12. Autumn
Iwoke up in a strange place. Again.
I really had to stop doing this, it was getting confusing. To say the least.
It took me a second to get my bearings and remember where I was.
I had spent a lot of time in the greenhouse, just wandering around aimlessly looking at all the plants and vegetables that were growing in here.
I couldn’t stop myself from touching everything I came in contact with. And I also couldn’t stop the little bursts of magic that came out of my fingertips and down into the plants. I had to force myself to leave when I realized just what I had done.
The whole entire inside of the greenhouse was now bursting with overgrown plants and it almost looked like an entirely different place than the one I had originally walked into.
I always did this kind of stuff.
It wasn’t just the markings that covered my body that made me stand out and made the people back at camp hate me so much. We weren’t supposed to use our magic, it was meant to be repressed, and it was almost as if I were incapable of ever doing so.
It just burst out of me, not to ever be contained.
And what’s worse is I always liked it.
I felt lighter and freer afterwards. Like something in my soul had been momentarily freed each time for a little while before it had to be locked back away behind it’s bars inside it’s cage inside of me.
I couldn’t stick around inside the greenhouse after what I had done. I didn’t want to have to look at the evidence.
Would these strangely kind people turn me out after this?
Would I be stripped naked and kicked out the door?
I wandered into the woods because that’s what I was familiar with. The woods were what I knew.
It was home.
I was a forest witch, after all.
I curled up at the base of a big tree in a pile of leaves.
I fell asleep like that with no hope for my future and scared of what would happen to me when they finally found me.
But I”d get through it. I’d survive.
Just like I had everything else.