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Uncle Mike helps her move into her new apartment, rented for literally pennies on the dollar from the wife of one of his fellow firefighters who engulfed her in a hug large enough to drown in and said anything for family, hun when she recognized her. Selina had not cried.
Aunt Vanessa sets up a row of pretty Halloween-themed pots on her windowsills and tacks up the care instructions for each of the plants Bloom’s friend Flora had sent, and then grabs a hammer and a saw and does some bullshit crafting magic and before Selina and Uncle Mike have even finished unloading the car, she’s got a sturdy workbench for magic homework.
Selina has printed off every picture of her cousin and aunt and uncle she can find, and tacked them up with colorful tape and bright blue pins all over her walls. It probably looks a little weird, but family has always been important to Selina and those three are all the family she has, that she’s had for years.
She still feels like she’s making up for lost time, a little - all those years where they were only faces on a screen or voices over a phone to one another means something, of course, but that’s still years of physical absence. And it’s reassuring, to know that if anything happens - no evil fairy bullshit will ever be enough to make her not question who these people on her walls are, or why they are so important to her.
Her aunt and uncle will deep clean their house tomorrow. There won’t be so much as a scrap of paper with Selina’s address on it or a single hair left in Bloom’s carpet, and she knows its as much for her protection as her cousin’s.
But she’ll still wake up in a cold sweat three times a night, afraid of one day seeing pictures of a stranger instead of her all-but sister. She’ll write letters and hide them around her apartment that explain everything, just in case. She’ll hide the fancy magic phone Bloom’s friends had given her in the antique jewelry box Aunt Vanessa sent to her when she turned sixteen, and the baby grimoire Icy gave her amidst her vast collection of fantasy books, and she’ll check on both of them religiously.
But for now -
“What about green for your curtains? And we can get you a nice area rug to match?” Aunt Vanessa asks. Selina rolls her eyes - since she showed up on their doorstep, her aunt has been waging a one-woman war against all the grey in Selina’s wardrobe. It’s proven unsuccessful, but now she’s got a whole apartment to work with.
“If it’s a dark green.” She allows. Uncle Mike smirks at her from where he is putting together a bed frame, and then swears when he pinches his thumb.
“And a matching table cloth for your workbench - a dark green would hide any stains nicely.”
“Aunt V, I’m not murdering things.”
Yet. Bugs were apparently pretty common, but Selina resolutely did not count them. And if she needed animal parts, she had the mice she fed to Eldora and Acheron. Which -
“It’s witchcraft, honey. And I know Earth is - finicky about all that at the moment. Mike’s going on his hunting trip next week, he promised to save you all the bits. Freezing it won’t be a problem, will it?”
“I’m starting to think you’re more invested in ritualistic animal sacrifice than the actual witch and witch-in-training is, honey.” Uncle Mike sounds amused more than anything else. Aunt Vanessa goes red for an instant, and Selina laughs.
“Freezing should be fine. Maybe you’re right - I’m supposed to be experimenting with all this stuff anyway.”
Substituting a small life for that of a larger, especially a larger life taken in service of genuine good - Uncle Mike processes his deer and freezes it for consumption, not for sport - could impact the rituals Selina’s been considering. She’s got a working theory that, given Earth’s lack of magic, she’ll need to scale everything up to get half the result.
Aunt Vanessa beams, and then goes back to furiously stocking Selina’s kitchen.
X
Having to get all secretive over contacting her own fucking family is weird, but she can stop in at the fire station whenever her shifts at the coffee shop end, and Aunt Vanessa’s shop is kitty corner to the library. She’s willing to put up with it to protect her family. There’s a lot she’d do for that.
Selina’s days quickly fall into a pattern; work, visiting with her aunt or uncle (or both!) and then either going back to her apartment or to the library to dig out what weird occult shit she can find. Her studying is mostly self-guided; the “assignments” she gets from Icy, Darcy, and Stormy are infrequent and often little more than copies of books. It’s frustrating, but Selina’s invested, and it’s fucking magic, so she perseveres.
Which brings her to now; to her notebook flipped open to her hastily scribbled notes on a ritual to promote growth and the alterations she thinks will make it actually work.
One of the alien plants - the one she thinks is sentient - wiggles in front of her.
Selina looks over and finds Eldora watching. The snake looks interested. Or maybe just hungry; she’s got a raw deer heart in the middle of her ritual circle.
“Okay.” She breathes, and then picks up her ritual knife ad gets to work.
It’s a bullshit ritual, cobbled together from wiccan and alien-magic resources. The chant is mostly a vehicle for intent, so she’s chosen her words carefully. The heart makes a satisfying squish when she spears it.
She holds her breath at the end, and stares uncertainly at the plants. Nothing happens.
Nothing continues to happen.
She lets out a slow breath, and then shrieks and flies backwards when the probably-sentient plant also shrieks and balloons up in its pot.
It’s got eyes now.
They stare at each other for a moment, silent. Selina offers it a hand, and a leafy frond slaps it in a high-five tentatively.
“Holy shit.” She breathes, and then flops backwards onto the floor.
“Do you need a bigger pot?” She asks, lifting her head just enough to see the plant nod. It is examining its fronds. Cool.
Her grin is wide enough to split her face in half.
Magic.
Cool.