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"life can be short but life can be sweet" December 5th 1658 ☾
December brought snow. The thick, cumbersome kind that hardened into deadly ice and could kill the very warmth from a breath. They had not been prepared for such coldness. The glasshouse was struck with an eternal frost, suffocating the roof like a sac. Carlisle's plants withered and wilted, diseased and weakened. Simran dared not touch them.
It was a cold that felt as if it could even kill the dead. There had been no signs of the vampires that had attacked her so long ago. Simran almost felt as if she had made the event up. But the thoughts of fire stayed in her head as the ice began to affect her body with daily shivering. Fire, and fuel, and dead burning bodies- thin, ghostly things that were not quite human, not quite animal, but a monstrous thing in between.
Even God's walls could not protect against the sickness.
"Drink this," Simran said, holding the cup to Carlisle's lips when his own hands could not. "It will warm your stomach."
The Reverend's son had been confined to his bed for days, with no hope for recovery in sight. Simran had stayed by Carlisle's side for most of it. She wanted to soothe her hands over his skin, let her gifts wretch the very illness from inside, to burn it away until he was in the same spirit she'd come to associate with him, but she would not, could not. His eyes were tired, reddened and watery. His voice was flat, weakened and fatigued. He was too ill to believably recover overnight by her powerful hand.
"What is it?"
"Tea. Laced with lavender to help you sleep." Stirred with words of healing and herbs of cleansing.
Carlisle's head lifted slightly from the pillow then, his eyebrows lifting and colour returning. His hands still shook around the cup.
"From the glasshouse?"
Simran nodded, smiling as he sipped from the cup. The potion would work slower than she wanted, but he would get better in a way that would look natural, and while he drank the tea, her hand slipped beneath his pillow, leaving behind a poultice. A witch's practise to aid his recovery when her hands could not do the immediate work. Anything to avoid the rising Reverend's suspicion.
"I thought the retched frost would have killed whatever life was left in there," he said, once he'd drained most of the tea. Already he seemed to look brighter, the energy of his voice returning.
"Your lavender is healthy still. Just as you will be soon enough."
He didn't argue, though his face said he thought otherwise.
"Thank you, Simran." A hand reached out, gripping hers softly. He was warm- frightfully so- but she held his hand just as tightly. "I don't know what I would have done without you."
She could not help the smile that fell upon her lips, could not prevent the way her body leaned forward to rest fully against the bed. Carlisle looked up at her with glassy eyes, a wistful look upon his face. For once she could not comprehend it.
She let a laugh leave her mouth, shaking Carlisle from his stilled stance against the bed as he leaned forward again. "The devil would have driven you mad with boredom."
His smile was a grin now, big and toothy and brilliant. "Truly. Father would have required an exorcism to save me from such."
Simran flattened her hand against his head, brushing his bronde hair from the sweat that beaded his face, and wondered how she'd become so endeared to him. Wondered how she had come to joke so easily with the son of a holy man, a witch-killer. She should have long been gone from the church. But something kept her tied there. Something dark and different and promising. There were answers hiding between those walls, just waiting for her to find them. Answers that lay with fire.
"Hush now or he will hear us and I will be bid to leave," Simran said, leaning in as if it was a secret, giving his hair one last tossel. "Then you would truly go mad."
"I would not allow it."
He seemed so serious then. As if he had not spoken so honestly with her before. She smiled, held the hand that lay limp against the bed, and stood. Carlisle had no real sway over his father, and if the Reverend had wanted her gone, she would have long been packed away and whisked out of sight.
She had felt Reverend Enoch's presence moments before, hanging by the door as he often did in intervals. Simran slid out, stopping as the Reverend held out his hand.
"My son has flourished under your care," he said. There was a glint in his eye- a familiar one, one she didn't like.
"God has answered our prayers," she said, bowing her head piously as he liked her to do.
Reverend Enoch smiled, crooked teeth peaking from behind his lips, but his eyes looked straight through her. Simran did not like the tone of his repeated words.
"God has answered our prayers indeed."
Even in the cold, the woods had a warm sense of comfort. Even in the woods where the vampires had attacked. Just stepping amongst the trees left her fingers tingling as she bent into the grime and the dirt to pull roots to the surface, plucking thin veins to place in her baskets. When she unfurled her hand, the jagged tree roots came extending toward her, wrapping around her palm softly until she could snap them clean off.
The earth seemed to answer to her touch, asking why her powers had laid dormant for so long. Her skin buzzed and wrinkled, power building beneath her layers, begging to be used. Simran longed to let herself go, to unwind herself from the ball she'd made so tightly. She wanted to show the Reverend what she could do, what she had been blessed to be gifted with. If she believed in God, then she would call herself an angel, someone kissed by His grace. Enoch would call her the opposite, something twisted and sprouted from the fertile fires of hell.
Oh how she wished to prove something to him, whether he be right or wrong.
Then there was Carlisle. She could sense his sickness even when she was not by his side. The knowledge that she could heal him only made her power that more hungry for use. It was difficult to hold in, to mask the twitches with quick movements and sudden laughs.
What would he think of such gifts? Simran thought of the disdain he felt for his father's methods. But disagreement was not enough. He was still the son of a Reverend, and despite his kindness, humans had little capability to change. What made him different?
I struggled so hard with this so we're leaving it there! Trying to get the plot rolling so chapters will probably be small and with a few time jumps between parts
