Chapter Text
The orphanage grows smaller behind you. The woman beside you grips your hand with a smile, and you watch as the breeze surrounding the both of you picks up her long dark hair and whips it around.
"Are you ready to go home, my dear?" She asks.
Home. The only home you'd ever known was slowly disappearing over the horizon behind you. Supposedly your new home was with this woman.
You nod, your eyes still on the way her hair moves in the current.
—
"Don't feel bad, [Name]," Lilith says, kneeling down to you.
You pull your knees to your chest, swiping a tear off your cheek.
"Many witches are late bloomers," She comforts, moving to place a hand on your back but deciding against it. She sits fully on the ground next to you, looking down at you with a sad smile, "There are plenty of witches your age who can't cast any spells."
You don't respond, hand gripping your chest as a dull ache overtakes it.
—
"What does this mean, Hettie..?" You hear Lilith ask.
A curtain separates you from her, stark white like the rest of the healing coven wing. You'd never been to the Emperors palace before. So unfortunate a near-death experience is what finally brought you here.
"[Name] was born without a bile sack, Lilith, and I hate to say it but... I've never seen anything quite like this before in any witch on the Isles."
You peer at your arm, tubing and needles hooked up to it. The tubes feed liquid into your bloodstream, what exactly the liquid is, you don't know.
"For now we can only assume it's the same as most other congenital heart defects. We'll monitor them for a couple more days, do some more scans, but we'll have to send you home with some potions and glyphs to keep them healthy."
"Will..." Lilith trails off, you can practically hear her apprehension, "Will they ever perform magic..?"
The room goes silent.
—
You walk beside Lilith, exiting the theatre where she'd just given a—rather unnecessarily flashy, in your opinion—speech for the Emperors Coven panel. Returning to the crowd of young witches flitting from booth to booth within the covention building, Lilith turns to you.
"So? How was I?" She asks, placing a hand on your shoulder to guide you as you walk without looking.
"Uhhh, dramatic?" You offer, head buried in your sketchbook.
She sighs.
"What about the Blight girl?" She asks.
"What about her?"
"Did you watch with her?"
"I sat next to her," you shrug, finally closing your sketchbook and tucking it into the bag hanging off your shoulder.
"Did you speak to her?"
"You technically never told me I had to speak to her."
Lilith stops and groans, pinching the bridge of her nose exasperatedly. Before she can scold you for the umpteenth time about the importance of making friends, a younger witch runs up to her with a pen and paper asking for her autograph. Without realising it, a group of fans begin to surround her, all asking about the Emperors Coven and wanting autographs and the like.
You stand off to the side, pulling your sketchbook back out. You doubt Liliths newfound posse will be leaving anytime soon. It remains like this for another few moments, Lilith drinking up the attention her impressionable fanbase offers.
"Sister?" You hear the blue-haired witch ask, breaking your concentration. You look up, following her gaze to none other than The Owl Lady.
Lilith quirks a brow, signing a paper and handing it back to one of the children surrounding her before putting her hand back on your shoulder. She pulls you closer to her, keeping her arm around you possessively.
"It's been so long since I've seen you last," she says haughtily, "What are you wearing?"
The two of you approach the owl lady, Liliths fans following, "You look like some sort of trash collector. Oh, right, you are."
"Oh, Lily," the owl lady starts back, "I just had to see the leader of the Emperors Coven in action."
She crouches down, giving you a long look before saying to the children surrounding Lilith, "Y'know, when we were kids, Lilith was so excited to see the Emperors Coven, she peed a little."
The children laugh and you can see Lilith turn red in the face. She glares at the owl lady before ushering the children away with a quick smile and a forced, "That's all for today!"
"You shouldn't even be here!" she starts, pointing an accusatory finger at the owl lady, "You're a wanted criminal. Unless..." She gets excited then, removing her arm from around you to grab the owl lady's hands in her own.
"I don't believe it... you're here to join the Emperors Coven!"
The owl lady snickers, then bursts into a small fit of laughter, "In your dreams," she says through giggles, Liliths face falling.
Lilith's brows furrow, and you know whatever she has to say next isn't worth paying attention to. You look back down at your sketchbook, furrowing a brow of your own and getting lost again in your own world.
Unfortunately, you are quickly interrupted.
"Eda I need your help!!" A whiny, loud, voice cuts off your train of thought, "I accidentally challenged Amity to a witches duel and I think she's going to kill me all the way dead!" Says a girl, running up to the three of you and pulling the owl lady's attention away, annoyingly along with yours.
The girl who'd spoken sinks to the floor by your feet as she wallows. You take a half-step away from her.
Lilith hums, pleased, "It seems your student has met my strongest protégé." Lilith crouches as well, examining the girl.
"And look at those ears! Is she human?"
You perk up. Human? You look down at the girl yourself, who is covering her ears under Liliths mocking gaze.
Lilith scoffs, rising again, "Where did you even find one of these?"
You don't look away, though, making eye contact with the alleged human while Lilith continues to taunt Eda.
The human looks up at you nervously, offering you a shaky smile. You return it with one of your own, which seems to surprise her.
"Okay, Edalyn," Lilith says, casting a spell to get rid of the owl lady's wanted posters plastered around the covention building. "For one day, you won't have to hide from the law, because I want to see how good a teacher you really are."
Lilith walks away, pulling you along with her and forcing you to tear your gaze away from the oddity that is a human in The Boiling Isles.
