The snow floated gently over the bucolic landscape, drifting lazily about the sky and sticking to the jackets and hair of any of those brave enough to leave the warmth of their homes. Here, the homes were few and scattered, the town consisting of only Main Street and a church around the corner. Off in the distance beyond the church, a black pair of boots could today be seen marching forlornly though the snow. The black boots, however, belonged to a woman dressed discreetly in white, blending in with her frozen background. Her modest dress came down to her ankles, white save for the pink accents and lace, and was hidden under a perfectly white peacoat. Only the pink lace on the long sleeves of the dress showing from beneath the coats arms hinting at the dress’s opulence. Her brown hair was neatly tied up into a complicated bun, two strands of hair left curled into twists on either side of her face to frame it, though most of the carefully styled do was hidden beneath a white woolen cap.
The woman’s face was smooth and round, cheeks a little blushed from the cold wind that was attempting to desiccate her rose-colored lips. She was not a superficial woman, which would be frowned upon by her acquaintances anyway, but many of the men in her town would often extol her beauty. Well, at least before they found out they did. She, however, could not see what they saw, nor cared to try. She continued trudging through the snow drifts, maudlin and chanting an incantation under her breath to kept the wind from chilling her to the bone.
No one noticed her absence as she slowly made her way away from the town, her destination one only known to her. She dressed as she had to attempt to go unnoticed as she headed into the mountains east of the town, not needing to draw anymore suspicion to herself. She could have used magicks to hide herself completely, but she had been trying to refrain from such extraneous acts since she was in the middle of quelling the town’s fear and skepticism of her. Her battle was perhaps futile, it being hard to return to decorous society once you are discovered as a witch, but there was no need to further kindle their hatred of her by finding out she had been wandering around invisible. Normally, she was quite idyllic, but the constant taunting and threatening from the town’s people had brought out a hidden querulous attitude that screamed for her to hex some sense into them all. Or better yet, obliterate the God forsaken town.
Her trip was not as long as one might think, hiking into the mountains just far enough to find a hidden cave she had found when she was small. Her parents had told her to hide here many times when she was younger and her powers began to show, trying to hide her gift from the people who would despise her for it.
As she entered the cave, she pulled out a slender wooden stick from the side of her boot and said “lumos,” her voice echoing around the hollow alcove in which she hid. A steady, incandescent light appeared from the end of the wand and illuminated the cave, revealing the mysterious contents within.
On the floor near the woman’s feet lay a pitch black cauldron, the golden contents within it simmering gently on the dying heat of the fire beneath it. She pointed her wand at the glowing sticks beneath her potion and spoke the word “incendio,” the fire immediately growing and warming the pot and the filling the cave with a unsteady glow. She muttered “knox,” and the light her wand was emitting vanished, leaving only the flicking light of the fire to help her see in the shadowy cave. She returned the wand to her boot.
She now turned her attention to the cave walls, where shelves with no seen form of support held hundreds of small bottles of herbs and ingredients. The woman walked over to the shelves, her shoes making little sound on the dirt-packed floor, and carefully selected three bottles before returning to the cauldron and sitting before it. She uncorked one of the largest of the bottles that was half-filled with flakes of green and dropped a measured amount of the contents into the golden potion before her, now leaping about in the pot without any splashing on the ground. She opened the smallest bottle next and mixed it with the contents of the last bottle before emptying them both into the cauldron as well. She then tapped the edge of the cauldron with the tip of her wand and used a large wooden spoon on the floor to mix the potion, examining the golden color to assure it was what it should be. Satisfied, she removed the spoon and stood to replace the bottles back on their shelves.
“AH-HA!” a deep voice shouted from the mouth of the cave, causing the woman to jump in alarm and drop the bottles she had been holding to the floor where they shattered. “You’ve been caught, Witch!”
The man at the cave was holding a pistol, the safety already off, and it was aimed directly at her chest. She put her hands up, shaking slightly, and looked pleadingly at the man.
“Please,” she begged, “I implore you, please do not shoot.”
“And why should I do that?” he said, fire and hatred in his voice. The flickering light from the fire cast frightening shadows on the mans scared face, his dark hair and beard still pepper with flecks of snow from the storm brewed outside the secluded cave. Her fear caused him to look darker and more insidious than he normally would appear, a monster made real come to end her life. “Would you prefer to be burned in the center of town? Death is the only solution for your kind, you evil tart.”
“I accept that I shall not be able to convince you of my innocence, b-” she began.
“Innocence?!” he shouted, interrupting her. “Ha! Anyone who does the work of the devil does not even know the meaning of such a word. Now, step away from the evil brew you were going to poison us with, and accept your fate.”
“I think not,” she stated plainly. In one swift movement, she grabbed the wand from her boot and disarmed the man, the gun flying from his hand and dropping heavily to the ground.
“You bitch-” her started, and his hand reached to his pant pocket to retrieve a second pistol he had hidden there. Before he could point it at her, she raised her wand again, pointing it at his chest.
“Avada kedavra!” she shouted, her voice enhanced as it bounced off the rock walls. The man dropped to the floor, completely dead, the pistol resting on the ground by his now lax hand. She looked down at the man in horror. The words had slipped from her lips before she even had time to think about what she was doing. She had panicked, and this man had pain the ultimate cost because of it.
She had to run now. She had no other choice. Once the people in the town noticed the man was gone, she would be immediately to blame and would no doubt be killed. She could hold off their attempts with magic for a while, but eventually she would slip and they would succeed. Now, she felt as though she deserved their wrath. She killed a man for simply believing a myth that he and everyone around him were taught to believe was fact. Perhaps he had a family at home, a wife and kids depending on him. She could have blocked the bullet, stunned him, anything but what she did, but what was done was done. She turned back to her potion and ingredients, hot tears streaming down her face and she looked at the concoction she had spent so many months brewing to perfection. With a flick of her wand, the cauldron was emptied, another flick and the bottles and flasks on the shelves disappeared as well.
Her thoughts raced faster than the tears flowing steadfastly down her cheeks, she tried to sort out what had to be done. She owned little and could replace what she did have, so she had no reason to return to town. She looked down regretfully at the man still laying at the entrance to the cave. Her hands trembled as she lifted her wand one last time to cut a deep hole in the cave floor, place the man inside it, and cover him with the hard soil. She did not look away from the place where the man’s face lay in the ground as her hands snapped her wand in half and dropped the pieces to the ground around where the man’s chest would be under the Earth. Outside the cave, the wind had begun to howl and the town lay quiet and frost-covered, no one suspecting that one of their own had just been killed.
She stepped out into the blistering cold and turned away from the town that had so long been the only place she knew, the blowing snow obscuring her body from view. All that could be seen walking away from the town was a solitary pair of black boots, a hole in the frozen background disappearing from their sight forever.
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