Hara and the Witch

Chapter 10: Time for Memories?

Hara looked around slowly, feeling her stomach heave as it recognised a voice she hadn't heard in so long. A hand gripped her arm and the voice let out a startled, happy laugh. 'It is! Hara, I can't believe it's really you.'

Hara, swallowing hard, shook the hand carefully off her arm and pursed her lips. Her head was whirling and she anchored onto the weight of Plim on her shoulder, claws pressing through her shirt.

Plim and Hara had worked out a multitude of signs for each other in tricky situations (examples being an awkwardly drawn out laugh followed by a cough; Plim pretending to fall off Hara's shoulder and die; Hara pretending to drop to the ground and die (only used the once as it hadn't really worked as well as she expected); a nudge and a sniff; or this: claws digging into skin. All said "we need to get out" and, comforted by the presence of her friend, Hara could not agree more.

'Mere.' She nodded curtly and sidestepped the tall woman in her pale pink outfit. 'We must be off, work to do.'

And then she strode out of the pub, just slowly enough to make it ambiguous if she was actually running.

'Quick, round the back,' Plim muttered, keeping an eye cautiously out. 'She's coming.'

Ducking under a server at a fruit stall and sliding beneath an empty table, Hara pelted for the dingy alleyway, heaping over a sunbathing cat to get there.

She darted down the alley, slumping beside a crate when she felt she'd gone far enough, the back door of the pub just in sight. She tried not to throw up, but Plim didn't make a sound as Hara dropped to her knees in the shadows and heaved, instead quickly pulling the fallen strands of her hair back and ensuring Hara moved before the puddle got too close for comfort.

'Hara? Do you feel alright?' When Hara nodded, Plim looked around, found a bottle of beer and passed it to her.

'No, I don't-'

'Open it.' Hara did and watched as Plim unceremoniously darted off with it. Hara could hear the liquid being poured out, cleaning away she mess she had made. 'I'll be one minute,' Plim's whispered voice called, and then Hara was alone.

Mere. It had been over five years since they'd last met. Hara had wished, so many times, for something just like this to happen, for Mere to appear and... she never could decide what she wanted to happen. Her stomach churned at the memory of her voice, exactly as she remembered it, but she took a deep breath and closed her eyes, thinking instead of the money she and Plim had made. Still, she flinched at more than one footfall.

'Hara?' She cracked open an eye and saw Plim had returned, Marigold with her. The witch's voice was gentle and concerned. 'What happened?'

'No, it's fine. I just... saw someone I used to know,' Hara said, trying (and failing) to smile.

'Someone you knew well?' Hara nodded, eyes filling with tears that spilt down her face when she saw how worried she had made Plim.

'I...' Choking on the words, she shook her head and looked to Plim. 'Plim? Can you?'

Plim landed on the ground beside Hara's trembling foot, gently placing the beer bottle, now filled with water, before her.

Then, taking a deep breath, Plim said, 'This is what Hara told me when we first met.'

In a village endless as far as the eye could see, there once lived a child.

She wasn't the only child in the village, but she did not have a fortitude for the company of others and for years she kept mostly to herself, independent and content to remain so.