≈  PROLOGUE  ≈ 

I don’t remember much of memories after my childhood. It’s one of the reasons why I am not much of a big crowd people. I don’t like attention. I don’t care about them giving interests and affairs on me. I don’t want them to know me for it will only cost a lot of lies and made up stories and I at such. What else would that lead me to right? Solitude, of course. It’s not a big thing for me though. Because apparently, I barely remember my past, or maybe for some reason, I just don't feel like remembering it.

When I say past I mean my very first life before everything turned things to decades. My age to be specific. People say age is just a number. It’s a principle I would always go against with. Age isn’t just any number or way of lifespan measurement. It is also a measurement of pain, suffering or maybe even happiness you had in your life. And people just don’t know what it feels like to stop physical aging with the numbers increasingly moving.

From the mirror I see a 17 year old lady with blushing and warm cheeks and hair so black yet soft at sight. But when I try to look at the twinkling pair of light brown eyes swimming with the whites of my eyes, I see something else. Something kept so deep that a mere scoop of digging wouldn’t make much of a difference. Things that were kept, not buried.

10 A.D.

“Come on Len! We’ve been doing this the whole afternoon. Just hit the targets.” I’ve been so weary to stab every target Leem had hung on every tree near our house with a cask of spears my father had intentionally made for me to run-through my hunting skills. It’s a thing everyone in our little village is good at and I, with my civil right, shall not be left behind, though for now I think I have a lot to catch up on.

“That’s the thing brother, we’ve been doing this like forever that I don’t get enough time to rest.” I stepped out of the circle mark where I should be standing to shoot every target and started picking up the spears that had missed the targets instead. “Good for you, you can do things ordinary people can’t and most specifically," I gave him an annoyed look before throwing, "I can’t!”

3 hours straight of practice, I say, is reasonable enough to grab some time to rest. Leem, gladly though, gave me some look of sympathy and helped me pick up the javelins. “It is not as fun as how you think it is.”

Leem, biologically, is not my brother. He’s just an ordinary orphan my mother had kept since his parents died when he was still as innocent as a cooing baby. It was my mother who took care of his mother while delivering him. My father, on the other hand, had never favored the thought of it, but it was that very period when the leader of our village, my grandfather, starts to give precursors and other signs of wanting a grandson. And luckily Leem ended up a kid whom elders admire.

Just like me, he has a very dark hair, and I swear it is the softest hair I have ever known, much softer than mine. Just like his hair, his eyes reflect the darkness of his hair and were magnificently sparkling. Compare to mine though his skin resembles the trunk of the tree behind him more. Since he’s mostly out during the day, he gets to have his skin scorched.

“I believe that was quite enough sister. Let’s train again until father calls me to help him with his duties and you with mother.” Leem wasn’t really strict and tough; perhaps he’s starting to be disappointed because I haven’t been providing him much of a progress to report to our father about my hunting skills.

“You’re disappointed.” I lowered my arm back down, with the spear, and stared at it, trying to state a very obvious fact. And what do I expect? Nothing, really.

“I am not.”, sigh.

“You don’t look like you’re not.” Still not looking at him.

“I’m just tired that’s—LENOX!!!”

I haven’t quite registered what happened after Leem has shrieked out so loud. One thing for sure is that someone knocked me down so I lay on the ground with an itch of something tight from the inside. It was so tight that my breathing had started to malfunction. I don’t know what else was happening everything was a blur from my vision and my whole body went numb except to the itchy tightening. I'm not quite sure though, but I think it's coming somewhere from my torso.

I was really focused on stabilizing my breathing and not to pass out so that I can have a quick glimpse of what was happening, but then all my efforts seem to be void when all oxygen had already turned to abandon me.

And all I could see is a mixture of black and white. And all I could feel is nothing but the sudden numbing coldness.

Someone must have carried me; I thought the moment I realized that I was brought inside our house again, on top of my bamboo-made resting place to be exact. I touched my face and other parts of my body to see how things turned right when just a moment ago, I was dwelling to some kind of a death feeling. My hair, still sticky because of the coconut extract my mother insisted me of using. My limbs are still intact. I still smell like my own self. My whole self, still same as it was. Well, maybe that's just what I thought. Of course something will not be right. I lift my hand from my chest to see blood staining my hand from the wet parts of my bare clothe. There, just right the place where my heart should be located comes blood that’s still beyond my knowledge of sorting.

