Hello... Again

It Was Never to Become

Smoke drifted through the air of the old castle chamber. Daylight pierced through the thin curtains of the window. The sunlight and smoke merged together. Yellow wafts fumed and curled; the ultimate goal was to slither its way to the ceiling and throughout the whole room.
A woman sat on the small bed in the corner. The smoke polluting the air originated from the cigarette in her left hand. She was curled into a ball on the vertex of the wall beside the bed. She rested her forehead atop of her knees. Her long, dark brown ringlets draped around her body. She lifted her head only enough to inhale a drag from the Maverick cigarette's filter. The woman flicked the excess ash into the glass topper of a candle - her makeshift ashtray. The woman began to slightly rock on her haunches. Her lips moved as she whispered. She sang.
"Here in the darkness I know myself. Can't break free until I let it go."
Another inhale of the stinging smoke.
"Darling, I forgive you. After all, anything is better than to be alone. And in the end I guess I had to fall. Always find my place among the ashes."

A white-based calico cat jumped onto the mattress. The animal walked over to the woman in confidence to ask for her attention. The cat sat directly beside the woman and stared up at her owner. She meowed. The woman reached out to the cat and petted the top of her head - caressing the animal's ears. The cat purred. She rubbed her head against the human's hand in content. The cat rubbed the whole side of her body against the woman's arm as the petting session continued. Then, the attention stopped. The woman's right hand went limp; her left brought the cigarette to her mouth again. The cat meowed to the human in an attempt to alert her of her remaining presence. Her voice was not heard.

"I can't hold on to me. Wonder what's wrong with me." The woman continued her singing. Her voice grew in volume. The emotions of the lyrics overtook her as she belted her heart out.
"Lithium," her voice went back to a whispering alto. "Don't wanna lock me up inside."
Her volume grew again, "Lithium." Back down to the whisper. "Don't wanna forget how it feels without Lithium. I want to stay in love with my sorrow."

The calico tilted one ear to the side in annoyance of being ignored. What possessed humans to want to carry their voices like this?
The animal tried once again to get the woman's attention. Absentmindedly, the woman dropped her right arm to pet the cat again. She purred in happiness.

"Beatrice, do you think that he means to do this to me? Do you believe he is capable of seeing me as anything other than what I was?"

The cat didn't so much as meow in response. Instead, the calico groomed her paw; it was as though the cat really could care less about her owner's predicament. And why should she? She gets meals everyday. All she has to do is eat and sleep...
Beatrice looked up at her owner from her grooming and churred. The little noise got her owner's attention. The cat walked over to the book that the human had been reading for the past week. She sat on its cover. The woman stared at the cat. Was she trying to tell her something?
Of course she was! That cat was smarter than she gave her credit for.
She needed to be like the main character in the book - she needed to be strong; to be coy; to be brave; to be what she had been portraying all of her life. She needed to be subtle, yet ruthless.
The woman got off of the bed and walked over to Beatrice and picked her up in her arms. She laid down onto the bed with the cat placed on top of her chest. She gave the cat the attention that she had been begging for for the past ten minutes. The woman gave the cat affection until the cat was happily contented with the attention.

Lithium... stay in love with you.
I'm gonna let it go.

The human put the cat back down onto the bed and opened the wardrobe across the room with the wave of her hand. Her fingers played a "come-hither" motion. A set of black robes levitated toward the witch.