A/N: Holy, smokes, y'all! Since you're seeing this, that means, when you get to the end of this chapter, we will have gone 38, 899 words and 209 pages in Microsoft Word together. =D I'd say that about puts us on first-name basis at this point, lol! No, seriously. THANK YOU for going on this journey with me. It means so much more than you know!
Also... Sérë, ni mel translates to: "Rest, my love."
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It's a strange thing, when home becomes a house. Alien.
It was a stranger thing, having once been placed upon this same counter, before she was tall enough to reach the stove, and centuries later picking up rubble that would take its place and yet...
This was foreign.
Mother's cloak and wide brimmed, pointy hat that always sat a little crooked on her head rested on the coat rack by the door, but the knowledge that she wouldn't be putting them on seemed wrong.
Iris touched the sad hanging basil plant over the sink and marveled at how the morning light that touched its leaves still, somehow, looked pretty when she felt hollow.
Returning to this time spoiled her.
It made her forget that anyone could disappear at any time, with no warning at all.
She was nearly afraid to touch the cooking utensils by the stove, the baskets of herbs sitting atop the cabinetry, the mortar and pestle that would likely never be used again.
How was that old wooden "House Rules" sign behind the dinner table still there?
1) The ONLY SPIRITS allowed are the ones that come in bottles.
2) NO FLYING BROOMS (Caleb) OR SKYBOARDS (Owen) IN THE HOUSE!
3) BE NICE to each other! The only things I want to see turning into frogs, birds, snakes, or lizards are tadpoles and eggs! (Iris. Jasper.)
4) DO NOT TOUCH anything that looks like it might be charmed unless you wish to be subjected to sparks, a hair color change, an enlarged nose, etc. If it is spelled that means I have not yet had enough coffee to care about who awakened and chose chaos.
Right. They had been a rowdy bunch, hadn't they?
Iris clamped her lips together and kept moving.
Upon spotting a violin case propped against a pianoforte in the living room, which had a thin book with a duck on the cover laying atop it, she moved a little faster.
She opened the hallway closet with a heaviness that only grew. Inside was an old broom with a crooked handle and a popsicle stick-shaped board beneath shelves that held folded sheets and blankets.
The broom handle still shone like new; the broom straw spelled into the skyboard hadn't frayed in the slightest.
The farther she moved into the house, the more this gnawing out-of-place feeling grew, and the more she loathed it. Nothing felt right. This place carried that same emptiness which swallowed her whole hundreds of years in the future, after it had all been reduced to rubble.
But this was home, wasn't it?
Iris lightly touched the stair railing and watched her feet make the same climb she'd made a million and one times before.
YOU ARE READING
The Reaper's Bride
RomanceIris was a half-witch and ex-journalist turned smuggler in the wake of an apocalypse that history books would later call a victorious conquering by the demon race. Owen was a wizard, a Baron, and her husband... who died in her arms at the height of...
