#WitchcraftWednesday || ONC 2023 | ✔

Chapter 19: Tajikistan

As much as he might loathe it, there's one unfortunate truth Nathan must face when morning comes: he can't postpone going home forever.

He leaves Jamie to completing the script she left unfinished the previous night, though not before ensuring she actually eats something (I don't care how often you repeat it, Jamie, black coffee isn't an acceptable substitute for breakfast, damn you). Then, he finds himself driving home, a little calmer and well-rested and with a little more peace of mind. The disorientation from the night before wears off slowly, though it lingers in the background still. Nathan suspects it'll do so for a while.

It's only when he's standing in his living room again—alone, surrounded by his thrift store furniture and the burned curtains—that he realises he doesn't have any semblance left of a comforting routine to fall back on. Before, he might have gotten to work, gone around town selling pills, sorting out the stock, answering calls and dealing with difficult clients. Now, he doesn't have any of that anymore, doesn't have much but turbulent seas of time. He's going to have reinvent himself from scratch.

But where to begin?

Putting the grimoire back under his coffee table's leg for the time being is as good a place as any, so Nathan does just that. He takes his curtains down right after, discarding them in the trash along with his ruined bag, resolving to replace these items once he's got the energy and motivation for it. And then, as if finally ready to fulfill a neglected New Year's resolution, he turns his attention to his long-suffering front yard.

Cleaning house might as well start in the garden.

Turning Wasteland into Wonderland, Nathan soon finds, doesn't happen in a day's time, no matter how much he labours at it; it may take weeks, months, years of effort before the grass is green again, before the flowers flourish rather than wilt, and once that point is reached, the maintenance work never stops, just like how overcoming addiction is a battle that doesn't ever end.

And it'll be tough to maintain that front yard, so damn tough Nathan fears he might one day lose the motivation to keep putting effort into it, fears he might neglect it again, let it turn right back into the repulsive, unkempt mess it was. He's willing to do the work to keep that from happening, though, at least for today: he finally calls waste management to come pick up that broken cooler, he waters the plants and the grass, and he spends at least an hour removing weeds of all kinds, trying not to be too bothered by the fact they always grow back, that a garden can never be free of them entirely.

When he's done, red-faced and sweaty from working hard in the sun, he surveys his front yard and concludes it still looks shitty, but not quite as shitty as it did a few days back. Nathan decides he likes the look of it just a little better now. Even if it's regrettably devoid of pretty blue-haired menaces to society intent on making videos.

It occurs to Nathan that he never did watch Jamie's video about the book, or any video of hers at all. Six million subscribers, sure, but he still has no clue if her content is actually half-decent. After all his hard work, he feels he deserves to calmly waste his afternoon on the Internet and he knows just which corner of it he'd prefer to get lost in. He makes himself a sandwich and settles on his couch, opening YouTube on his phone and searching for Witchcraft Wednesday once more.

He still can't bring himself to watch the video he stars in (seriously, which sadistic fuck decided inventing the camera was a good idea?), but he has time and can work up to it slowly, picking a few recent videos he's more comfortable watching at random. So he watches, not quite sure what to expect, and finds he has to conclude Jamie's pretty damn good at what she does.

The videos he sees look polished to Hell and back, every frame flowing smoothly, not a single transition out of place, special effects present but never overdone, always used... effectively. Their pace is fast enough to keep his attention from wandering, but not so fast he can't keep up with everything being said and shown. The humour is spot-on and Jamie seems entirely in her element when placed in front of a camera, maintaining the kind of energetic presence you can't look away from even if you try as she talks animatedly in a fashion that actually makes you want to shut up and listen. Nathan has never given a damn about medieval dancing mania or the Slender Man Stabbing of 2014, but Jamie makes them sound like the most interesting things in the world.