Chapter Text
“Come on, Lily, tell me what’s wrong.”
Lilith’s eyes snap open, and she jolts upright. It was that dream again, the one where Edalyn had woken up before she could read that blasted scroll. The one where they talked, and both denied the Emperor’s Coven. The one where she was happy.
Her stomach rumbles with hunger and nausea alike. It’s too late to think fancifully now, but her mind still taunts her with what could have been. She almost rathers the nightmares.
Whatever. Lilith shakes her head a bit, patting her cheeks. There’s no time for this, she has work to do. Stretching, she exits the nest she had slept in and begins picking the straw out of her hair. The whole nest thing was Edalyn’s idea, twisted sense of humor and all. Lilith had wanted to tell her no, but…
If there was anything she could do to make Edalyn laugh these days, it was well worth it.
The two Clawthorne sisters were known as Augurs by the people of the boiling isles, so named after the uncanny curse that would turn them both into feral, bird-like beasts when triggered. Individually, they were the Raven and Owl Lady. Nobody knows how the curse came to be, but it has, in some ways, made them both infamous.
That is, nobody except for Lilith herself.
It was a stupid mistake. The owl scroll was written in a complex, ancient language, and she should have known better than to trust her rudimentary translation. Still, her perfect, chaotic sister isn’t quite so perfect anymore - and it’s all Lilith’s fault. Envy is a tricky thing, you see, and you don’t quite realize the hold it has on you until you’re chasing the most important person in your world down as she flies, literally flies, away from you.
She didn’t join the Emperor’s Coven that day. How could she have? Well, she had entertained the thought for a moment. Lilith had betrayed her own sister for the sake of that dream, the sunken cost fallacy almost demanded it of her.
But as the days stretched on and the curse did not end like she thought it would, Lilith couldn’t bring herself to reap the ill-gotten gains she had sought. Edalyn had tried to stop her, tried to tell her to join the Emperor and leave her be, but Lilith hadn’t listened.
“With this spell declared, let the pain be shared.”
So now, and for the last twenty-five years or so, rather than one sister being fully cursed, both had been half-cursed. In some profane act of karma, the curse dampened Lilith’s magic far more than it suppressed her gifted sister’s, and Edalyn went on to join the Emperor’s Coven to find the cure for her own–but mostly for Lilith’s, she later admitted–sake. To her, this curse was a strange accident, and Lilith had paid a high price to help her, so Edalyn would do anything she could to do the same.
What she didn’t know was that Lilith was simply atoning for her own gravest sin.
In lieu of traditional magic, Lilith threw herself into the study of potions. It was about as exact of a science as you could get - follow the recipe, master it, and then maybe try something new. But no matter how new of a thing you sought to try, the laws behind it remained clear. You always needed a base, always needed an activator, etc. No matter the recipe, no matter the experiment, some things never changed, and Lilith has always appreciated consistency.
Internal monologuing aside, Lilith sets about her morning routine, wrestling her hair into a tight bun, fussing with the loose curls that demanded freedom and ultimately giving up as she realized a half hour had passed. She’s considered relaxing her hair, but the uniformity isn’t worth the labor and materials she’d need for that kind of potion, especially not on a shopkeeper's salary.
So, as with every morning, her hair remained the most chaotic thing about her appearance. That’s another one of Edalyn’s favorite jokes, she remembers as she smooths down her red skirt and casts her morning spell. It used to annoy her, but she’s softened up about a lot of things as they’ve grown older.
Lilith has just finished sweeping when, as is routine, a blur of orange, gray, and gold barrels through her door, nearly taking her out in the process.
“Lilyyy,” Edalyn draws out the last syllable of her name, spinning her into a hug, “it’s been forever! Oh, how I’ve missed you, dear sister!”
“Edalyn,” she greets, putting on her best ‘irritated’ tone, though her face betrays her humor, “you were here yesterday.”
“Yes, but do you know how long 24 hours is in owl years?” the Owl Lady grins, before pausing, hand on her chin in a classic Thinking Pose. She snorts, “Actually nevermind, I don’t. But I bet it’s basically forever.”
Lilith rolls her eyes, wriggling out of her sister’s grip. Edalyn grins as she goes to Lilith’s cupboard and pops out a bottle of apple blood. She sits down at the table while Lilith begins preparing breakfast for them both.
“Day drinking?” Lilith asks, already knowing her sister’s response. This had become sort of like a daily ritual for them: Edalyn comes over for breakfast far before the sun rises over the isles (the Emperor’s Coven maintained strict schedules, but Edalyn could do practically whatever she wanted as covenhead so long as she was there when her scouts started to rouse).
“You know it, sister,” she responds, “how else am I supposed to make it through the day?”
This gets a short laugh out of Lilith as she shakes her head at her sister’s antics. “Of course, of course.”
