There is a ghost at the top of the hill, shimmering in the tall grass, filtering starlight onto the sodden grass like a wisp of cloud over a crescent moon.

The witch claws at the crags and crumbling clay on her way up, stumbling on crooked roots and stubborn stones. All of those years of candles melted to sickly yellow puddles, all of those decades of lanterns in her window and an open door with no friends to fill it. Every single second of self-loathing and bitter betrayal…would she finally be free of it?

The sky is foamy with a soft spring pink on the horizon and she knows they haven’t much time.

She approaches, silent as a scared cat, and the ghost turns. The witch feels her breath hitch painfully in the tight knot of her chest. Even through the film of purgatory, she is unmistakable, a brilliant beacon, a lighthouse in the gloom.

For a moment, her eyebrows droop and her face–so often lit with a wide grin–is foggy with fear, but the brightness behind her eyes burns it all away when their gazes meet. Blue as the morning. Blue as hope. Blue as forgiveness.

For one foolish moment, the witch in the woods believes that the sun is waiting for her.

Strix’s fingers grasp hungrily at the cold, crisp air between them and she thinks Evelyn might do the same—a chill clambers up the witch’s arms and under her skin. There is cold in her limbs but heat in her heart and she sobs it out against Evelyn’s ethereal shoulder. The regret, the loneliness, the soul-shattering weight of TIME, it all comes out in a rushing river, a stream of bawling and babbling. If Evelyn were alive, her hands would be on Strix’s face, swiping tears and streaks of filth and smoothly stroking her hair free of snarls. She would prod and poke and pepper her face with kisses until Strix begged her to stop.

But Evelyn isn’t and the sun is rising in spite of them. As the rays peek over the hill, dazzling and devastating, Evelyn’s embrace evaporates.

Strix remains long after the echo fades, face hot and stinging with tears and arms full of morning mist.

—

I wrote this for Alex Elizabeth, a friend of mine who inspires me with her music, her writing, and her passion for Dice, Camera, Action (and Strix in particular). As a person with four sisters, the relationship between Strix and Evelyn is extremely important to me and I wanted to explore that as well as the impact of survivor’s guilt on that bond.



Headcanon: Barovia celebrates a Samhain-similar festival when the veil of mists grows thinner. Strix finally finds Evelyn waiting at the edge of the forest, after decades of failed rituals. This would take place the same year she resolves to resurrect her party. To be read while listening to “Little Talks” by Of Monsters and Men and “I Am Stretched On Your Grave” covered by Kate Rusby.

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