Maybe I was too consumed of the blood to panic and quickly notice my surrounding. And as if on cue, I found an arrow just beside my right foot. The deadly thing was stained with blood as well  and I can’t quite understand what just happened or maybe I was just not believing it actually did happened.

Like a flash, the memory of me being struck with an arrow, successfully aimed at my heart, floods me. I just died. And now I feel boundless and excessive. I feel anew, and being anew could mean one and only thing. They had turned me.

This doesn't really make any sense.

They really turned me, just like what I’ve been dreaming of for years. But everything just feels extremely not right.

--

She knew everything. The spells, the sorcery, the supernatural state of being a Wiccan. It was her own grandfather, who has started this nature that he extremely exclaims to be very dangerous and must be on great safekeeping.

Since she was still 8, she’s been very jealous of Leem. Not by having to share her share to the family but because Leem was bestowed by her grandfather a Wiccan life. And after that Leem with the age of 19, never got to taste real aging.

She loves the idea of never growing old and spending eternity with her family. But her fondness of spells and sorcery have triggered her mother’s anxiety and decided not to bestow the Wiccan life to her for her own sake. She’s been trying to understand but the jealousy never seems to fade and she hates it a lot every time she get to see some Wiccan with the pleasure of doing tricky spells against one another. In short, just for fun.

Her father who’s a direct descendant of her grandfather took no choice but to be a Wiccan. Her mother didn’t take the chance of turning into a Wiccan; she wants to have a simple and normal life. It’s a dream she was dreadfully eager to have until one day when her mother was sleeping her father went to casting some enchantments to turn her mother the moment she wake up. And apparently, she did. It didn’t end up well, of course. It was her mother’s very dream that her father has stolen. She completely understands her father though; he did it out of love. He doesn’t want her mother to age and leave him or maybe even worst, die and permanently be left alone since Wiccan cannot die in the hands of nature. They need another Wiccan to get killed.

She’s now a Wiccan! The thoughts of her new strength are so overwhelming she thought she could just fly into the sky and hug those fluffy soft clouds. But then, something feels really strange. And she have nothing, even a bit of tiny idea, with the twitch she's feeling.

Where is everyone?

Her smile dropped in an instant when her feet brought her outside her room. There she saw a body. No. Not just any body. It belongs to someone whom she knew has brought her to the house. “Leem!” She knew her voice could reach every house in their village but she strangely couldn’t hear anything. Everything was deafening silence. She couldn’t even hear her voice. She kneeled beside the unkempt body near the door and pulled one by one the arrows sharply pierced in his body, not bothered by the blood that was starting to pool. And it hurts her to believe that maybe Leem is still breathing and alive because she knows for a fact that he isn’t. No vital signs. His body’s already cold and it thrills her to see how in a snap Leem would leave her.

“Len! My Daughter—Mother! Thank goodness! Mother help me please!! Help Leem mother he’s not surviving!! help him!!!” She knows exactly what that face her mother is giving her means. “There’s nothing we can. I’m really sorry”, she’s expecting to hear it from her mother but instead she said, “Run my daughter!! Live a happy life!!I’ll make sure no one will come after you. I promise you my daughter! Now go!! ” She didn’t have to sort out her thoughts and feelings because her mother put both her palms on her cheeks and was already shoving her into the woods.

“Mother! Mother!” Her eyes drift dry when her feet were resisting her will to go back. “Mother!! How about—“ But it didn’t took her a minute to have any answers for her question because near the big tree that was covering the side of their house places her father. Just like Leem, he’s wounded but his were much more thrilling than Leem’s. She only steal one last glance of the spear stabbing her father’s forehead before she resume on resisting her dragging feet. Her mother must have put some spell on her feet to keep her from the storming onslaught.

“Be safe.” She saw her mother mouthed before a man appears from behind her to stab her from the back but her mother was born with agility that was pretty much enough to dodge the sudden blitz and pays him in return a stab right at the heart. Her mother heaved a very deep breath, but as she was filling her lungs with air the man retorted with the same stab at the same place on her and that was when the both of them fell on their knees that Lenox’s neck pushed her not to look behind and focus on escaping. It was indeed her mother’s plan to do this to her, just to save her, that even her voice turned mute just to avoid noise and attention. Her family wants her alive, and after all that had happened, she herself isn’t sure of her worthiness to live a Wiccan or any other life. The happy life her mother has told her to live have just been destroyed and she see no other reasons to keep still.

a/n: HELLO WICCANS!!!!