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Stumbling through the forest, past the tombstones of her childhood, Kat wasn’t sure what to make of it all. She cast a stray glance at Beetle, who was racing past with arms outstretched.
“Are you still writing fanfic?” her best friend asked.
No. She thought about it, not frequently but sometimes, when exams and grades and lately her aunt got too up-in-her-face, she would indulge in the silly scenarios her brain made up. And okay, maybe she had a bit more pep in her step the days after. And maybe there were entire paragraphs up in her head she hadn’t written out.
But to say she was writing would be disingenuous. Writing fanfic has always and will always be about the joy it brought her. The sheer unbridled rush.
Magic, as ironic as it seemed, wasn’t enough.
She isn’t sure how, but it seems like talking to Beetle opened up the floodgates. She can’t help but to spill, waves of pitiful information being expelled from her mouth like bile. She needs to get a grip on herself.
She doesn’t. Instead, she ends up whispering another insecurity, just cannon fodder, while cast in shadow and looking up like some damned lovestruck girl in a trashy movie, but Beetle’s shining in yellow sun and pulling her up to higher ground and hugging her, and she feels her troubles dampen for just a moment.
Warmth. That’s all she can feel. Never has the sun at the academy felt this way and she relishes in it.
She can’t quite figure out what to say before a “Thanks!” as she stands up and gets up. Beetle looks at her knees for a moment, muttering something before getting up.
She calls her Bee. Like some insipid little child. She hates it so much.
But Beetle tolerates it. Indulges in it even.
Beetle yabbers on about their old roleplay, even saying it with a slight pause, just like she used to. Room for the hyphen! She remembers her quipping. So juvenile, she finds herself thinking.
Still, Beetle’s energy is contagious, and she finds herself being pulled into it, catching the thrown stick, now weapon, and locking eyes and blades with her.
She’s getting so into it it’s embarrassing, but she spares a glance at Beetle who’s flushing with delight. There’ll be no judgement there, she knows, and runs with the ideas so fast she gets whiplash.
And Beetle’s following her every word, just as excited as her. It's so refreshing she needs to cool down for a moment. She takes a breath and says, barely containing herself, “We should write all this down when we get to your house.”
And Beetle flushes, touching her neck, and proposes an idea, prefaced with plenty of safety statements: “What if Silver and Pearlescent were a couple?”
And…Kat actually hadn’t thought of it before. Sure, she’s mulled over the friendship in her dorm with a wishfulness now only amplified by actually seeing Beetle, but…
There’s gold, dancing between her eyelashes and hair, blush blazing on her cheeks, and for an instant Kat is enthralled.
She halfheartedly responds, breathless, and Beetle shoots off, playing into it, and something catches Kat’s eye–
She tucks her hand into Beetle’s hair, and plucks a spider out. It shines, with a magic she hadn’t seen before, but all seems dull in comparison to the goblin right next to her.
There is light, and it is all she can do to not go blind.
Then, they reach Beetle’s home.
Then, they see Kat’s aunt.
Kat takes off her headband, leash now significantly tightened. They eavesdrop on the two adults downstairs, and Beetle…Beetle defends Kat.
Defends with so much anger and vitriol that Kat feels she has to step in.
“She’s not usually like this,” is her only refute. “She’ll probably apologize later. It’s just how it is.” Please, she begs. Let it go.
And Beetle, who has never taken a command to lie down in her life, doubles down. And Kat, who has always been swept up in her, does too.
The voices downstairs rise, and. Oh no. Her aunt says, sitting in a house she doesn’t know, in a goblin’s house, towards said goblin, “You’d be happier out in a swamp somewhere, I’m sure.”
Has her aunt lost her mind?
Beetle, understandably at this point, starts heading down. But she knows she can’t. No matter how “scrappy” Beetle is, she can’t take on Kat’s aunt.
Whirling her back up the stairs, Kat speaks in double meaning so thin it’s almost air. “Wh-what are you doing?!”
But she’s forgotten. Beetle didn’t go to an academy and hasn’t been taken in by a witch as smart or conniving as Kat’s aunt. Beetle’s been homeschooled, with her closest friend a shapeshifting ghost, and the best advice she’s ever been given is to not be caught in the forest at night.
Still, Kat pleads. “She’s kind of mean, but she’s smart. The type of witch who rules her town. I can be like that. I wouldn’t–” tie down the life force of an apprentice. Hold her niece’s heart on a string to keep her at beck and call. “I’d be good.”
“You know, you’re selfish,” and she feels her bones rising to the threat.
What the fuck, she thinks, fist clenching. And from where she is, on the lower stairs, she can only throw low blows.
“Maybe to you it wouldn't be worth it,” and her voice starts cracking already. “Your family doesn’t expect anything of you. Mine expects me to be perfect.” She gets closer, nose to nose, and feels herself embodying her aunt. “And to” a sinister smile spreads across her face “Never” Beetle’s eyes widen in anger and confusion “lose.”
She turns and heads upwards, clenching her ring, her heart, her everything. “So don’t lecture me about what a witch is, like you’d know.”
And Beetle offers protection, but–Kat can’t. Just because she’s physically higher doesn’t mean she can’t aim low. It just means she can go lower.
Sickly, poisoned words, imbued with just enough magic to strike fear and hurt. She insults Beetle’s grandmother, really digs in there. Every part of her rational mind is telling her to go back, but she can’t. The pièce de résistance: “Can you actually do any magic?”, and the end of it all, “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you’re certainly not a witch.”
Beetle, as always, matches her energy. Somehow, a crystal-less goblin who's supposed to be learning goblin magic, levitates a good 2 feet off the ground like it's nothing and strikes the fear of goblin-god in her.
“If you keep pretending to be like your aunt, someday you really will be like her.” No magic in the words, she dimly notes, barely keeping herself together. And, oh wow, is that three feet now? “And when that happens,” okay Beetle is now a good head-and-a-half taller than her from sheer-fucking-willpower apparently, “I’ll be the one to bring you down.”
She grabs at her ring, a spell already half-formed, like that will help her now. Beetle’s magic is electrifying the air, lifting the goblin’s hair and casting a bright harsh glow on it. Her pupils are probably super dilated and her breathing is erratic.
“Get ahold of yourself,” she shoots back, dashing down the stairs. “You’re such a child.”
She can still feel it, Beetle’s magic, even as she’s out of sight. Even as Beetle touches back down to ground and it drains away from the air. Even as she gets closer to her aunt, who should by all counts overwhelm any trace of Beetle.
It’s there, lurking. Her aunt’s beady red eyes make a reappearance and she’s hollow. She could probably have her heart torn out now and she wouldn’t notice.
Beetle steps down the stairs, glowing with magic. Blues and yellows.
“Did you have fun with your little friend?” So many warnings in one sentence.
“She’s not my friend.” Firm. She has to stand firm. She cannot let a goblin get to her.
But she’s not stupid. Magic ruled by emotions is powerful. And as proven today, Beetle’s magic is tied to the people she cares about. Her grandmother, and by some horrible amount, Kat.
She can’t tell if she’s in danger or safer than ever. Her aunt ushers her out, heavy hand on her shoulder, and she’s invited over anytime.
Her headband with cat ears that she’s had forever, enchanted even, are thrown to the ground.
She tells herself it doesn’t matter. She focuses on Beetle’s magic, still thrumming in that hut. Holds onto the memory of it and the faint buzz in the back of her head, all the way to her Aunt’s house.