Cracks

030 | shamrock green grass and italian takeout

         S H A M R O C K G R E E N

                                        —

Klaire took in the destroyed metal and broken concrete sparsely peppered with shamrock green growth, the signs of struggle both decades old, and minutes new. Verterran forces had slowly retreated, the uptick in iron coated bullets and nullifiers leading to a positive outcome.
        The witches evacuated jarringly at the same moment, literally seeming to departicalize into thin air. Yet even Klaire knew it was an illusory manipulation of magic. That somehow—and she didn't know the specifics— witches could receive and reflect light particles from their surroundings by making thauma mimic photons, creating an artificial mask of invisibility. One that they wore around themselves as a means of retreat. Well, all of them save the one in black camo, cleaning out the slash in her arm.

         Awareness pooled into Klaire's stomach, her eyes flicking off of sooty rubble and onto the witch who squatted beside the foldable bench she sat on. The one who remained oblivious to her weary fascination, focused still on her arm.

        Sometimes, the MedHands needed extra help and Avery, alongside a good portion of 'self-declared pre-meds' their year, seemed to take any chance they got. If he had any ideas about medicine though, he had yet to tell her; since last time, he seemed to want as little war action as possible. Avery shifted his weight further onto his right side. From her vantage sprung the beginnings of almost-unnoticeable, silver roots. A collection of blurry, animostic flashes of movement scurried through her mind.

     It was becoming increasingly clear to Klaire that witchborne melanocytes differed greatly from humans'. Hair colors on spectrums of silvers, reds and blues seemed common—regardless of skin tone, science of which, had to be fascinating. She made a note to look into it later.

      Klaire wanted to accept it. Him. She wanted to accept everything about him. She really did, but it didn't seem like that was going to happen all at once, with the snap of a finger.

       She'd spent her life believing that they were a foreign other. Her whole life. Not that every one of them was a threatening other. But they were still separate entities. Different.

The fact that this boy experienced life with different senses and had abilities that outstretched mankind left her dumbfounded. Klaire had never been around a witch in such a frequent and normalized setting—at least to her knowledge. And what fucked with her was while he was at baseline, so, so different from anyone she'd ever known, he was also, so very humanish. Maybe that was why witches blended in so well. People searched the mountain tops and not the valleys. They thought of the sharp featured figures in long dark robes, with a familiar, or a wand, and an estuary accent.

        Forget the caffeine-addicted student who seemed to primarily own sweatpants and Takis. Hermoine and Ron could literally stab contacts in their eyes and expect to get complemented on their dye job.

        Klaire almost smiled.

        It had been a pretty convincing excuse; she hadn't doubted it for a second either. She'd spent quite a bit of the last month wrapping her head around just how much had flown past her. And slowly getting to a new normal with Avery. Klaire actually felt like they were closer. She could only guess it was because he felt relieved or something. Oh, and maybe her curiosity and well, affection, had been taken as the same thing.

        It had to be hard on Avery. Being on his own so long in the middle of well, inquisition strongholds. Despite everything, that topic was still very much avoided by both of them. Faint tendrils of weariness crept up on her here and there, and she tried to conceal it as much as possible. It made her feel ashamed. Guilty for wondering if the kid that made her kill his dorm's spider, could geek out on magic and blow something up.