Although divination was a skill that relied heavily on recognition and interpretation, which could often be challenging, it was something Sean had always been fascinated by.
He wasn't so much a fan of using it to predict romantic outcomes, like Anna. But after what had happened to Trevor, he'd always wondered if he could have prevented it, had he only been better at divination and received some kind of clue at the time. He had to be careful though. More on more than one occasion that line of thinking had become poisonous, opening the door for more guilt to slip in and slowly gnaw at what was left of him.
After placing the candle on top of the cloth and lighting it, he got up briefly to switch off the light on his ceiling fan, then returned to a seated position next to it. He took a few slow meditative breaths, focusing on the cool surface of the obsidian in his right hand as he stared at the wall behind his bed.
"Anything yet?" Trevor asked just as Sean had parted his lips to begin the chant necessary for this method. His unanticipated interruption drew a laugh out of Sean, who gave Trevor an exasperated look.
"Oh yeah, I see my bedroom, my obnoxious friend," Sean teased before regaining his composure.
"Wow, it worked! I'm in your room!"
With that, Sean's second attempt to begin was also thwarted by their laughter.
Once they'd both simmered down, the third try proved to be the charm, since Trevor had so graciously elected to remain quiet.
"Mother moon, father skies, lend me your gift to see..."
Nothing.
He repeated it four more times before he noticed his vision was beginning to get fuzzy. He continued to repeat the chant quietly as his dark room blurred further. Sean couldn't help blinking instinctively in an attempt to clear his sight, though it was unsuccessful.
Trevor watched as Sean's warm, hazel eyes began looking as if they had a greyish film over them. Muted, the way the haze coming off a lake softened and discolored everything around it. The chant was working.
Sean fell quiet, then his head slowly tilted upwards. Trevor moved closer, following Sean's gaze to the ceiling. The cat studied the way the light from the candle played with the shadows on the textured surface before looking back to the teen.
"What are you looking at?" Trevor questioned cautiously.
"The moon," Sean replied, though his response seemed a little sluggish.
The witch was stunned. The clarity of the pale moon glowing above the tops of the trees, crowning them in its light, was breathtaking. In fact, the trees themselves, their leaves, the dirt, and foliage beneath him... All of it was so clear that before he'd heard Trevor's voice, he'd been concerned for the briefest moment that he really was outside.
"See anything else?" Trevor whispered, his whiskers pointed forward with curiosity.
Sean didn't reply.
It had never been like this before. All of the other times he'd done this, the things he saw had always come in quick, sometimes unfocused flashes—like someone dialing through the stations on a fuzzy radio, only with pictures. There was never any sound.
"Sean?" Trevor questioned a little louder. His voice sounded distant.
"It's like I'm in the woods," Sean replied just above a whisper.
"That's pretty vague...Can you tell where?"
"I don't see any roads or buildings..." He'd never had a vision this vivid or focused on one image or even one place before. Ever. And it was honestly starting to get a little unnerving. Maybe the universe was trying to tell him something.
"You don't think it's—?"
"Shh," Sean interrupted, his head turning to look at something apparently to his right. The witch flinched and rolled his shoulders suddenly, turning his head to look in the opposite direction.
Trevor noticed goosebumps spreading across Sean's bare forearms, the fine hairs there standing on end.
"What?" Trevor breathed, unable to help himself. "What is it?" His curiosity was killing him.
After a few seconds that took far too long, Sean replied. "I... heard something."
Trevor stayed quiet for as long as he could, watching Sean look from his right to his left.
"Are you doing that?" Sean asked. "Seriously?"
"No, I'm not moving." The cat's own anxiety rose as Sean blindly set down the obsidian and shifted some. "I'm right in front of you."
"I keep hearing something moving," Sean said so softly that if Trevor wasn't nearly in his lap right now, he might not have heard it.
Another chill ran down Sean's spine. Why were there sounds? There were never sounds along with his visions. He'd been practically holding his breath, straining to listen when every hair on the back of his neck stood on end.
