Daughters of Creation

Chapter Twenty: Quondam (Part One)

"Belonging to some time long past; once but no longer"
—Quondam

October 20

  On the second day of searching, she found them. It hadn't been more than a whisper that alerted Emrie Michele to the Sea Witch's presence. Ezra and Rowan had daggers and blades drawn instantly. Millicent, Dana, and her held their hands protectively out in front of them, raised, crackling with power, one slightly further and higher than the other.

Like an apparition from the long forgotten, the Sea Witch grinned sharply at them, not at all daunted by the group she saw in front of her. "So, you've finally come, huh?" The old woman cackled, blue eyes bright with inner power.

"Finally come?" Emrie Michele raised an eyebrow, her hands didn't come down. "You knew we were coming? Do you have the Sight?"

The Sea Witch snorted, the wild look about her heightening: a wild abundance of white hair sat tangled about bony shoulders, accentuating the eerily brightness of her cobalt blue eyes and the wrinkles written across the plains of her honey face. "You ask a lot of questions, fellow Sea Witch. But no, I don't have the Sight ... but someone I knew did, someone from long ago told me."

Millicent hadn't looked away from the Sea Witch since she'd surprised them. Ezra glanced at the Dreamwalker from the corner of his eye. The vampire looked deadly as he stood closest to the Sea Witch. "She telling the truth?"

"She's telling the truth, though reading her mind is ... stranger than normal." Millicent frowned, eyeing the Sea Witch.

Those strange, electrifying blue eyes centered on Millicent. Something passed through those eyes, too fast for Emrie Michele to recognize, and it raised the hairs on the back of her neck. She didn't like how this fragile looking, albeit terrifying, witch stared at Millicent. Rosalyn would burn the Veil down if she let something happen to her blood sister.

Emrie Michele slid closer to Millicent, putting herself between the Dreamwalker and the Sea Witch. If what they believed to be true, then this witch was over hundreds of years old. Ezra's grey eyes watched her move, a minute frown pulled at his lips. Millicent glanced at her, knowing what she was doing, and her expression mirrored Ezra's. Emrie Michele ignored them. They could frown all they wanted: she wasn't going to let Rosalyn down.  

"Of course my mind is stranger than those you've encounter before, I've been alive for over hundreds of years." She leveled them with a look, the not-quite-stable energy around her intensifying. She truly looked like a being who belonged within the stories of the Originals, with the creation of the Veil. This woman had long since lost her sanity. "Come now, you didn't travel to chit chat about unimportant things. Follow me."

She beckoned, and they followed.

The woods seemed to swallow them whole as their small group hurried after. For such a frail, old woman the Sea Witch moved surprisingly fast. She traveled through the woods as if she was simply walking through a field of wildflowers than gnarled roots and thick underbrush. Emrie Michele found it immensely harder to navigate than their own woods next to their apartment. They were days away from the Gates, but even from their location they didn't see or hear any source of human life; no villages or towns or cottages sprinked near the woods or even inside. She found it odd, but if the Sea Witch lived within these woods it was possible she kept them out ... or something else kept humanity at bay.

Her cloak snagged on every stickerbrush and twig. Grumbling, Emrie Michele wrenched the fabric free once again.

Ezra dropped back, his vampire abilities making him impossible to hear. "Do you think she really has what we're looking for?"