The Bewitching Hour

✧ chapter two: burn the warlock

Yorak the Great and Terrible is neither great nor terrible, but no one ever bothered to ask him how he felt about the name before they went and assigned it to him.

The word great implies a particular status. Yorak doesn't have that status. He isn't accepted by mortals or by magick folk, so how could he attain that sort of recognition? Great could also imply stature, and Yorak is admittedly not very tall. He doesn't think that he's short, but he is not tall either.

Terrible, of course, is only ever a mean word. Yorak is not always very fond of himself. But he knows that he means well, and that he does not interfere with anyone if he can help it. He keeps to himself. All that he asks is that he be allowed to do so.

The villagers usually leave him alone these days. He sometimes sees them through his windows, through the gaps in his trees, and they flee if they happen to catch his eye or turn their children's heads away from the house. He doesn't find that hurtful. Of course he doesn't. He definitely doesn't, because he wants to be left alone. It's not like the mortals could offer him anything anyway.

Something is stirring, though. His occasional glimpses into his crystal ball and secretive explorations around town have told him that the village is in a state of distress. About the lack of rain, most likely. Yorak can do without it for some time, as his elemental magick is enough to supply his own basic need of water, but he guesses that it is not the same for the village. Even he could not produce enough for everyone if it was demanded of him.

Yorak spares little thought for the rain and little thought for the village below until it comes storming up his walkway. He wakes one morning to what sounds like a bar fight and peers through his windows to find that a mob of angry villagers armed with blades and bows is making its way, slowly, up the hillside.

He sighs. He turns to his collection of birds aligned in cages of varying shape and size.

"Such arrogance," he laughs. One of them chirps something at him that he interprets as agreement.

The first time, Yorak is lenient. He sends a smoky apparition of what a mortal man might call a "ghost", and then they run away screaming and hysterical, many dropping their weapons as they do so. Yorak laughs. So simple.

He tries to pay little mind to the attempted invasion and to return to his usual routine. No rainfall means that his garden maintenance has changed ever so slightly. But he does have a decent supply of rainwater, so he doesn't have to resort to exhausting his magick just yet.

Yorak grows most of his own food. It is shared amongst him and his animals— the birds and the snakes. He often has to gather small fish or earthworms for the snakes. And he frequently lets the birds out, either giving them free reign of the cottage or taking them into the greenhouse and transforming it into an aviary. He thinks that he is a very good caretaker for his animals. For this reason, he also keeps bees. He has an easier time than a mortal might have avoiding their punishing stings and their sweet honey is a nice supplement to his mostly-vegetable diet. It also serves him well in trades.

On an average day, Yorak greets and cares for his animals as soon as he wakes. Which he does rather late in the day as a largely nocturnal creature, and the shade of his trees combined with his sturdy wooden shutters means that the sun rarely disturbs his slumber. He talks to the birds that can talk back. Better companions, he is sure, than any more sentient being. The sorts of creatures likely to stab you in the back or to grow tired of you.

When his pets are satisfied, Yorak tends to his gardens, if need be, and does whatever chores he must, from dusting to sweeping to washing his clothes. He cooks himself a meal when his stomach reminds him that he is supposed to eat. And then he returns to his studies. Magick is an endless study, as best he can tell. He could live a thousand years and then live a thousand more, and still he would not comprehend everything about it.