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Everything may indeed have a price, but this isn’t one Hilda’s willing to let her sister pay.
“Right.” She sits back and swipes at her cheeks with the cuffs of her cardigan; they come away damp, but she’s determined. “Let’s get you sorted.”
There’s a lilt to her voice that she’s practiced over years of Sabrina’s skinned knees and scorched eyebrows (some spells have a steep learning curve even for the most talented of young witches). The cheery tone’s harder to manage than usual given the broken skin currently cross hatching her sister’s back.
Zelda starts to argue--and at least that’s something akin to normal--but Hilda cuts her off.
“You’ll be in no fit state to wait up if you don’t let me help you.”
Zelda’s lips twitch so faintly at one corner that Hilda might have missed it if she hadn’t spent lifetimes learning to read the subtlest changes in her sister’s moods.
Neither of them would sleep tonight until Sabrina comes home and probably not for nights after--and they both know it.
Zelda nods and starts to gather her tangled hair over her shoulder.
Despite what she had said, Zelda would be waiting, arms open, for the niece who might not have been her daughter but was most definitely their little girl.
And when they were ready, Hilda would be waiting to fuss over the both of them, the two most important people in her life who were sometimes so infuriatingly similar that she’d like to scream the house down on top of them.
caoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaos
Hilda empties the contents of her purse out onto her own bed. She sifts through balled up handkerchiefs, a dozen vials of various sizes and colors, and sends one wayward familiar scurrying back to its web downstairs.
She glances over to see Zelda unfasten the last few hooks on the back of her bustier in one practiced go, then, uncharacteristically, drop the black garment to the floor.
Zelda’s spine is even straighter now that the rigid boning has been cast away.
“ Oh, Zeld,” Hilda whispers before she can stop herself.
Her fingers find the right bottle of their own accord.
caoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaos
Zelda’s skin is a map of furrows--angry, red, and just this side of bleeding across the sharp peaks of her shoulder blades; scabbed and bruised, yellow and green, along the valley of her lower back. They disappear into the waistband of her tailored skirt.
Now isn’t the time to ask about them, not that Zelda is any more likely to tell her later, but Hilda adds another mark against a certain High Priest to the tally she’s been keeping, thinks she’d like to borrow her sister’s shovel one day soon.
Instead, she just asks, “Do they go all the way down?” and Zelda simply answers, “Yes.”
caoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaos
Pressing her lips against Zelda’s spine, once then twice, is technically not part of the spell. What’s visible of the abused skin has already unknotted and reknit itself neatly under the balm warmed in Hilda’s hands.
But it is the ingredient that elicits the smallest of sighs and finally, finally, draws the tension from her sister’s pale shoulders.
caoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaos
It’s hours before Hilda hears Sabrina’s voice outside.
She’d let Zelda sit sentry alone on the front steps while she paced equally alone in the foyer.
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They both tuck her in tonight. She’s back to them safe if not entirely sound--broken hearts and bruised pride aren’t quick to heal.
Zelda may roll her eyes at the snug-as-a-bug routine and lean gracefully out of the way as Hilda pokes her fingers into the quilt surrounding their niece, but she doesn’t move from her perch on the edge of Sabrina’s bed.
Eventually they give up the pretense of leaving for their own room and curl close around her--Hilda to her left and Zelda to the right--like they had done on those rare nights years ago when Sabrina had woken up screaming for parents she’d never really known.
caoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaos
Hilda loses track of how many times Sabrina apologizes into the dark before the girl finally falls asleep, face tucked into Zelda’s neck.
caoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaoscaos
At some point a yowl from the bottom of the bed startles her enough to realize that she’s fallen asleep, and for some time.
It’s just light enough that she can make out Salem’s dark shape darting from the room. She feels the tug on the quilt as Zelda draws her leg back beneath the covers.
She should get up and put the kettle on, start sorting breakfast, and seeing to making a fresh jar of broken-heart’s balm for Sabrina
She won’t have the heart herself to tell her niece that it is nothing more than a placebo, some vaporub drowned in lavender and anything else she has on hand to disguise the smell, for some years to come.