HALCYON [Minamoto Teru]

36

For a weeks, the perpetual sense of time bent to different proportions and fragments of the day. Time passed like no other and epiphanies sunk into the air .. a certain blonde exorcist found himself amalgamated within the daily routine of a small child.

But from afar, he watched both the small witch and her interactions. Sometimes it felt like he was watching a ghost in itself.

Nyx would stare emptily at a space, a spot for minutes— dozens of minutes before turning like she hadn't acknowledged it just a second prior. She was ever so disconnected and detached from her own surroundings everything felt like it was missing lines from its script.

Her mother would have frequent outbursts when she saw Nyx staring at family portraits.

The woman, as Teru had grown accustomed to calling her, would go on a rampage, senselessly slaughtering the same humans in which took her husband away. However, with necromancy, she resurrected them and they continued on with their duties as though nothing had happened.

Nora's mother held no regard for humans. She despised them utterly.

Yet from the window, he would spot the short little girl stare. However not at him. She stared at the children who laughed and greeted their fathers who came home with bright smiles. Her life was like one out of a fairytale, however, she lived it seven different times. This would not be the insurrection of her sorrow. This lifetime would merely mark the beginning of the curse that followed her bloodline.

She would hide behind the large blackout curtains to watch bitterly, hoping no one would catch her spying. Spying on the life that could have been hers if not this one.

The regret laid dampened upon her soul.

Even so, as time passed, the clock seemed to stop and Teru himself had seemed to undergo a change. Some days, he was able to see Nyx's innermost self come out. Not figuratively, however, literally. It crawled from her shadow and whispered things to her in her small dainty little ears.

Like black tar taking a humanoid form, perhaps it was a witch thing?

The fluid pinkness in her irises darkened every time it spoke.

Although Teru agreed to be Nora's temporary friend .. He hadn't spoken to her in over a day. It was a pool of infinity silence between the two. Every unspoken word only trickled further down to an abyss, never to be thought of again.

His presence was simply there, however, his witch was not.

Her past that caused her to become the self-hating, ever-loathing witch she was today wasn't something so simple as the loss of her father and the deranged attachment her mother had to reality. It was something more complex .. and as far as he knew .. the Red House had taken him back to the past.

And maybe, just perhaps it took him back to see how Nora had cursed herself.

He did, however, wish he could have gone back a bit further into time. It would seem that Teru was already too late and his witch was already desolate of emotion.

"Mr. Knight .. You're not from here are you?" Nyx mused aloud, her feet tickled the grass, her eyes reflected to the emerald green grass that almost seemed fake. Dozens upon dozens of eyes watched their every move, from every tinted window in their manor, to even the gardeners trimming the hedges.

Teru wasn't too alarmed at her discovery. Nyx was no idiot despite her age. She was rather mature. His attire, his mannerisms, dialect, and even how he looked in general stuck out like a sore thumb. Everyone looked tired, and exhausted, just as walking corpses would be.

The air was dull and cold, and there he was, a light that shone like the sun that felt artificial in that time period.

"Everyone is attracted toward you."