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English
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Published:
2021-01-19
Completed:
2021-09-16
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2,321
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5/5
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A Covenant of Violets and Roses (DISCONTINUED - BEING REWRITTEN)

Summary:

Religion is something that never really crossed Luz Noceda's mind - that is, until she attended a religious school.

Luz Noceda is the new girl at Hexside Girls High - a prestigious private school she somehow found a place at thanks to an owed favour and good timing. She befriends Willow Park, a talented artist and passionate botanist, and encounters Amity Blight, a top student with a prickly exterior and perfect grades. Yet, appearances aren't all what they seem...

Luz finds herself and begins who understand her place in the world, Willow learns forgiveness and shows strength, and Amity comes to terms with things that she cannot change.

Notes:

Hello my friends, this is El here! TOH got me back into writing fics somehow, so here's my first multichapter fic in what is probably years..
A few things of note.
1. This fic will be exploring a lot of heavy themes in great depth - the main thing to look out for being homophobia. I will put trigger warnings before chapters that require them but this is an upfront warning.
2. This fic is technically set in Australia, because I am familiar with the Australian school system instead of the US one. Australia specific things will be mentioned and I'll explain in notes if need be.
3. Updates probably aren't going to be super consistent so I do apologise in advance, but school is going to be chaotic this year as I'm graduating soon
4. I don't have a beta reader currently, though that could change.

This chapter serves as a prologue to the story that is about to unfold. I have a plan in place for this story but things could easily change... :)
(what can I say, I'm a plantser)

Enjoy :)

This chapter is written in a bit of a different style to how most of the others will be written, but ones like this will occasionally pop in and serve as interludes of sorts.. ;)
The first chapter should be coming soon!

Chapter 1: A Prologue of Give and Take

Chapter Text

An infant, short and full of life.

A light.

An ember that cannot be snuffed.

A child, one that blazes through the thicket.

One that undercuts the harsh thorns that are worn and battle-scarred.

A knife, one that penetrates sturdy branches that protect the heart.

The core.

A girl. One that would realise that she has power to burn down an entire forest.

Unruly and wild, unable to be resisted.

Untameable, like the wild violets that would grow in your grandmother’s garden.

One cannot cut them down.

 

Acidic words.

Acidic words that lick at blood red petals, that will penetrate and drain the colour from the leaves and the sky and the grass.

Taunts, cries, remarks. Truths or falsehoods? It does not matter.

For words are acidic, and they burn like rain.

Leaving permanent, unnerving marks that cannot be erased.

Erasure? These marks are infallible at inflicting trauma.

Because the truth of the matter is that trauma lasts longer than one’s physical body.

Trauma is generational – the line learns how to adapt. Torn wounds reinforced with regrown muscle.

One must be strong, unfeeling and unmarked.

Because emotion dictates weakness.

 

But yet, here lies the willow tree.

Severed from its earth, owls perched on fallen branches.

Stability once existing now torn away.

Perhaps someday it can reintegrate itself into the natural ecosystem that surrounds it.

But currently – it cannot. A blight has taken hold, rotting it from the core.

Whilst small children once gathered around the tree to sing their praises, all that is left now is poison.

 

But perhaps there is some hope for the tree lying in the musty earth, or the petals drained of their blood red hue.

After all, light reveals the truth of the matter, but light is not undying.

 

 

Chapter 2: A bouquet of cryptic metaphors

Summary:

Luz contemplates her new beginning.

Notes:

Hello lovely people! I did warn you that my updates would be sporadic, but I didn't expect to be this inconsistent. I apologise for my dreadful lack of an upload schedule, but I think that's something that unfortunately I'll have to adapt top, considering the state of affairs in my personal and school life.
I hope to write Chapter 2 soon, but no promises here folks.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

I can still remember all the days where the sky was stained by soft, pink clouds as the sun set gently. Ones where I could sit at the beach and watch the seagulls fight over scraps of food that someone had thrown into the sand. Tonight is one of those nights.


I can see a spindly woman walking across the shore, a small, furry black mutt of a dog following her.
Eda. That’s her name. She’s certainly a character, a woman with a wild mane of grey hair and a sharp gold tooth. I’ve always thought that she’s looked a bit like a wild witch. I still remember the first time that I met Eda. I was eight years old. Even then I was a scrappy and clumsy mess. Eda has always fascinated me.
She’s a woman with a story, that’s for sure.


Mami often has long shifts, she's a vet. Eda would babysit me when I was younger. I don’t think that she was ever the ideal babysitter, but Mami seems to trust her with her life.
One time I stayed over at Eda’s house. I had stumbled across an ornate journal, the cover made of some kind of fancy leather. I cracked it open, and a piece of paper fell out. On that page was a poem.


