Scarlet Spells

EPILOGUE

The wind rustled the leaves gently at once, but soon picked up its pace, sending a single leaf off of the ground and into the air. The leaf swirled and swirled and swirled in the moonlight until it finally landed in an unfamiliar forest bed. Well, it wasn't a forest exactly. It was the woods. A moment after the leaf landed, it was mercilessly crushed by a feet. Whatever the intention was for the person who owed the feet, proceeded to crush similar leaves and twigs and ants on his way to a destination that was yet to be reached.

Birds screeched at a distance and the only other sound made other than that and the wind was the crushing of leaves beneath his feet as he finally came to a stop. He smiled but in no good. The wind at once, blew hard enough to set his head piece of his cloak flying back, revealing his head. The moon shone atop his smooth hair, a dirty red in colour.

He lifted his hand outwards from within the cloak he wore and positioned his index finger, a bit higher than the rest. In a few seconds, a butterfly, green in shade, settled itself against the tip of his index. Another pair of shoes came to a stop behind him, but he chose not to notice at first and kept admiring the tiny creature in his hand. 

"Jason?" called the latter. 

"Do you know what is an aconite?" asked Jason, whose line of sight still rested on the butterfly on his hand. He had a smile on his face, that might as well creep anybody out should someone stumble into him then. His tone was husky, as if he spoke directly from the pit of his throat. However, none other than his tone was known by the person standing behind him.

"No."

"Aconite is a plant, rumored to kill people with a single touch. Now tell me. Is it lethal or not?" he spoke in an amusing way, raising and dropping his voice whenever he felt like it. 

"Yes," said the other, uninterested.

Jason smiled, which slowly extended into a creepy, low-tiered laugh. The birds flew away, disturbed in that unfamiliar night. "You won't be foolish enough to touch it, will you?" his voice was shaking with excitement, the butterfly, long gone.

The question was not the one meant to be answered, and knowing that, silence prevailed for some moments until Jason spoke again.

"But she did. She was foolish enough to almost touch an aconite, I had to bite my tongue to keep myself from laughing out loud. Princess Cynthia isn't that much of a tough nut to crack."

Jason momentarily froze, reminiscing how he rushed on a boat to reach the docks of Nizal after getting to know that Cynthia was originally gone to Nizal after somehow fooling everyone with her decoy at the castle. He remembered how he frantically searched around, aimlessly wandering around the streets of Nizal to find her. The way he finally found her wearing a frock coat and a hat that was enough to disguise her from the eyes that saw, but not from the eyes that searched. He remembered how he kept staring at her, not believing that the person he despised was so close, close enough to be strangled by his hand. 

He remembered how he felt that day, when he identified aconite flowers and was impressed by himself on however did the conversation change that day that would let the 'mighty beast' to do something stupid. Even though she never touched it and was  interrupted by an old man, that did not bother Jason at all. After all, he wasn't planning for her to fall into a trap he hardly set, not to mention, a boring one.

"Thanks for all your help for all these years. I wouldn't have gotten this far by myself. But, I could only wonder...how will people react when they finally find your true colors...,"he said as he turned his body half-way, and his neck completely, to finally acknowledge the other person sharing his space. "...Fredric."