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52. Hesitation
🕑 Added 2025-08-30 10:28:10 +0000 UTCOphelia woke up looking at an unfamiliar ceiling. She was in a hotel room that the cats had found for her yesterday.
She continued to lie there, staring ahead, her eyes fixed on a wet spot next to the ceiling fan, as her mind wandered. The past few days had been like a strange dream or a nightmare. Right now, without any pagan worshippers of a strange forest god, without any talking cats or the strange man with hollow eyes, everything felt surreal in the quiet that followed.
The torrent of thoughts and feelings flowing through her was like a wild river threatening to burst its banks and overflow, flooding her entire being. All of the conflicting wants and needs merged into a white noise, indistinguishable from one another.
She mechanically got out of bed. For the next few hours, she went through the motions of her routine. She was somewhere near New York, so taking an Uber, she managed to catch a train to Washington, D.C.
She watched through the window as greenery and urban landscapes passed by, the rhythmic sound of train wheels calming her. The whole journey blurred into one until she finally got in the vicinity of her home, after taking a bus. All she wanted was to lie in her own bed and not think about anything. Just for some time, pretend everything was fine, just like the old days.
But she couldn’t.
She realized that the moment she laid her eyes upon the old house. The broken planks were just as broken as before, the peeling paint unchanged. Yet, it felt completely different. It wasn't just peeling paint anymore. It was peeling paint in a magical world, a world with talking cats and gods, a world where she was a murderer. She felt the stone in her chest grow heavier with that thought.
But it was also a world of possibilities, a world of power, a power available to her.
The two sides of her were preparing for the same battle inside her head that they had fought at least five times already.
She pushed the thoughts aside as much as she could and entered. Her mother was thankfully out or asleep. She quietly went upstairs to her room to finally relax, but the moment she entered her room and lay down in her favorite spot by the open window overlooking a massive tree, it hit her.
The spot didn't fit her anymore. The room didn't feel like hers. These belonged to the normal, mundane world, and she was no longer part of it. She turned onto her back, trying to settle in, but the bed felt wrong beneath her.
She turned again, now facing the wall instead of the window. A few photos hung there, mostly of her alone, celebrating educational accomplishments. Her first day at university. Winning a dance competition in high school. First place in fencing in middle school.
She turned back to the other side, to look away from the pictures, and closed her eyes. She liked to lie like that, the wind blowing through the canopy usually calmed her down. But today the leaves didn’t rustle. No wind blew outside, as if mocking her.
It was always so relaxing when it did, but now it was just infuriating. Did she ask for so much?
Well, if it wouldn’t blow on its own, then maybe she should make it—
“Stop,” she almost screamed out loud, catching herself at the last moment.
A part of her screamed, as her thoughts slipped away from her grasp.
The tears came on their own. She tried to stop them. She didn't like to cry. But it was useless. At the last moment, she grabbed a pillow to weep into so she wouldn't wake her mother in case she was in the house.
She cried into the pillow, quieting her sobs. Her bottled-up emotions finally caught up to her with the force of a wrecking ball. Tom’s death, the fight with the motorcycle assassins, the existence of magic, and even the existence of gods.
How?
How was that possible?
Would she go to hell now after killing someone and hurting another?
But there was no hell, she remembered, not for her. She would dream among the stars, whatever that meant.
Her body also changed. It seemed stronger, lighter, somehow more... hers. But that was one of the least concerning things on her mind.
That was another problem. She saw a god, not an icon or biblical portrait. She could barely remember, but deep inside, she knew she had seen a living, breathing god and its messenger.
The scene of its descent from the sky was still blank. Each time she tried to remember, a strange, paralyzing fear came from within. She had never felt anything like it. Just thinking about the creature descending from the sky froze her mind. The entire ritual was a blur, except for two things.
One was the moment she took Tom's life. It was burned into her memory.
But the other, in a strange way, was even sadder. She never got along with her family, never truly experienced a heartwarming reunion or familial love.
But that changed.
It changed when a massive black snake entered her very soul. When she choked on cold scales slithering down her throat, while held aloft by a creature beyond comprehension. What was the feeling associated with that scene?
Warmth.
Familial warmth.
