Work Text:
Imogen Temult arranges her long, pale purple hair around her shoulders and takes off her glasses. She studies her own image on the screen of her laptop. The sprinkling of golden glitter across her cheeks is a little uneven; she leans in to rub some of it off of the left side. She turns her face to a few different angles to study it, her brow furrowed a little bit with concentration.
The blue light of the computer isn't doing anything miraculous for her skin, and she has never loved the look of her own face-- at least, not since she was a little kid. But she is on a mission, getting ready to film a video for her subscribers, so the usual self-conscious thoughts about her own appearance are only a quiet buzz in the back of her mind.
She adjusts a few strands of her hair, and then leans back, satisfied enough. She takes one last quiet breath, one last moment within herself, and then clicks the "record" button-- and a bright, pretty smile spreads across her face as she greets her followers.
A sweet, open-hearted cottage-core witch in a cropped white blouse with puffy sleeves and a crescent moon necklace, she gives her followers an update on her own magickal journey-- an in-depth review of the self-care spells she has been trying out. She outlines how each spell has worked for her, and ends the video with earnest advice and a teaser about this weekend's video on her own little windowsill exploratorium of herbs and crystals.
She takes a breath at the end, saves the video, and then does the whole thing again.
Outside, the sun slowly makes its way across across the big sky, down toward the edge of the rolling fields. The horses graze a little ways behind the barn, and the chickens scratch and pick around the woodshed.
As Imogen finishes her last take, the sun reaches the level of the land, and spreads, golden, across the fields. She stands up and walks to the window. She pulls open the checkered curtains-- she had closed them for continuity in the video lighting-- and looks out at the world.
Recording does odd things to her mood-- sometimes it makes her genuinely cheerful, what with all the smiling and chatting at the imaginary audience. But sometimes it makes her feel oddly dissociative and empty, and this is one of those moments.
She pushes open the window and breathes in deeply the comforting smell of the farmyard air. She feels a tension in her belly-- an intense urge to get into her usual, practical clothes and run out onto the farm, pet the horses, feed the pigs, walk to the woods, come back to herself.
She has video editing to do, tonight. But a quick little break could maybe be justified, to make her more efficient afterwards-- she throws on a thin wool sweater and her wellington boots and darts down the stairs and out through the back screen door, unable to resist the impulse.
*
A little brush run over the horses, a few gentle words spoken to them, a couple of warm, ripe strawberries picked from the patch, a few deep breaths of the evening air, the chorus of the crickets beginning in the tall grasses, and Imogen begins to feel like herself again.
She is just reaching the steps of the back porch to go back inside when she hears the sound of a car rolling up the driveway-- and stops, her heart dropping a little. Her father and step-mother are back from town, home for the night. She feels a familiar sort of anxiety mixed with annoyance. A car door opens, and then shuts, on the other side of the house, and she hears their voices and the rustle of their shopping bags.
There isn't quite time to dart into the house and up to her room before they can see her. She will either have to talk to them on her way up, or wait a half hour or so until they have settled into the TV room, and then sneak up under the sounds of their movie.
She lingers for just a moment, indecisive, and then she hears the screen on the front door swing open and shut, and a lurch of anxiety makes the decision for her-- she runs, quietly and unobtrusively, away from the house and through the back garden. She ducks behind the woodshed and feels the relief of anonymity, freedom, and then takes off through the grassy meadow toward the woods at the edge of the property.
Sometimes Imogen feels like such a coward. She hates it-- she should just go into the house, brave the short, uncomfortable conversation with the two of them so that she can get upstairs. So she can edit the video, and post it. So she can get a real sponsor. So she can make enough money to finally get away from this house, this place that she loves, but where she is not wanted.
But her feet take her instead toward a safe place-- the watering hole in the woods, at the end of a little path through the evergreen trees. She can take her boots off there and soak her feet, maybe even float in the water on her back and look up at the sky like she did as a kid.
The woods are darker than the fields, and peaceful, but the golden light of dusk is still streaming into the watering hole's little glade when she approaches it from the forest path. The whole glade is lit up in the day's final golden hues, the light sparkling off the water of the round watering hole at the center. Imogen reaches down to pull off her shoes, eager to get her feet into the water-- and then she notices something, and her whole body freezes while the quiet glade spins.
There is a person in the water, floating face down, washed up against the edge of the pool. For a moment, Imogen cannot move, cannot breathe-- and then a different sort of instinct takes over, and she dashes forward and grabs the person--the girl-- around the waist to roll her out of the water.
Long black hair slops over the face, the hand falls limply back into the sparkling water with a splash. Imogen presses her fingers to the neck, and waits, her own heart beating frantically, until, a long moment later, she feels it--a pulse. A slow, slow pulse.
She scrabbles the wet hair off of the girl's face-- an odd, beautiful face-- and presses her mouth down onto the girl's mouth to give her air. She rests a hand on the slender ribcage and feels it rise, the lungs filling.
"Stay alive," she intones inside her own mind, trying to say it somehow into the girl's mind as she breathes the second rescue breath, and then the third. "I've got you. Let me keep you alive."