The three figures are still. The chamber breathes.

A fictional character Telling. Meet Charghith.

The three figures are still. The chamber breathes.

You want a story.

She doesn't look at them. She is examining something near the floor.

They always want a story. How you came to this. What it cost. What changed you. As if a person is a sequence of events that explains itself.

I learned to cast before I learned to read. That much is true. The rest — the version of me that was a girl, that had a mother, that came from somewhere particular — I have released. Not lost. Released. There's a difference.

What I keep is this: the craft is not a tool I wield. The craft moves through me. Has always moved through me. I was a vessel before I had a name for vessel. Before I had a name for anything.

She turns her forearm over. New ink there, faint — dried today, or yesterday. She studies it without expression.

Each working leaves a mark. I did not decide this. I simply noticed, some long time ago, that it was happening. New symbols, new placements. Not random. Never random. Precise. Intentional. I am not the one with the intention.

I have been a Deeproot of the Witches for longer than the Witches have had that name. I will not explain what that means. You can work it out.

The first figure leans forward.

"Who writes them? The marks. If not you — then what?"

A pause.

At her collarbone, beneath the edge of her collar, something moves beneath the fabric. A slow crawl of heat. She does not look down. She knows what is happening.

She pulls the collar aside.

Two words, still forming. Fresh ink. Dark as night.

FUCK OFF

She reads it. Her expression does not change.

I think that answers your question.

The chamber is quiet.

She lets the collar fall.

The Lodge found me because I stopped moving. That is usually how it goes. You stop moving, and the things that have always been watching finally know where to find you. I don't mean that as warning or invitation. Only as fact.

I am here because here is where I am. The craft continues. The marks continue. Whatever guides the hand continues to have opinions.

She glances at the second figure. Then the third.

Ask something else.

Visual

A woman who appears mid-thirties — face turned in profile, skin mapped in dense ink. Tattoos climb her jaw, curl beneath her eye, trace the cartilage of her ear in symbols that predate any language she'll admit to knowing. A gold ring through her septum. Dark hair loose. Her gaze is set somewhere past the room, past the conversation, past whatever question has just been asked. She is not here in the way you are here.

Faction: The Wildwood Witches · View the Gallery