Like meeting a friend or family member she dearly missed.
It was strange, but she couldn’t remember that part without feeling as if she had reunited with something lost.
The feelings weren't entirely hers. That was another thing she needed to control, to know she was truly herself, not a puppet of a god.
She was supposed to have a teacher, Sam, the strange man who told her the strangest things she'd ever heard. He gave her guidance, he and his talking cat. But there was no way around it. He was a monster. She tried not to think about it too much, but he had killed at least six people she knew of without a second thought. The cat said his clan was powerful but strange, but to kill without remorse... Yet, who was she to judge? She was also a killer. Her god required it for her to receive her gifts.
Was that what the world was becoming? A place of death and brutality, ruled by strength, celebrating death, with people like Sam at its pinnacle?
Her breathing slowly calmed. Bottled up emotions left with her tears. When she finally stopped crying, the pillow was soaked.
She felt tired but better. She would deal with things one at a time.
First, she needed to decide what to do with her life. Running away was tempting. From her problems, from everyone she knew. She couldn't finish studying here, but it could be enough for some practice in a rural hospital.
Yet she had a distinct feeling that even if she managed to run from family, Sam, and the cats, she couldn't escape magic and the changes it brought to the world.
She also needed to learn to control her emotions and their outbursts, not to mention the snake living inside her. But should she join Sam and the cat? He was dangerous, truly dangerous, not like some angsty character from a teen drama. He was a monster, a murderer, but a knowledgeable one, a powerful one. He always seemed to know what to do, which was reassuring amid her confusion.
She didn't know exactly what she wanted, but a path was becoming clearer.
She finally sighed, falling asleep despite the still relatively early hours of the day, emotional exhaustion taking its toll.
She woke up to the sounds of her mother moving around the kitchen. Her head felt clearer, and she breathed easier now. Memories still haunted her, but she felt like she could think more naturally now.
She decided to resign from university. Facing the people from the trip was more than she could handle, and she would be moving somewhere anyway. Collecting paperwork took time. Resigning meant losing her scholarship, which she regretted deeply, considering the amount of time spent on getting it, but now it seemed so unimportant.
Finally, she gathered her things and went downstairs.
“Already back?” Her mother froze while pouring herself wine. “Huh,” she chuckled. “Didn’t have it in you?”
Ophelia was surprised. She didn’t feel much anger at her mother's words. It was as if the woman spoke from behind a veil, her words meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Gods were real, magic was real, and her mother was still being a bitch.
“What are you smiling about?” her mother furrowed her brows.
“Nothing.” Ophelia locked eyes with her. “I made a deal with a pagan god and am leaving this house to study magic.”
Her mother froze in confusion. “Magic and gods aren’t a joke-” She choked on the last word, probably remembering the incident with the flying chair from weeks ago. “Devil’s child,” she hissed.
Ophelia felt amused. She didn’t know if it was how small her mother seemed or the foreign sense of pride taking root, but she didn't care right now as she simply walked out.
She took a bus to the college campus. The resignation took over an hour, with papers to be signed and processed. The lady in the office didn't seem bothered by their full scholarship student leaving, as she went through the motions with the same bored expression.
Ophelia decided to walk home, using the time to think about her next move. She was still uneasy about learning from Sam. It was strange. She felt unnerved around him, always on edge.
But he was the only person she knew who offered to teach her magic. It was hard not to think that she didn’t have a choice. There was always the option of just running away to some small place, being a waitress as a worst-case scenario if her dreams of becoming a doctor didn’t work out.
With that in mind, she continued walking, losing herself in her thoughts until her legs brought her to the vicinity of the massive mega church. She lifted her eyes as revulsion rose inside her. The same feeling as if her father might walk through those doors any second came over her, but now it was accompanied by something else, inside her, coiling to strike the first person who walked through those doors.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Ophelia swore as she started running from the church.
She didn’t know if the creature would actually attack, but she wasn’t staying here to check. She ran through a couple of alleys until she finally stopped, trying to calm her quickened breath.
As she was resting, with her hands on her knees, she heard a voice.
A voice she recognized as the weight in the pit of her stomach dropped.
“Ophelia,” said the person, clearly surprised.
“Miss Brianna.”