I was met with a bouquet of violets and roses.
The violets sweet smelling, the roses delicate too.
roses can’t be red, and violets aren’t blue
the decay and the wither takes away those hues.


I could see sketches of roses and violets drawn in the corners the page. This was clearly a play on the traditional ‘roses are red…’ poem.
I had asked Eda about my discovery, but she dismissed it as junk. The journal seemed insignificant to her, so I may have… borrowed it. It’s not like it was important to Eda anyway.
But that idea of violets and roses always stuck with me. Two flowers, so opposite of each other, and yet, so perfectly paired for each other.
I’ve always enjoyed flowery prose fiction, so why not flowery poems too?


It’s quite romantic, isn’t it? Except, in the poem that I found at Eda’s, it seemed that the opposite was happening. I often wonder what caused that to happen.
Ever since reading that poem, I often think of people as flowers. More often than not, you can find a flower that acts as a good representation of a person that you know. I think that Mami would be yarrow, and Eda would definitely be an iris. The protagonist from my favourite book series: The Good Witch Azura, would likely be bluebells. But I could never quite figure out what flower I would be.


I guess that makes sense, seeing as I’ve always been the black sheep. The odd one out, the missing link, the pea that has no pod to fit in. It’s weird, being lonely. You would think that you get used to it eventually. My Mami says that it’s a part of human nature to want to fit in, and that’s something engrained in us, that you can never get rid of, it’s in our DNA.
My Mami is a smart woman.


I realise that I’ve gotten lost in my thoughts, and the once pink sky is now a deeper violet hue. I love sunsets, they’ve always felt symbolic of new beginnings to me, and that’s exactly what I’ll be getting soon.


You see, Eda works as an art teacher at a fancy private school about forty-five minutes out of town. I don’t quite know how she got the job, but she says that it pays pretty well. She had found out recently that a spot had opened up for a new student on very short notice, and I had to make a choice.
So, I made the choice that would make my Mami proud.

 

I notice how seagulls forage the coastline, looking for pieces of food that someone might have thrown out in the shore. Hungry, looking for something better.
Eda’s always had that mentality. “Luz. Never settle for the bare minimum. You deserve better than that.”
I’m not sure if I believe that, but I appreciate her saying that anyway.


I sigh, pushing away the thought.
I don’t need to worry about that anymore. All I need to focus on is the future.
A future that is ahead of me, that maybe could bring something new, something better.


I hope that I can find my happy ending.

Notes:

Whoo! That's the chapter! Again, I'm sorry for not posting for so long, school is hell but I'm still here. I will try to get Chapter 2 out once my exams are over. I'm in my final year of high school and it's not a vibe :')

Chapter 3: A façade of thorns and malice

Summary:

Amity starts her first day of year nine in an ordinary fashion.

Notes:

So... I lied. Still have trials in three weeks, yet somehow managed to crank this out. Heh.
I've decided I need to take a more relaxed approach to this, it's supposed to be fun! So if the editing isn't the best, I'm sorry. I'm trying to not be as hard on myself here.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

The church is an institution that has always been bitterly familiar to me. Whenever I tell people that I live in a church, I often get strange looks.

Well… I must correct myself. Saying that I live in a church would be an inaccurate statement, but our property is on the same land as the church my parents works at. My mother is a minister. She’s been one my entire life, and I’ve never known anything else. It’s always been this way, as it should be. It all makes sense. The Blight family has quite the history within the Anglican denomination.

But I feel as though I have not properly introduced myself, which is imprudent of me. My name is Amity Blight, and I am of fourteen years of age.

Gosh, that sounds so formal, doesn’t it? It’s just the way I’ve been raised and groomed, I guess.

That shouldn’t matter as much as it actually does.

Back to introductions.

Hello there, reader. My name is Amity Blight, and for my whole life, I have gone to Hexside School for Girls. Honestly, my life is not that interesting, but here I am anyway, laying it out here for you.

I’m in Year Nine this year. I can’t believe how close I’m getting to school being over. Only four more years until I leave for university and study law. Just as how things were planned for me.

I would be studying to become a minister, but I decided to aim higher.

At the beginning of every new school year, I feel this dreaded anticipation sitting in my stomach. It’s heavy and consuming, and I don’t know what I should do to get rid of it.

I guess… get high enough grades to please my parents? Urgh, talking about my life feels like an exercise in patience that I was set up to fail.

Anyway, it is the first day of year, and here I am. This school is like a second home to me, the walls and halls and people so familiar to me, I could probably navigate this place in my sleep. As I watch out the window in the car, I can hear my sister tapping frantically on her phone.

