and Nellie was the person that had dug it up to orchestrate such an escape.

    Nellie wasn¡¯t completely sure where these kinds of thoughts were coming from. They were coming from somewhere inside of her mind, naturally¡­ it was weird to experience. It was hard to explain, even if the person she was attempting to explain it to was herself.

    She didn¡¯t know why, she just knew that this interpretation her mind had supplied about what this card could mean¡­ well¡­ it just felt right. And she felt more than just a little silly at just the idea of thinking that, even if for just a moment, she thought that these cards were telling her something.

    She couldn¡¯t really understand it, if she was being completely honest with herself. But there was something inside of herself that felt as if these cards truly were talking to her; as if there was a message that they were attempting to give her that she was actually capable of parsing out, even if it was taking her a bit of time to do so.

    Maybe she was going insane.

    Or maybe¡­ which, compared to something as astronomically unlikely to happen as her going insane¡­ maybe there was truth to this intuition thing.

    Maybe there was truth to this witchcraft thing.

    More than enough people were on the internet, explaining a lot peculiarities to all kinds of different practices for her to at least know that she wasn¡¯t alone in being curious and confused. There were more than enough blogs, posts, videos, and articles out there to help new witches start to find their way through their craft; to aid them in finding their path.

    There were more than enough names out there too, all used to describe the phenomenon of being a new witch, for Nellie to know that she really wasn¡¯t alone in wondering about all of this. She actually wasn¡¯t alone in having these kinds of worries, confusions, and curiosities. Different people that defined themselves as someone just starting out on their witchcraft journey utilized all kinds of terminology to describe just that: baby witch, new witch, foundling, witchling, novice, apprentice, shadow, neophyte, whisps, and on and on it went.

    In her research, Nellie had even come to learn that there wasn¡¯t just lack of agreement on a proper term for what a ¡®new¡¯ witch should truly be called, but that there was a lack of consensus precisely because of the nature of the craft! It was all so very subjective and personal to each person that, at the end of the day, it wasn¡¯t supposed to matter if the term shadow was considered demeaning by one practicing witch as long as the person that was called a shadow wasn¡¯t them. Each were supposed to be able to define their own voice- and that extended into the language utilized by each of them.

    To Nellie, that definitely opened the door to some questionable possibilities. What if someone wanted to be referred to by an insulting term? But, then again, all decided how they went about their way. If one wasn¡¯t interested in having to call someone by a name they didn¡¯t agree with, then they just wouldn¡¯t have to interact with them.

    There was a freedom to witchcraft that¡­ well¡­ it scared Nellie.

    There were rules that could be followed, yes. One of the first things she had learned was that there was never supposed to be a space allowed for malignant magic. All magic practiced was supposed to be, or, at least, it was understood that it should be, for the overall good of the world. There were many different names for it, but, at the end of the day, much like many religions of the world, witchcraft was supposed to follow the Golden Rule: Treat others as you would wish to be treated.

    But witchcraft wasn¡¯t a religion.

    It could be religious, seeing how most that practiced witchcraft also practiced their religious beliefs within their craft. But there were secular witches, atheist witches. There were witches that kept their religion fully separate from their witchcraft.

    It was all a big mix-and-match belief system that gave every single person the full control of deciding on their own path.

    After having been raised in a family where everyone was supposed to follow the Bible in the particular way the different pastors that had come and gone from her life had insisted was the correct way¡­ where there was no variation unless the priest or her parents explicitly said so¡­ where nuance was only for those intelligent enough to analyze through the text and find it, where she had always been far too young to make her own questions valid¡­

    It was scary to have so much freedom. It was confusing.

    Nellie looked down at the cards before her once more, focusing on them.

    To her, it seemed as if the cards were attempting to tell her that a new beginning was coming. It felt obvious to her, even though she really didn¡¯t know that much about tarot.

    Maybe she was going insane.

    Or maybe there was more to this witchcraft thing than she had first forced herself to think.

    Maybe she had always known there was more to it, deep down inside of her soul.

    Maybe she had just been too afraid to admit this to herself and had tried to blunder her way through enough failures to convince herself that she had been right to doubt and refuse all along.

    Maybe it was time for a new beginning.