After a brief pause, Lilith adds, “By the way, I have the next week’s supply for you before you go.”
Edalyn lights up, “That’s great! How much do I owe you?”
Another part of the routine, this one a weekly occurrence, Lilith sighs. “We’ve been through this before. You don’t need to pay me anything, it’s medicine.”
The younger of the two sighs, downing another swig of apple blood. “We have, and I must ask once again: what else am I supposed to do with the emperor’s stolen money, if not give it to the best potion-maker in Bonesborough?”
“It’s not theft,” Lilith reminds her sister, as she always does, “it’s repossessing the…affects, of wild witches. Which they could avoid, by joining a coven.” She pauses. This is usually where this leg of the conversation ends, but another thought pops into her head today. “And besides, if it were thievery, wouldn’t that mean you’re doing the stealing for the emperor?”
Edalyn raises her eyebrow at the off-script line, “I believe it is.” For a moment, her eyes soften. “But, it’s worth it.”
A familiar envy, far overshadowed by a familiar shame, grips Lilith’s throat as she struggles to find words. She doesn’t look at her sister, instead focusing on plucking the hair off of the rat eggs she’s holding.
“Besides though, you know me,” Edalyn’s tone lightens, “I always wanted to be a master criminal, heh, and this makes me the best of them all!”
“Ah, yes,” Lilith says in her signature dry tone, “you are essentially a pirate.”
“Ha! Maybe I should get a hook or something.”
A smile tugs at Lilith’s face. “Maybe you should.”
This time, the silence between the two is comfortable as Lilith cracks the rat eggs and beats them with a whisk. She pours in some curds to make them fluffy, and begins getting to work on toasting flesh for the two of them. As she does, she sets the moss and a moss knife out.
“Speaking of covens,” Lilith says after a while, tentatively, “how are things with Raine?”
Edalyn groans, and Lilith takes that to mean ‘not well’. Though, to be fair, Lilith isn’t sure how well she’d fare if her ex–in theory, if she had one–was about to become one of her coworkers. Rumors have been spreading about Raine Whispers, a musical prodigy and Edalyn’s best-friend-turned-childhood-sweetheart-turned-scorned-ex, gearing to take over from the current aging covenhead, which would mean they and Edalyn would be working very closely together…after not talking for almost twenty years.
“I suppose that means that you still haven’t talked to them?” she asks.
Edalyn snorts. “And say what? ‘Hey Rainstorm! So sorry about ending our relationship and years-long friendship because I couldn’t control my curse and was afraid to tell you. Why didn’t I reach out before we were on the emperor’s elite team of covenheads together? Oh, because I’d rather make the both of us suffer for nearly two decades instead of showing an ounce of vulnerability and risking directly hurting somebody I care about. My bad!’”
Lilith shrugs, “Well, that doesn’t sound so bad to me.”
Edalyn gives her a withering stare, and Lilith smirks at her. Once the eggs and everything else finishes, she sets up plates for the two of them and joins Edalyn at the table. “You’ll figure it out. You always do.”
“You have far too much faith in me.” As if to illustrate her point, Edalyn takes another swig of apple blood. Is this her second bottle? Lilith will have to check later. As a matter of fact, when has Lilith seen her not drinking it recently?
Oddly enough, Edalyn mirrors her concern, but for different reasons. Lilith is snapped out of her thoughts when she feels Edalyn’s hand on her right arm, “Lily? Are you okay? You look pale.”
Instinctively, Lilith jerks her arm back, shaking her sister off. Realizing what she did, she coughs, looking away. “Yes, I’m fine,” she deflects, pushing the (rapidly growing cold) breakfast towards Edalyn, alongside a cup of bile. “Worry about yourself.”
Edalyn’s smile is almost sad as she takes the cup, putting the apple blood down. Good, Lilith thinks to herself.
The two women eat in silence, words left unsaid to one another, before Edalyn gets up to go to work. Grabbing the box of potions left by the door, Lilith watches as she drops a few snails where it had been. She doesn’t protest; as much as she hates it, Edalyn’s right. Lilith does need the money.
“Hey,” Edalyn says as she’s about to leave, “I love you, you know.”
“I know. I love you too.”
With that, her little sister leaves Lilith to her empty home. Lilith inhales sharply, then exhales, releasing the spell she had been holding onto during Edalyn’s visit. The spell she holds onto whenever she leaves the house. The curse makes magic more difficult, but the reason she can’t cast as well is much simpler than that. Lilith looks at the arm Edalyn had touched earlier and, like a fist unclenching, watches as the illusion of potions coven’s sigil disappears.
When faced with the necessity of providing for her sister and finding a cure for their curse, Edalyn turned to the emperor, even when she hadn’t wanted to, but she wasn’t the only one who traveled a path she swore she never would.
Lilith turned to wild magic, and she will cure both of them if it’s the last thing she does.