#fitgof bpr

[fitgof]

“What do I do now? What if Lorey still hates me? We had a fight and then- It’s been decades, Summer! Now I’m a murderer. A monster.” She always had been.

“It hasn’t been decades; not here. Your parents told everyone you moved to Fraise to study. No one has any idea about any of this but the Scholarship will come for us when they find out. And they will soon enough.” Summer looked at the two bodies. “You’ll need to clean yourself up, and I’ll make you something to feel better. But we won't be able to stay here. We’ll fix what we can, Miss Amy. Together.”

[fitgof]

Through fitful sleep Amy spent her days, no longer able to distinguish her dreams from her living nightmares. They plagued her everytime she closed her eyes.

During that smoke-filled night Robin begged for Amy to clear the air and when the wind stirred the skeletons staked above the burning pyres waved. Burnt flesh and clothing swung off their bones like the rustling branches of a willow tree while crows circled above ready to pick the bodies clean.

A parade of horses and carts raced along the path leading out of town, their hooves ripping up the dirt track. The cartwheels wobbled on the bumpy road, dislodging a makeshift wooden coffin. It fell, splintering open, and Lorey’s body rolled from the box. His teeth had been ripped right out of his mouth; a bloody gaping hole beneath his vacant and soulless eyes. Amy fell to her knees and screamed.

[fitgof]

With a final clack the marbles stopped swinging. Amy leaned over to swing them again, bumping the chair from under the desk and sending it lurching backwards. It wheeled into an old mirror, propped against the wall, and waiting to be hung on the bare wall above.

All the walls in the office were bare apart from a single painting on the other side of the room above the fireplace. Even though the art work reminded her of the burning huts of Windflower, it didn't interest her as much as the paintings she found dislodged behind the mirror. Amy’s hands trembled as she moved each canvas, recognising each and every one of them.

They were hers from Dianthus's gallery. The ones of the crows that a very secretive buyer purchased from her father. The ones that shouldn’t exist yet because she won’t be painting them for another fifty years. Scrawled in each bottom corner were her initials: A.V.A

A fire burst in the fireplace and the burning huts of Windflower glowed in amber light.

[fitgof]

Crystals and gems, all protruding out of the rocky walls, glittered under the moonlight shining through the open roof. Their aura tinkled a melodic sound in all colours of the rainbow but all Amy could do was admire their beauty. She never paid attention to her childhood classes of celestial navigation and treated crystal healing just the same. If she knew that one day she would be lost, trapped in a cave and exhausted, she would have taken her studies more seriously. 

Raucous shrieks amplified against the rocky walls drowning out the tinkling crystals and destroying the moment of bliss. Bats descended from the cavern roof, hundreds of flapping bodies spiralling down into the cave, tumbling from the sky and hovering above the water. Their wings thrashed in a thunderous roar marring the pond’s still surface with ripples.

[fitgof]

Feeling it

Wanting it

But how much can you take?

[fitgof]

 Gum snapped around the receptionist’s tongue and a bubble formed through her lips. Amy considered zapping the bubble away with a blink of her eye but after a round of giggles the receptionist sucked it back into her face and hung up the phone.

“Take a seat and he’ll be with you soon,” the receptionist said. She waved Amy away and began to fuss with her hair.

After everything she’s been through, a simple receptionist with a facial protrusion is what prevents Amy from a life with Lorey. Plastic benches lined the walls and Amy chose one as far away from the receptionist as she could get without leaving the building.

[fitgof]

"Perennial!" Everlast cried for his wife, as Perennial took her last breath and dropped to the floor. "Ambrosia, what have you done?"

A punch to the stomach would have hurt less than her father’s words. He blames her, thinks she’s a monster. Anger simmered inside her, hatred grew. He doesn’t care what she’s been through and what has led her here. The final control Amy held over her father’s airflow released and he slumped to the floor, unmoving, beside his wife's own lifeless body. 

Amy fell to her knees letting out a loud guttural cry that echoed off the tiled floor. She had always known she had a temper, and that it could get the best of her, but only resulting in arguments and a bad mood. Never with violence and certainly not against those who loved her most. 

These hands once made art, now they bring death.

