Wyrd: Book One of the Witch War Trilogy - WATTYS 2018 WINNER!

Chapter 30: Where Laina Has One Hell of a Morning After

Laina was the tree.

Her roots, hundreds of them, stretched into the earth underneath her, drinking up the moisture under the ground; her branches reached into the sky, her leaves fluttering in the winds from the North on a warm summers' night. Laina held a girl inside the hollow of her strong trunk, cradling her. The girl was sad. She had hair the colour of a pale-yellow finch. She had a patina, like the trees own bark, sneaking past her neck, it's rough beauty a pattern telling her story of survival. She cried tears like the sky dripped rain, that soaked the earth around the tree's base.

Laina was the tree.

She stood firm at the girl's back. Steady and strong, lending the familiar girl her support.

She loved the girl. She knew this the way she knew she craved sunlight and water. The way she knew when it was time to drop her leaves, time to grow her buds, time to open their flowering faces to the sky. This girl was a branch off the same tree.

Sometimes Laina was someone else, something else. But always, she was there for the girl, ever since the child wreathed in flames had called for help, called for hope, called for love so many years ago. Laina had heard; had answered.

I am here, she whispered. I love you, she whispered. I will stand with you, she whispered.

The girl, now a woman, never answered.

But this night, like so many other nights, she was there for the girl, was her shelter. The tree that hugged her in her hollow, that helped her withstand the sadness, this aching pain, her burdens. Even if she didn't know, even if she couldn't sense it, even if she would never appreciate it, Laina would find a way to be there. That's what you did for family. For your sister.

A blue fairy landed on the girl's shoulder, kissed her cheek, talked to her of heartache. How the tree was jealous of the fairy – all she had ever wanted was to talk to the girl of nothing and everything. But she could only watch. So the tree stood tall and let her leaves fall, weeping with her, watching, watching over her, as icy-blue eyes closed, as the girl drifted off to the realm of dreams.

Meanwhile, Laina was the tree.

***

Laina groaned. Her head felt like the seams of her brain were splitting open, swelling and trying to escape the confines of her skull, her temples pounding in protest. She kept her eyes glued shut, pushing her waking life away, pulling the cozy comforter over her head. She was not ready to open her eyes to her bedroom, walls plastered with posters of the Sydney Opera House, the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, the Space Needle in Seattle. Instead she wiggled towards the warmth at her back, snuggling into the radiator cuddling her backside, but there was something making her uncomfortable. Maybe she was sleeping on her phone or ... or her tablet was digging into her. She tried to push it away lazily, her hand flailing into contact with something ... warm and living. It snuggled her tighter.

She launched herself out of the bed, jumping up and around, yelling, landing on her feet in a readied attack position. A half-naked Joel lay, tangled and sprawled on a white bed in a room with walls of pine, his eyes flying open at her startled shout.

"Take it easy, woman," he mumbled. "I'm trying to get some beauty sleep over here."

"Take it easy? Take it easy!" Laina shrieked. "Why are you in my bed?!" She grabbed a pillow and launched it at Joel's head. He snatched the pillow gracefully from the air and propped it behind his head and upper torso.