‘Emira, are you staying back after school?’ I can hear myself ask.

“Hm?” Emira lifted her head up, pulling a headphone out of one ear.

“Oh, yeah, sis, I’m meeting a friend at the shops after school, so I’m not coming home with Mother.”

“Are you working late, Mother?” I ask. “I was thinking of staying back at the school library until it closes at six.”

“What an excellent idea Amity, it is always good to focus on your studies,” she replied. “I can pick you up once the library closes.”

“Thank you, Mother.”

Exchanges with my mother typically follow the same format. I’ve learned to groom my responses to her liking, and that has gotten me by for all these years. She has high expectations on all of us, of both me and my siblings, but I have always had the most pressure placed on me. Em and Ed, my siblings, are prodigies, and I’ve always had to work the hardest in order to be noticed.

Exchanges with my friends at school also follow a similar format. My friends, as loyal as they are, often engage in the most vapid of topics. I can hear them now talking about Love Island, or some reality show of that variety. My mother never permitted me to watch such things, so I never engaged. Besides, such things never really peaked my interest. Boscha showed me some of the Bachelor once. I never understood what was appealing about going on national television to have a chance at being with a random man. Even if you won, it’s unlikely that such a relationship would be long-lasting either.

But perhaps the one thing that stood out to me from this boring and treacherous mess of a first day at school was one of the new girls. New students are something to be expected, and usually the girls at Hexside swarm the newbies, wanting to know everything about them and figure out where they fit within the Hexside ecosystem. If the girl seems cool, she usually gets swooped up by Boscha or Skara, and they try to integrate her into our friendship group. Usually, these new recruits get filled in on all the drama by the first week, and by their first term, they are easily integrated into social system and a natural part of the ecosystem.

Of course, there are exceptions to this rule. Some that I know about… all too well. But exceptions tend to be rare.

Of course, there was one new girl this year that stood out to me. Perhaps the reason why she stood out was that she was talking to half-a-wit Willow, or maybe it was the collection of exuberant anime pins on her backpack.

Or perhaps it was the pin with pink, purple and blue stripes that caught my eye. The one I had a vague idea of the meaning of, and the only item of that sort I had ever seen in person.

Perhaps, she’d understand.

But there is no way that I can talk to her. I can’t do that to myself, to my reputation.

I can’t make myself the outcast.

 

 

Notes:

There is a plan for this story that I am orchestrating, don't worry. A lot of it is.. kept in my head instead of on paper though, oops. Thanks for reading <3

Chapter 4: The Anti-Christ

Summary:

Willow reflects on her former friendship with Amity.

Notes:

Hello there, another instalment I wrote not as a warmup, but more so to get some thoughts on paper.
I like it. Hope you do as well.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

I can see you in the hall, no matter how much you may try to hide.

It’s hard for you to hide, seeing as you are so noticeable.

You’ve always been popular, likeable, well-liked by everyone.

It’s the concept of the cult of personality, isn’t it?

The cult of Amity, a cult that I somehow fell for.

Such a cult would be more captivating if you weren’t sucked into a cult of another.
The cult of your mother.

My fathers would play this song a lot when I was younger.

It was soft and melodical, and surprisingly soothing.

I never truly understood the meaning behind the lyrics until you betrayed me.

After then, I didn’t see you for months. Our worlds would not collide until we were older, and still filled with bitter resentment towards each other.

You more so more than me.

Perhaps it was your Catholic guilt, though not in the literal sense.

I know you, Amity. I know your deepest and darkest secrets, even if they remained unspoken.

I know that you’re afraid of yourself.

I never was. I was the opposite.

I was afraid of almost everything. Yet the one thing I knew well was who I was.

Until you took that from me.

When our worlds collided once more, the verbal ridicule that you would subject me to left unseen marks on my mind.

It was hard for me to believe that we were once friends, and to be quite frank, it still is.

Part of me wishes that we could have stayed friends.

But now I know that we’re too different, and you’re stuck on a path your mother chose for you.

Perhaps… I am the anti-Christ to you.

Notes:

I wanted Willow's chapters to be more experimental. I plan to get experimental with the other two as well, but for now I really enjoy channelling Willow this way.

Chapter 5: Not a Chapter, I'm so Sorry

Summary:

TD;LR, I'm rewriting this story.

Chapter Text

Hey, so the long and short of it is that this story is being reworked. Whilst I don't think the content here is bad (hence why it's being left up), I am not satisfied with it because knowing the events I have planned out, I don't think these chapters will work particularly well.

This story has gone through several iterations and the one that was posted here was by no means the first. I still plan to write this, I just want to make sure I do it right. Thank you for your patience.