Hexed

5

"Nothing else in the whole wide world matters as much as avenging your sister."

― Jason Jack Miller, Hellbender

☽★☾

Brynn had never felt so openly accepted by a group as she did then. After Joan had repeated the nickname for those gathered around, everyone had smiled with approval and offered her murmurs of welcoming. Not one person was entirely the same as the others. Some had flaxen hair, others had locks of midnight black. Some were thin and slender while others took up much more space. Even skin color held much more variety than Brynn would have expected ― some seemed to blend right into the shadows because of their dark skin color ― and she immediately cursed every historian ever for whitewashing something like this. Gender also seemed to be something that not all of these people conformed to. While no one had probably even heard of terms like nonbinary and transgender in this time (it was only the seventeenth century, after all), the way that some of these people portrayed themselves definitely wasn't fitting of the gender binary they were stuck into.

"Does this group have a name?" Brynn asked after a while of chatting and greeting everyone. She directed the question to the group as a whole, but everyone looked to Joan for an answer.

The dark-haired young woman raised an eyebrow. "I've never called it by anything in particular," She shrugged. "But a motto of ours has always been 'Ad astra per aspera,' which basically means that times are tough but we believe in a brighter future."

Brynn nodded thoughtfully. "I like that," she replied with a small smile. "Maybe you can call the group 'Astra' or something like that. That is, if you want to call it by anything."

"Maybe I can," Joan said, a smirk on her lips as she stared at the redhead. "You've only been here a couple of hours and you already think you're in charge, huh?" Her tone was playful; she was joking with her, but Brynn still flushed a deep red, embarrassed for being called out.

"No, not at all! I―" But before she could defend herself, a pounding could suddenly be heard on the other side of the room. Brynn glanced over and realized that the sound was the rumble of footsteps as a young woman tumbled into the room from the entrance tunnel. She was shaky and out of breath, obviously exhausted by her hurried journey.

"Moon... Moonfall... There's some news that... I think you should know." The woman told her between breaths, bending at the waist as she heaved for breath.

Joan's expression immediately turned serious. She stepped away from Brynn, the air growing tense as she approached the messenger. "What is it?"

The woman's brown hair had fallen into her face, blocking her eyes from the others in the room. She sank into a sitting position on the ground, making it even easier to tell how fatigued her body was. Her face was red and slick with sweat. "It's Celeste. She was captured." She winced as if the words caused her pain.

"Celeste?" Joan repeated. It was impossible to decipher the emotion in her voice, but it was something that caused her throat to thicken and made her words deeper and smoother than their usual rough sound. When the young woman nodded in confirmation, Joan bobbed her head in response and sank down into a chair. She stared at her lap for a long moment.

Brynn glanced over at the others. Elise was staring worriedly at Joan from across the room, while Hawk, one of the young women who had been in the room with them initially, tucked a strand of her honey-brown hair behind her ear and kept her gaze fixed on the ground. No one spoke. Everyone appeared to be waiting for Joan to tell them what to do.

"Get everyone in here," Joan finally demanded. A young girl with shimmering black hair  ― whose nickname, Brynn remembered, was Oxalis ― nodded and rushed out of the room to complete her request. "We need to take action, and I need everyone in here to hear the plan."