Somehow at graduation she'd convinced herself she had a shot at not being crushed by all the guilt and fear and sadness. Of course, she also could've sworn she had seen Cyrus there for one fleeting moment, which had made her (naively) feel like there was hope for the both of them. That she wasn't quite so alone. That her brief taste of magic wouldn't be her last, that she wasn't damned to a nine-to-five, white picket fence life.
Now Tuesday couldn't stand the thought of magic. She wanted nothing to do with it, wanted nothing to do with anything that could dare to even think about going bump in the night. That's how she lived her summer, on a rollercoaster from hell in her mind, flipping constantly between different states of mind. Sometimes she was quiet, contemplative, hopeful. Sometimes numb. Sometimes she was shaking, sobbing in the fetal position, and sometimes she wanted to scream until she lost her voice. It wasn't all that useful these days anyway.
She had survived the worst of storms, but the aftermath–the damage control, the vainly trying to pick up the pieces and go back to what life used to be–was the real bitch. What no one had warned her about with trauma... The after is the hard part.
Despite her aversion to reminders of the strange and unknown horrors that could be lurking on her doorstep, just waiting to pounce again, Tuesday's aunt wouldn't allow ignorance. "You faced your father, demons, reapers, and the wannabe-Antichrist," Mary had said one week into the summer. "You don't need to use magic. But I'll send myself to hell before letting you go back into the world not knowing how you take care of yourself. Not after that track record."
Tuesday couldn't really argue with that. So without (audible) complaint, she dutifully spent her time off work studying anything Mary threw her way. Much of it was relatively mundane–the mystical properties of various crystals and half the spice cabinet, the do's and dont's of divination, the importance of meditation. An overarching theme existed, that magic was about energy–energy of everything, from household objects to people and places, and everything in between. Using magic meant manipulating that energy, and it didn't take a witch to do that (but that would definitely improve the outcomes...).
Perhaps the most terrifying lesson was on the threefold law, an idea popular amongst Wiccan and other spiritual communities that promised whatever energy you put out into the universe, it will come back to you three times as hard. Tuesday couldn't tell if Mary's inclusion of this was an explanation, threat or a warning. It's not like Mary blamed her or wanted to string her up for her sins–she hadn't gotten along with Tuesday's parents or the church for a reason. But she also wasn't one to bullshit people, and Tuesday wondered just how much worse things could get for her if she hadn't already paid enough penance for the things she'd done.
Apparently, she was safe for now, as she reached her aunt's apartment without so much as a cursory glance from other late-night walkers. Upon entering she was greeted with the smell of warm chocolate. There was always something sweet baking in Mary's kitchen; she was of the philosophy that when life gives you lemons, you chuck them out the window because surely someone poisoned them, and you make cookies instead.
Tuesday rounded the corner to see her aunt wiping up the evidence of her latest baking escapade with one hand, thumbing through a thick journal with the other. She nodded Tuesday's way, not sparing her a glance but pushing a nearly empty mixing bowl towards her. Tuesday licked clean the whisk that rested in it and went to wash the bowl, content that even though summer was crawling to its final, wheezing breaths, she still had their routine to keep her stable. Home-cooked treats couldn't fix everything, but a bit of cookie dough (Mary substituted apple sauce for eggs specifically for this purpose) didn't hurt.
She'd miss the routine at college. School was just in the next borough over, so surely she could visit on the weekends, but the thought of bouncing between two lives hurt too. Would the dorms have an oven she could make replacement cookies in? Even if they did, that would be sacrilege. Tuesday heaved a sigh, thinking the running water would cover up her utter exhaustion, but Mary zeroed in on her immediately and placed the nearest object–a spoon–handle-first in the journal before shutting it.
"Well?" she said, not one to bother with pleasantries. "What's on your mind?"
"I'm just nervous," Tuesday responded, scrubbing harder at the now-spotless bowl in her hands.
"It's going to be a thousand times better than high school. People start coming into their own after that. The ones too dumb to make it in and the ones too fragile to keep a real education going on daddy's money are weeded out before the second semester."
That wasn't really what Tuesday had been thinking about, but it was easier to roll with than the real issues. "You know that makes it sound like your own experience wasn't so charmed?"
"Okay, you caught me. I didn't make it five months into my freshman year at a traditional university. But it was a necessary hurdle to finding out not only that it wouldn't work for me, but also finding what would."
A timer filled the kitchen with its shrill beeping and Tuesday startled, dropping the bowl into the sink. She and Mary exchanged apologetic grimaces and the latter bent at the oven to retrieve the efforts of her labor, effectively ending the conversation. It's hard to talk around a cautious mouthful of piping hot cookie, which Tuesday was grateful for.
Dinner passed slowly, with Tuesday mechanically eating, not really tasting anything. She didn't even process what Mary had made. They separated after, with her aunt beeling for the journal she'd spoon-marked, so she drifted off to her room, sentenced to looking at all the boxes cluttering it alone. It was surreal how tidily the remnants of her life could be packed away. She had not much to show for sentimentality, having burned any photos that remained of her parents and left behind much evidence she'd had a childhood when moving to her aunt's. It was small for a two bedroom apartment (because what wasn't small in New York City?) but the size wasn't the only thing that necessitated cutting herself off from her old life. It was a skin she'd outgrown, and there was no sense in keeping a carcass around.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
So, her entire life had been boiled down to a set of 10-gallon plastic storage bins filled with clothing, toiletries, and a medley of other things you could find at any dollar store across the continental US. Impersonal. Immemorable. But right now, that's the kind of existence she needed.
