In The Witching Hours

Part 1: The Serpent Omen

Spending Midsummer's Day hospitalized at the Communion Life Hospital Center wasn't exactly how Cordelia had planned to spend the most magical day of the year.

No. She had a ticket to go to the annual magic fair with her friend Margery. Where they would surely have a wonderful time stuffing their bellies with sugar cookies, chocolate mushrooms and pumpkin ale, embarrassing themselves a little on the floating roller rink and, above all, timidly ogling at all the cute foreign wizards and witches they were too shy to approach, let alone flirt with.

The fair would also provide them with the chance to get their grabby hands on a bunch of whimsical ingredients and souvenirs that they didn't normally have access to during the rest of the year.

Of course, these days it's perfectly possible for wizards to order most of their funky stuff online... but the ones like Cordelia still prefer to pick their ingredients manually.

You see, Cordelia is a Seer witch.

It's a valuable trait that usually keeps her from harm's way since it bounds her to be highly ruled by her instinct and particularly sensitive to the energy of the materials and people around her. It has lots of perks. For instance, Cordelia almost never gets lost, since she can find her way to where she wants to go based on intuition alone. She can also usually avoid uncomfortable or dangerous situations, even if she never saw or heard about them. – Whether it's silly things akin to jinxed candy that will make her ears grow twice the size or more serious matters, like creepy vampire alleyways and cursed artifacts.

Having instinctive genes also meant that anytime Cordelia stared at a conjunct of objects while shopping, such as pile of bird skulls, most times than not one of them would effortlessly entail her attention and overpower all the other ones... which can get a little annoying sometimes when another person steps in and picks what fate had destined to be hers, but luckily most times if she explains her situation, they'll be kind enough to offer to switch, since for most magic people that don't possess any soothsaying abilities, not having a connection with their ingredients doesn't really make a difference in their magic. However, as expected there are also times people will deny her request or proceed to look at her like she's crazy or a bratty little witch.

Which she's not.

She has tried to ignore or go against her instincts multiple times. And in all fairness, the result was usually never good, but Cordelia is pretty positive it was never as bad as it was this time.

Her day had been terribly unlucky from the start, which is usually a sign from the universe asking her not to do something. It all started when she tripped in the shower and knocked down her new bottle of shampoo, then her Chartreux cat, Azura, slid down her leg with its nails sticking out and made a huge tear on her favorite pair of overalls that she had just put on. Right after that, as Cordelia was about to place a washed cereal bowl to dry on the rack, all the dishes in there fell down the counter for no logical or explainable reason. Later, whilst brushing her teeth she managed to squeeze a blob of toothpaste straight onto the front of her t-shirt and finally, right as she shut the front door and stood on the porch of her little house, she was greeted by an extreme downpour that started right in front of her eyes.

But she simply let out a big sigh and pulled the umbrella out of her bag. She really wanted to go to the fair, therefore if the universe was against it, it was just going to have to suck it this time. Besides, the weather had been stormy and gloomy for a few days now, so the last sign probably didn't even mean a thing.

Cordelia should have known better than to defy the fate of the universe.

Because if she hadn't, she probably wouldn't have woken up in the hospital 3 days later, feeling dizzy, having hot flashes, and with severe pain on her left arm.