The Seven

Chapter 1

Did you know that when someone is sleep deprived, their body seems to work against itself in ways that no other illness or condition does?

On top of the normal symptoms- the ones that I anticipated- like a lack of energy, bad attention span, and some slight problems with mood regulation, there's a shit ton of other things happening to you. Did you know that you become hungry one second, and full the next? I didn't. I just made myself a sandwich only to throw it away a second later. And I dare call myself an environmentalist.

Oh, and another fun one; I've become dumber. I guess it was to be expected after roughly 68 hours of not sleeping, but I've been staring at my essay for Astronomy 380 for the last few of those 68 hours and haven't been able to think of a single way to articulate the Orion Nebula without sounding like a preschooler calling a star 'shiny.' You'd think after three years of university and almost all of my classes being centered around astronomy considering that's the whole point of my degree that maybe I'd be a little smarter than that, but yet again my body has to get in the way of things for me.

I've been blaming my body for a lot of things lately. I know that starts most of the time in the teen years for girls, where the self loathing starts because their skin doesn't curve right around their hips, or their organs are unfortunately doing what they're supposed to do; but for me, they started much, much younger. My first memory, in fact, was prompted by me hating what my body did, along with everybody else around me that day.

Across every witch coven in the world, it's common practice for the first day the little ones show magical abilities to be more important than anything, even their birthday. Most witches show a little sparkle or a hint of bright color in their eyes roughly between the ages of 8 and 13. It's always followed by a big celebration, which is then followed by strict teaching for the next half a decade or more on specific teaching in accordance with their coven.

I gave my little show of magic at the age of 4, and I certainly didn't get any celebration.

My coven, especially my grandmother, all practice green witchcraft. Plants, herbs, oils, and jars of whatever you can find coming out of the ground were always scattered through the house in every nook and cranny. I knew how to heal myself with tree bark before I learned how to swim. It was the only education I ever received, as well as anybody in our coven ever received. It was our speciality, and hell would have to bend backwards if we ever touched any other magic. Then I came along.

One autumn morning, I had woken up in my twin-sized bed, with seemingly every illness in the book. I was seizing, coughing, vomiting, hallucinating, sweating, gasping for breaths that I could not take, and all but dying in my bed for hours. Grandmother Anita, who had taken full guardianship of me years before, tried her best to soothe my body of what she deemed a curse was doing to me. Her hands were shaking with the amount of spells she and the other witches performed, trying to console my small body from joining my mother's up above.

And then, so suddenly, I stopped all movement, and fell asleep, no longer deathly ill. The only remnants of that day are still etched onto my body, found by my grandmother seconds later. Ruins, so ancient they're indecipherable even to our eldest member of the coven, littered throughout my body. They stretch from my back, like a tree with the trunk across my spine, branching across my shoulder blades and wrapping around my body, before encasing my upper thighs where my legs come together around my pelvis. Although, those are only the highly visible ones, appearing gold across my pale skin.

The rest are more minimal, and blend in almost too well with my skin color that it's hard for even me to notice them. They glide along my arms to my fingertips, as well as to the ends of my calves, and circling my neck. I can't tell if it's still there, but I once noticed the faintest of a ruin on my left ear. I seem to find new ones every day, despite them being on my body for the past 16 years.