She collapsed on her bed, picking at the quilt draped over it and wondering if she'd miss it. Not the quilt, or the bed, but everything about her current scenery in general–the faint smell of Mary's favorite perfume, the comfort of having a space to call her own with a blissful privacy she hadn't gotten much of in her parents' home, the quiet. Would it be like how leaving her childhood house had been, emotionless and simple? Or would it hurt somewhere deep she couldn't name?
Idle minds were the key to disastrous things. Tuesday shook off the melancholic trap she'd wandered into and got to her feet. There weren't many places to go for a change of scenery so she wound up in the hall where the kitchen, bathroom, and both bedrooms intersected. There resided a broom closet-turned-altar room, with extra slats drilled in to house a different deity's sacred spaces on each shelf. The first time she'd seen it, Tuesday was met with a mixture of shock and confusion. Mary had told her, "I had experience having to hide my craft in what little private space I owned, growing up with my Christian parents. I was in what you'd call the broom closet, so it's fitting to have an actual one now."
Though she'd found herself here looking over the shelves in silent contemplation many times before, Tuesday did it once again, thinking that maybe this would be the last. How morbid. Looking over all the dedications to supposedly almighty, ancient beings that could smite her down without raising a finger... Well, she wouldn't be surprised if leaving the safety of her aunt's shelter would be the final nail in her own coffin.
Amongst the shelves were spreads laid out for deities across a smattering of locales and religions. Mary had taught her all about the different mythologies she'd never gotten to under her parent's watch: Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Scandinavian, Persian, Hindu. The most shocking theology lesson she was given, though, were from the two shelves devoted to goddesses rooted in Christian beliefs. The first, Sophia, was the Holy Spirit from the Trinity. Somehow, that had never been discussed in bible study, the idea that there was a feminine counterpart to Jesus that was swept under the rug in most Christian teachings, but there were still people who celebrated her as the embodiment of wisdom and creation. The second was Lilith, and she scared the absolute hell out of Tuesday.
That was a name that had come up in bible study, and there hadn't exactly been any nice things to be said of her. What no one had talked about back then, though–Lilith was Adam's first wife, before Eve, one not created from parts of himself but given a body all her own. She refused to submit to him and cast herself from the Garden. In modern times she came to be worshiped as a resistor of patriarchy; a raw force of nature, sometimes wicked, sometimes motherly; she was viewed as a snake, or a succubus, or as the mother of all demons. New witches were discouraged from attempting to work with her, as well as anyone who wasn't prepared to have their entire lives turned upside down, because Lilith was not one to tiptoe around painful lessons if they were necessary ones.
And, much to Tuesday's immense discomfort, Lilith was known to take revenge upon men who have wronged women. Mary had noticed her initial reaction to this information: "Oh, she would have approved of your extracurricular activities."
She couldn't look away from Lilith's shelf. It was marked not by name but the goddess's glyph, a cross hanging off a crescent moon. There were dime-sized snake and owl figurines, jagged chunks of obsidian, black candles, and a mirror no bigger than her own palm. In a chalice not too unlike the ones she'd seen at communion was some red wine she'd seen Mary pour out that morning. Swallowing hard, Tuesday finally dragged her gaze away to the next shelf down, one dedicated to a deity she couldn't deny feeling drawn to.
Even more so than any connection she'd felt to the God her parents had preached about. Although, Mary had told her on multiple occasions that "there is a little truth in every belief", that every religion was correct in its own regard and different people simply used different labels to describe what they were feeling. It was apparent how that could be applied to the shelf she now had her sights set on; in Christianity, you would be sent to either heaven or hell after death depending on what kind of life you lived. The Egyptian god of the afterlife, Anubis, similarly judged souls, but instead of hell damned souls looked forward to total nothingness. This idea of eternal judgement was intimidating, but the threats that encompassed paled in comparison to Lilith's rage. In common mythology Anubis was also tasked with guiding the dead into the afterlife and protecting gravesites. Thinking on this conjured up watery images of a figure cutting a path through the pitch black with the warm glow of a lantern, keeping hungry hands reaching out all around at bay, which Tuesday found oddly comforting. You know, assuming she would be judged worthy of such protection.
She wasn't dead yet. Maybe she could atone. Thus was the way of her frustrating, unending mental rollercoaster–she shuffled off to bed this time flopping to the other end of her self hate/acceptance meter. If a world could exist with fathers who assaulted their children and demons who mutilated high school kids to prove a point, weren't Tuesday's own sins excruciatingly insignificant?
She prayed to absolutely nothing and no one in particular, as unconscious ushered her under, that she be allowed to remain so insignificant. Considering her impressive track record of prayers going unanswered, it was a mystery why she bothered.
Mundanity was a privilege. Mundanity was a death sentence. Whichever was more true hinged entirely on who you asked, or when. If Tuesday had to label it the following day, she'd etch out MUNDANE on a crumbling, weed-choked crypt. Give it a few months, though, and surely she'd drown herself in it with the fervor of a man lost in the desert for the same amount of time.
She wouldn't know that, though. Even Mary couldn't see the future.