A soft green glow illuminated the hallway from the slim crack in the open door, spilling from the bedroom and onto the deep mahogany floors. Spinel meowed and continued forward without her, slipping in the small opening of the doorway and disappearing into the glow.
Maeve followed the black cat and, with a gentle wave of her hand, opened the bedroom door. The soft green light narrowed down to one point in her room: her vanity. Maeve raised two fingers.
Spinel rubbed against the legs of the vanity, meowing loudly, his wide-set eyes glowing and refracting green. She twisted her two fingers, and the drawer popped open, flooding the bedroom in green Magic.
Spinel jumped on the vanity silently and peered over into the open drawer.
Maeve stepped hesitantly across the room and picked Spinel up. She held him close as they peered into the drawer together. The soft green glow resonated from the small scrap of parchment she couldn’t part with. The same one on which she’d written:Why does this strange bit of parchment call to me?
The words she had written were gone, replaced with a sentence she did not write, in a handwriting that was not her own.
Perhaps for the same reason it calls to me.
Her jaw fell open. Spinel meowed once and jumped from her arms. She picked up the piece of parchment as the words vanished. The handwriting was unfamiliar, jagged, but elegant, script.
Maeve grabbed a nearby quill and dipped it in the ink well, ready with a response, as a cold trickle of Magic swept down her spine. Her connection to the spell on this unknown strip of paper intensified, validating her affection for it. She wrote the words with confidence.
Who are you?
Maeve waited only a moment, and her letters vanished. New ones appeared that glowed bright green, in that same elegant script.
I would ask you the same.
The words disappeared as Maeve read them. She steadied her breathing and wrote back once more.
I did not make this Magic. Did you?
Her words vanished, and a reply came back at once. Soon, she and her unknown pen pal were writing back and forth at a rapid pace.
I believe so.
You can’t tell me anything else?
What else is there to tell?
So you know nothing of this parchment?
Nothing that could be true.
The words were like a stab to the gut. She spent so many nights hearing those words from Alphard in response to her “episodes.”
Maeve, none of that is real. Maeve, that isn’t true. Maeve, that never happened. . .
Magic cracked tightly across her mind as her fingers touched the parchment once more. The sensation was familiar. One she associated with feeling the word no one ever dared utter about her, despite the things she saw. Despite how certain she was at times that the visions, the reality her mind showed her, was real.
Insane.
She was insane.
She set down her quill as the ink vanished and stepped back from the vanity. “No,” she whispered. “I won’t do this to myself.”
Another reply appeared, the script unhurried and beautiful.
You shouldn’t question what’s right in front of you.
Alphard’s Magic entered the house nearby. She felt each step he took towards the bedroom. She slammed the vanity drawer closed and turned away just as he appeared in the doorway, leaning against the frame for support.
“You’re in a state,” said Maeve cooly.
