Hara and the Witch

Chapter 14: There is More Than One Type of Storm

For the first time in her life Hara thought of her mother as selfish.

'She might leave you be, then, not...'

'Kill me?' Plim winced and Hara stroked her. 'It's alright, Plim. It's been a long time since I thought we would reunite and go on quests together,' she said, the lie scratching at her eyes.

A few moments later Marigold quietly joined them, broom in hand and question in her gaze.

'Hara is alright with the possibility her mother will kill her,' Plim said bluntly, fluttering over to land atop the broom handle, evidently her new place of preference; she eyed Marigold's horrified face as Hara snorted, adding, 'I suppose since you're one of us now, she'll set her... talons? Claws? Scales?'

'As far as I remember my mother was almost entirely human,' Hara supplied, pulling off her jacket and circling the tree, looking at it from different angles before she jumped and grabbed onto the lowest branch, fingers scrambling for purchase before she swung herself up and into the tree.

'Teeth, then,' Plim mused. 'She'll sink her teeth into you.'

'Hmm. Well, that could be terribly exciting. Will... will she be alright, Plim?' Marigold looked up at the tree, Hara having disappeared into the branches beyond her sight.

'I don't know,' Plim admitted. 'I think she will. But in all the item I've known her, Hara's always spoken of her mother like a memory that was safely unchanging. It'll have to hurt, losing that.'

Hara, meanwhile, wasn't listening to this conversation, although she had been temped to see what would be said when she was out of sight (a childhood habit that had helped her come across the most interesting things; she had probably spent more time listening into her conversations than actually speaking to her aunt), but the tree was calling to her more loudly than the conversation below. Besides, she trusted Plim.

She felt as if her world was swaying like the leaves around her face. They whirled and twisted in symphony with her emotions and the further she climbed the louder it grew. She wanted, just for a second, to leave everything behind and just think, but the silence she sought was elusive and even when she could climb no higher and the sky opened up all around her it was not enough.

The sky was in turmoil, the last remnants of blue distantly visible, quickly covered by scudding, determined grey clouds. A wind was building, picking up and swirling the sky, the leaves, her hair into chaos. It whipped her face and lashed her body and Hara breathed in the angry air, unsure what to do with her likewise raging feelings.

Her mother, it seemed, was neither quester nor hero. She was a killer, a stealer of life and adventure. How had she become someone who ended the stories she had once longed to write?

And Mere... Mere was the hero who had caused such pain to Marigold, a fact that hurt far more than Hara's own pain at seeing the woman who had once meant the world to her. She sighed, her breath stolen by the wind. She had loved Mere for so long, had loved her even as she held the pieces of her cracked heart, even as she rebuilt that heart. And Plim! Plim had listened to four years worth of Hara complaining about one woman and celebrating the other, only for this day to turn everything on its head. But wasn't it what she had wanted? To find these two most important women, a lost lover and a wandering mother, convince them they could still... She shook her head and scowled, cheeks an angry blue that matched the sky, longing for the day to go backwards and resurrect itself, for them to go to a different town, any town - for her own ignorance to hold out, at least for a little while more.

'Hara?' a voice called as the rain tentatively began to fall, the softest drops imaginable hitting a leaf here, another there. Hara looked up and saw Plim hovering before her, Marigold a few feet off, holding her broom steady, gaze solemn. 'Are you ready?'

'Yes.' She nodded, the sight of her friends softening her gaze almost instantly, and slid onto the broom when Marigold brought it close enough.

'You alright?' Plim asked gently, looking up at her cloud-faced friend.

Hara nodded. 'I am. Just bloody disappointed.'

'Here's to that.' Plim nudged Hara with her beak. 'And just think, we didn't even get to try Reginald's food. Today is a complete washout.'

'Where to?' Marigold asked, laughing with the others. 'The forest?'

Hara let out an enormous sigh, a drop of rain plopping onto her nose. 'No,' she announced, wincing even as she said it. 'No. I've got to go home.'

'...home?' Marigold said slowly, but before Hara could answer they were interrupted by a wailing sound that almost made the witch lose control of her broom and sent them into a momentary nose dive

'Plim!' Hara gazed at the howling dove in shock, watching the last of her bright feathers pale to a washed out grey, a hue Hara hadn't known Plim was even capable of.

'I'm sorry!' Plim sobbed, burying her head in Hara's pocket to muffle the cries. 'I'm sorry I couldn't-'

And then it started to downpour, the rain giving up entirely on delicate drops and instead belting the land with a furious vehemence. Within seconds the sky was almost completely dark, purple and blue hues mingling with the moody, shifting clouds.

'Plim, what's the matter?' Hara yelled over the thrumming of the rain, bending her ear close to the bird's beak.

'You're-' Plim sobbed even louder, but Hara shook her head, the words her friend had uttered lost to the growing gale. 'You're— and it's my—'

'Plim I'm sorry!' Hara yelled as Plim howled in anguish. 'I'm can't hear what you're say-'

'She thinks you're leaving!' Marigold screamed. The wind tussled the broom and Hara caught the witch's hat (or rather her face did) as it flew off; she replaced it and leant forward, face as close to Marigold's as she could get it.

'Why's she think that?!' she shouted, getting a mouthful of her own hair as the wind whipped some free of its braid.

'You SAID SO, THAT'S WHY!' Plim wailed.

'You did,' Marigold shouted. 'You said you were going home!'

'But that's because we need more information!' Marigold shrugged and Hara, sitting back, looked down at Plim in confusion. 'But that's because we need more information!' she repeated, but then the conversation was finally cut short. The rain had done its work quickly and by the time Hara had noticed they were once more losing height the ground was racing towards them and it looked incredibly rocky.

'Plim, fly!' she yelled, pulling the bird out of her pocket and thrusting her up, letting go only when she felt the fluttering of soggy wings against her fingers. She caught sight of Marigold for a second, hand gripping the broom with all her strength as it was knocked this way and that, before she lost her grip and flew into the air.

The rain battered her, increasingly icy and sharp, and for a dull second she could believe she was still on the broom and not, in fact, about to hurt very much indeed.

And then she landed.

It hurt very much indeed.

While she avoided the rocks, Hara forgot, as she was propelled through the air, to plan for a landing and by the time she saw the ground all she could do was close her eyes before she crashed, face first, in a wet heap.

Inhaling as soon as she could breathe, she sucked in a lungful of thick, gritty water and promptly began to choke, her nose freshly throbbing, her body aching and her throat scorched as she tried to cough and breathe at the same time.

The rain continued to pour, relentless in the face of such pitiful figures; Plim flew only a few seconds before the water worked its way between every feather and sent her spiralling down, her landing less muddy but just as jarring, and Marigold had also managed to avoid the rocks that would surely have snapped her precious broom, but she didn't get control of said broom in time to stop as the ground met her feet and she was painfully dragged along for a good few meters, her skirt snagging and tearing, her shins knocking what felt like every possible rock and root in the entire field and her hat landing on the ground moments before Marigold fell on top of it.

No, the rain did not let up. It grew stronger.