Chapter One Taissa #2
The elf leans closer, and Taissa thinks that he must be from the Wintertides.
His hair is a pale white, like fresh snow, and the humid air of the shop’s turned just a touch colder in his presence.
Elves, although they mostly reside in the UKHC, have their own boundary lines and rulers within it, their own courts based on the seasons.
“Everybody’s saying that the Dragons will take the Wyverns’ spot as rank one this season. Did you know?” A smarmy smile tells her that he knows exactly who she is and is delighting in this little exchange.
(Ah, the fourth option. Terrific.)
“Mm,” she replies flatly, ignoring the painful squeeze in her stomach that comes with any mention of her old team. Everything she’s lost flashes before her eyes in a brilliant burst of gold, quickly ripped apart to shreds by the smug, grinning face of Kion Locke. “Your total is—”
“Smile,” says the male, raising his phone and snapping what’s probably an extremely unflattering picture of her. “I’m DMing this into @washedupcelebs on Cauldron. Oh, and @cancelledcrones.”
At the mention of the cursed social media site, Taissa’s mouth twists in disgust. That’s where the majority of the death threats came from during the scandal, spamming her inbox, every picture she’d ever posted: even the one mourning the death of her father.
That was what broke her. The vile words underneath the photograph of her and her da, his crooked grin marred by the comments below. Telling her to kill herself. Threatening to do it themselves.
(There was one very interesting comment detailing a step-by-step ritual to summon Arawn, a death deity. Final step: Tell him to smite you down and spare you the shame of living, u stinky bitch, the user had written. Kion Locke had liked it. Because of course he had.)
As the elf taps away on his screen, Taissa feels her lips curl into a snarl. It is only by imagining Sansa, her little wyvern, standing behind her, that she avoids flinching as Worst Customer of the Week smirks gleefully. If Sansa were here, she’d bite the elf’s head off.
If Sansa were here, she’d bite Taissa’s head off for not standing up for herself.
(“I’m not the only one with teeth!” her wyvern would cry. “Use them!”)
Oh, she’s so tempted to take out her qyl.
The silver, magical stylus resembling a feather is in the brown, faux leather holster strapped over her jeans, around her thigh.
Witches like her are conduits to magic, and her qyl aids her in completing that magical circuit.
Taissa could draw a Level Two Combat glyph, a circle with a slash through it, on her skin and leap over the counter with all the deadly grace of an assassin.
Morgana help the male if she chose to use a Level Three.
It’s the way of magic to have levels. All glyphs—from Protection to Combat and everything in between—have different versions of themselves.
Level Ones are the simplest: minor sensations, nothing deserving of jazz hands, easy symbols any witch, warlock, or mage could master.
Level Twos, well, those are small miracles.
More swoops and squiggles and overall concentration are required.
Level Threes…Level Threes are most certainly deserving of jazz hands.
Hardly anybody can master Level Fours or Fives, unless it’s part of their profession.
(For example: A Level One Luck glyph can help you find your missing sock from a few months back.
A Level Two can make sure you get top marks on that alchemy exam.
A Level Three can win you an entire carriwitchet game, unless you’re found out by Kion Locke.
A Level Four can grant you the lottery. A Level Five can reunite you with your long-lost twin, who happens to be in possession of a staggering inheritance, and is ever so eager to purchase you a sprawling mansion on the tropical island of your choice.)
(Usage of Levels Four and Five are highly monitored by the Department of Magical Regulation.)
The male would never see her attack, fueled by the Level Two Combat glyph, coming. But that’s a surefire way to be sacked, and Taissa needs this job.
So instead—
“Give me your phone,” she hisses, but the male dangles it just out of reach.
“This old thing?” he croons. When she snatches for it, he laughs, stepping back.
Her elbows hit the counter with a dull thunk.
“Sorry, luv, no can do. I got photos to submit. Besides, they have, like, hundreds of photos of you already but I’m sure they’ll consider adding one more to the pile.