[fitgof]

“I’ve never been good enough for you, have I?”

"Amy!" Everlast said, appearing in the doorway. “What are you doing?”

"What am I doing?" Amy made the air push him against the wall next to her mother.  "You sent me away!"

"To help you, Sweetheart," Perennial said. “You needed time.”

“We can talk about this," Everlast said. “Tell us everything.”

"No."

[fitgof]

The cold floor tiles of the mansion surrounded by the dead bodies of her parents wasn’t the most comfortable place to have a conversation but Amy told Summer everything, from first meeting Lorey to what happened when her mother sent her back in time and how she met Alouette who turns out was really Dianthus, a previous heir to the Windflower Royal Throne. 

“Just say it, Summerdream. I’m a fool. I knew blood magic was forbidden and I should have trusted in why. Mother, Father, Morgyn, everyone believed I wasn’t ready to ascend, and they were right.”

“No, not everyone. I never agreed,” Summerdream said. “I didn’t agree with most of their decisions they made about your magic.”

“Like keeping you a secret?”

“Especially that.”

[fitgof]

“I died at my ascension. I saw the moon but I wasn’t part of the moon. I wasn’t anywhere.”

Summerdream raised her eyebrows. “You used blood magic?”

“With Alouette,” Amy said. “And then he locked me away and killed me over and over when he- when he-” 

The experiments, the dungeon, the excruciating pain of having magic forced out. Amy squeezed her eyes shut. She pictured those eyes that saved her.

“Who is Alouette?”

Amy’s eyes blinked open and she gasped. “You don’t know!” 

“No, Miss Amy, I’m afraid not.”

[fitgof]

“I always wanted to tell you,” Summer’s voice trailed off. 

“You- You're my familiar?” Amy asked.

“Yes.”

“But – I thought - I met-”

What was that creature’s name? Simon Says? Sweatysaliva? He said he knew Perennial. How many other secrets had her parents kept from her all these years? Amy wished she could ask them. She probably should have thought that through.

[fitgof]

Del Sunberry, sunrise, present day

[fitgof]

“Hello, Ambrosia.” 

“You know my name?” Amy asked.

“I know many things about you. Some I probably shouldn’t or don’t want to.”

“What things?”

The creature turned around in a circle, modelling their feathers and beastly appearance. An impressive wingspan stretched from its back.  “Do you not want to know about me?” 

Amy tried to pay attention to this deformed bird person but in her weakened state their name did not register in her mind and she didn't bother to ask them to repeat it. This creature was not her rescuer, at least not in this form. Narrow beady eyes protruded from its face instead of the kind soulful eyes of her dreams.  But as part animal and some kind of spellcaster finding her in a moment of need maybe–

“Are you my familiar or something?” she asked.

“Something like that.”

[fitgof]

The mirrored surface disappeared, replacing Amy’s tangled hair and gaunt face with Alouette’s greying features. Her body froze in shock recognising who stood before her. If she needed proof of time passing she had it now.

Alouette’s moustache twitched when a smirk crossed his lips. “Whispers about a couple looking for their daughter are making the rounds. I was considering introducing myself. What do you think of the name Dianthus?”

“Stay away from them!” Amy sprang to her feet to bang her fists against the glass. Magic sparked out of her hands with each hit against the window. How did she not see the similarities between Alouette and Dianthus until now?

“Don't wear yourself out, my dear, you know the place is warded. Not that you know many spells to be much of a bother,” he said. “Besides, it’s not me your parents need to be concerned about; I only want to help.”

[fitgof]

The door opened again, and the young woman entered. Amy shied away behind her mother’s leg.

“Are you ready for your bath, Miss?” 

“Who are you?” Amy asked.

“It's me, Miss,” the woman said, bending down to Amy’s height. “I’m Summerdream.”

“Oh, you're a familiar!” Amy hopped up and down, bouncing on the spot. “Mother, I found a familiar!” 

“Yes, I'm here to help your mother,” said Summerdream.

“How peculiar that I found your familiar, Mother.” 

“It is, my darling,”  Perennial said. “Very odd.”

[fitgof]

"Wife! Daughter! Welcome to our new home."