"Ho-my-GODS!!" Sean leaped to his feet so fast that he tripped on the shoe box behind him, crushing in one of its corners and landing on his butt just in time to see Trevor land on his bed, with his back arched like a Halloween cat.
"WHAT?!" Trevor yelled. His eyes were so wide that, were Sean not too shaken, he would definitely have laughed until his sides split. "What happened?!"
"Something growled. Like, right behind me," Sean stated breathlessly, noticing the candle was out—its wick the base of a small stream of smoke.
"You heard a growl?" Trevor questioned, relaxing his back some, though there was still a ridge of fur along his spine standing taller than the rest of his coat, and his tail was still poofed, looking even fluffier than usual. He nearly asked Sean if he was just messing with him, but his best friend was as pale as a styrofoam cup. Trevor doubted he was lying.
"Yeah." Sean rubbed his face with his hands. What did that mean? Surely it was representative of something and not a literal vision of the future.
He couldn't imagine just taking a midnight stroll in the woods that far away from anything, and whatever that was sounded big. There wasn't anything around here that would sound that way. It didn't sound like a coyote... Maybe a dog? There were grey wolves in Wyoming...but in Colorado? He'd never seen one.
"What do you think it means?"
After thinking for a moment, Trevor looked as concerned as a cat could. "Demons growl," he said flatly.
A few seconds passed between them as what Trevor had suggested sank in. And as soon as it hit bottom, Sean urgently went for the light switch, then the bundle of sage.
Sean sat up abruptly, his chest pounding and his skin crawling with chills that he couldn't rub off.
Hearing that growl hadn't been a great thing to experience just before bed. The nightmare that'd woken him wasn't just the imagined dribbles of his subconscious, either. It had roots in one of his darkest memories.
He let out an exasperated sigh before reaching for his phone. Eleven twenty-one. He hadn't even been asleep for an hour.
Sean tapped the message icon and texted Annalise. After several minutes with no response, he set his phone back on his nightstand, assuming she probably didn't hear it. As soon as he'd laid back down and rolled onto his side to get comfortable again, it chimed, startling him.
Snatching his phone, he turned it on 'silent' before he replied. A few texts later, Sean was out of bed, pulling on the best-looking outfit he could manage to put together in the dark, while not making too much noise.
He didn't wanna disturb the tabby sleeping peacefully on the top two-thirds of his pillow.
Walking down the street in the dark, he became acutely aware of how nervous he felt the more distance Sean put between himself and his house. He'd walked down these same streets literally his whole life. And had to have snuck out at least a good dozen or so times before he turned eighteen, and was allowed to leave the house at night.
Still, he was so uneasy right now that his chest kind of hurt. His gaze darted back and forth to chase shadows he thought he caught among the aspens that appeared as little more than towering black silhouettes.
Shortly after he'd reached the point where he'd need to leave the safety of the sidewalk to get to the river, he swore he saw a man following him between the trees, just past the tree line.
Sean started jogging...which, after hearing a few shifts of leaves, and seeing the man had closed some distance between them, turned into a full sprint. He swore one of the times he looked back he saw a dog. A big one. Maybe a Husky or a German Shepard. He didn't, however, see where the man had gone.
Slowing to a walk, Sean shook his head at himself. The man could have easily just been someone walking their dog. And here he was, acting sus himself because a weird vision and a bad dream got him unsettled. Still, he checked over his shoulder frequently until he could see the lights from the party and hear the bass of the music.
It felt like getting to a safe room in a horror game, and Sean made sure he'd mostly caught his breath by the time he was in the buzzing clearing along the bank of the river.
The smell of the trees gave way to that of running water, weed, and booze. When he passed by the back of one of the cars, a Starset song was playing loud enough from it for him to feel it vibrating through his frame. Sean beamed—relief washing through him. No demons or bad dreams could possibly cling to him through this kind of atmosphere. And it didn't seem likely that any strangers would try messing with him in a crowd full of people.