There’s that one of you crying behind a skip. It’s my favorite—”
“Oh, fuck off, you pointy sod,” says Taissa, a little less than pleasantly and very loudly.
Sansa would approve.
Donald, waddling over from his perennial perch near the pork scratchings shelf, sends her home early with a half-hearted speech about being disappointed in her but not very surprised, no, not very surprised at all.
(This is not an unusual occurrence, to be fair.
The customer is not the first to harass her at her job, and he definitely won’t be the last. If only Scran Mart had some semblance of HR—but she’s well aware that the shop’s willingness to have a social pariah ringing up deformed aubergines only goes so far.) All the while, the elf smiles mockingly at her and takes some more photos.
Taissa sends a vulgar gesture his way. It’s one she invented herself, and it’s quite good. The elf, however, looks more confused than anything.
One miserable car drive later (good old Drucilla the Dacia is beginning to heave her last breaths), and Taissa’s rather regretting her outburst as she stares down at the bills on her kitchen table.
No matter how shambly the cottage is (no, the microwave, washer-dryer, and bathroom sink do not work…
yes, there is a family of rats living somewhere in her walls, and no, she does not want to think about it), the cost of living in Banallan is expensive.
She could have left during the fallout; she could have gone to another Hidden City in Scotland, like Glascolm or Dunanaird.
She could have even gone to Pluenn in Wales, Ballyford in Northern Ireland, or Great Hartwich in England.
Why remain in the city where her ex-teammates still reign, where everybody hates her?
The answer is simple, really. And so, so stupid.
She’s holding out hope. That she’ll be asked to return, to play again. That one day there’ll be a knock on her door and it’ll be the NCL Wyverns, begging for her to come back. Maybe even Aster, wearing her half of their ridiculous friendship locket again, grinning like nothing ever changed.
Morgana, she’s an idiot.
Throat tight, Taissa shoves the pile of bills off the table. Fine. So she can make do with skipping breakfast and lunch, maybe picking up more shifts at Scran Mart and hiding her face underneath a hat. The one thing she won’t do is ask her mum for help.
After all, Estee Cho isn’t much better off than she is, even after selling the house.
All that money she’s using to travel the world, but even that’s begun to run low.
Taissa’s childhood home wasn’t a mansion.
Sighing hard, she bends down to pick up the bills, trying to ignore how uneven the kitchen’s wooden floorboards are.
Overdue payments, rude elves, and the lingering smell of pork scratchings on her clothes.
This is her life now. After throwing the papers back onto the table, Taissa stomps into the garden and the late morning air.
The small vegetable patch behind her bucolic cottage was her mum’s idea.
Estee is of the firm opinion that there’s nothing a few hours spent elbows-deep in a sea of damp, loamy soil can’t fix.
And despite her daughter’s protestations (Taissa loathes eating vegetables, much less bringing them into existence), Estee marched right into Taissa’s garden armed with a spade, a shovel, and a boatload of good intention.
Thus had Taissa’s vegetable patch been born (rather forcefully, in her opinion—her mother was quite ferocious in her shoveling), and despite her initial protestations, the ridiculous thicket of kale, Swiss chard, and tomatoes has grown in the rich Scotland soil—and has grown on her.
Nothing relieves the ever-bubbling cauldron of anger inside of Taissa’s chest more than brutally ripping stubborn weeds out of the ground, wringing them tight in her gloved fist, and pretending that they’re the necks of various people—Coach Frasier’s ruddy one, Referee Stoughton’s pale one, and Kion Locke’s stupid, thick one.
Aside from the violence Taissa likes to enact against her weeds, the garden is a peaceful place, dappled with sunlight and painted in shades of green.
Dark emerald moss blankets speckled stones.
Overgrown grass surrounds her vegetable patch, and a weeping willow is home to a family of chittering squirrels.
The looming forest of pine seeps, somewhat, onto her yard.