Lilith takes you with her to find Amity, the youngest Blight girl who you find... overall, very boring. The only thing she cares about is Lilith's approval and joining the Emperors Coven after she graduates. At least, you think that's all she cares about.
You haven't really bothered to actually talk to her about much else... or at all.
"Abomination, rise!" The green haired girl commands, you and Lilith watching as a purple goopy creature rises, twists its own head off, and throws it. The head soars a few feet and smacks a poor man in the face, knocking down his baking coven panel. You turn to Lilith.
"Can I go home now?" You ask, flicking a piece of abomination goop off of your sweater.
"No, [Name], we have had this conversation before. I'm sick of you cooping yourself up in that house, constantly sitting hunched over that desk of yours? It's horrible for your spine, you know." Lilith exasperatedly responds, keeping her eyes on Amity's form as the girl continues training.
"I don't care about my spine, this is boring."
"If you're so bored then go see the construction coven panel, or something." She says, waving you off.
"We just came from the construction coven panel." You deadpan.
"Then the potions coven, whatever coven you want, just do not leave the building. We can go home after Amity wins this duel, I'll make sure it goes quickly for you." She pats your shoulder, glancing down at you before returning her gaze to Amity.
You groan to yourself and turn on your heel to go find something, anything, to do to pass the time until you can go home.
—
Once it's time for the duel, you find a spot outside the theatre and take a seat. You have your sketchbook in your lap, finally at peace as you sketch away with no one around. Most people had navigated to the seats inside the theatre in excitement over the duel, finally leaving you by yourself.
Every minute or so, you hear loud thuds and bangs coming from the theatre as, you assume, the duel rages on. Things go silent for a beat, just before Amity comes running out of the theatre, not even noticing you on the floor by the door as she sprints away.
Only a few seconds later, the human comes sprinting out as well.
She runs past you, skidding to a halt before quickly moving in reverse and turning to you.
"Did you see where Amity went?!"
You nod.
"Where is she?!"
You point in the opposite direction that she'd been previously going, her gaze following your finger. Her eyes light up when she spots the Blight girl and she starts towards her.
"Thank you, whatever-your-name-is!" The human calls to you behind her as she runs to Amity.
You wait a couple more minutes in silence before people begin filing out of the theatre, prompting you to stand and lean against the wall while waiting for Lilith.
She comes out after a few moments, seething, dishevelled, and gripping her staff. She spots you and slows her angry pace, huffing a sigh as she approaches.
"I need to grab something from backstage, wait for me outside and we'll go home after," She says, struggling to keep her tone even. Her staff collapses, the little white raven palisman at the top flying to your shoulder.
"What even happened?" You ask, scratching underneath the palisman's chin.
"Nothing," she growled, clenching her fists. You decide to shrug it off, turning on your heel and heading outside to wait for her.
—
Once you reach home, you jump off of Lilith's staff. She follows you, although with much less enthusiasm.
Your shared home isn't much more than a cabin, rather humble considering Lilith is head-witch of the Emperors Coven. It's hidden deep in one of The Boiling Isles's many forests, nestled between trees and foliage.
It's two stories, yours and Lilith's rooms being upstairs while the rest of the living space and kitchen is on the ground floor. There's a basement, too, but you never really go down there.
Once you're inside, Lilith makes her way into the kitchen. She opens a few cupboards, gazing into the pantry.
"Do you need any help with supper?" You ask her, hovering at the entrance to the kitchen.
She looks at you for a second before exhaling fondly, her expression morphing into a smile as her previous anger melts away.
"No, no, I know you've been itching to get back to that workshop of yours. Go on, [Name]."
You can't help but smile, rushing towards the back door, "Call me when the foods done, Lilith, see ya!" You call, sliding the door open and shutting it behind you.
You follow a familiar beaten path through the woods, pushing past flora and fauna alike until the thick tree line opens into a clearing. In the centre of it, a circular shack with a glass domed roof. Your workshop.
Inside, you plop down in a rolling chair, kicking off the ground to push yourself towards your desk on the other side of the room. You pull one of the many chains hanging from the ceiling and a light shines down on your desk. You take out a pencil from a cup on the desk and reach into your bag for your sketchbook once again.
For the rest of the night you sketch away, surrounded by nothing and nobody but your own inventions and collections. Potion ingredients, trinkets and artefacts you'd gotten from the night market (unbeknownst to Lilith), and the most remarkable, multiple small automatons dotted around the workshop.
They're all lifeless at the moment, lying dormant on your desk and shelves, but all were made from your bare hands over the years. Many of them were simple and small, modelled after bugs and other little creatures. Some, however were bigger. Namely, the large automated raven standing on your desk.
You lift your eyes from your sketchbook, peering at the metal raven.
"I nearly forgot about you, Mortimer," you chuckle, reaching into a drawer nearby and pulling out a small glass capsule. Inside, a bright teal liquid shimmers. You give it a quick shake before grabbing the raven and opening a hatch on his chest. You place the capsule inside and gently put Mortimer back on the desk.
A second passes before his eyes glow similarly to the potion you'd powered him with, he stretches out his wings and begins flapping them. He flies up, perching on top of your head.
"Caw! Nevermore!"
Your fond smile shifts into a confused expression.
"Sure... whatever that means."
You turn back to your sketchbook, Mortimer making himself comfortable in your hair.