Daddy's stationary

As you check your mail, you notice a letter that makes you stop in your tracks. You know this stationary, you spent your whole childhood looking at a man who would cautiously fold thick white paper to put it inside envelopes such as this one. It is just so beautiful. Now that you are older you can't help but wonder how much each of these costs him.

“Dad”, you find yourself saying.

You open the envelope as your heart beats following a dangerous rhythm, a frequency that is anything but healthy. How do you feel? How does one start to describe what you’re currently feeling? Excited? Emotional? Afraid?

What if it does not say what you expect? What exactly do you expect it to say?

After all these years, your heart had given up on ever getting an answer to one of the letters you sent monthly. After all, back home you were only a disgrace, you were the dirt under the rug and replying to your letter was giving you too much dignity, too much importance, it was too similar to treating you like a daughter. Yet here it was… the letter.

Hidden under the multiple bills you still can’t afford to pay, your father has been for the entirety of the day.

You unfold the letter to find his pompous calligraphy.

“Louise,

We truly hope you are doing well. Even though we had our discrepancies in the past, we as a family hope you might be willing to return home.

Your mother is very sick, no doctor has yet been able to discern what it is that is causing her such terrible pain. Yet every night she lies in bed, all we can hear is her voice screaming your name, begging us to ask you to come home.

I love your mother more than I love myself and for her I am willing to do everything. So here I am writing this letter, asking you to please come home, to please come see her. You will not regret this, we both know it is what's right for you to do.

To be completely honest, we don’t know how much time she has left and it would truly destroy me to know she left my side without my having done everything that is in my power to make her feel better. So know it is me who is begging for your return.

I hope you get this letter. I hope you agree to come home.

Looking forward to hearing from you,

Marcus Bloomsbery”

You notice he signed using his own name, not a reference to the fact that he is related to you there. Your father... always so un-fathery.

You find yourself unable to hide your smile. It just seems kind of funny when you think about the story as a whole.

They asked you to leave when they discovered your leanings toward witchcraft. To them you were nothing but the possibility of losing their status, their little girl had been corrupted by the devil and they could not let their friends know.

As you refused to conform, as you refused to stop speaking openly about the Goddess you now followed, they refused to let you be a part of their lives. And so it is that you were kicked out of your home, made to wander the streets as a nineteen year-old girl.

As far as everyone in you silly little town is concerned, you left to study abroad. They probably continued that story saying you got married, had beautiful children and were now living in Europe married to a religious, perfect man. Who knows? Maybe they even went as far so as to say he is some kind of minister just to make their friends jealous.

Or maybe they just let everybody forget you. Perhaps they pretended there was never a fourth daughter. Maybe now Danny is allowed to say he is the eldest sibling.

You are not sure. yet you know that whatever it is they said, it must be so far from the truth. So far from your dirty apartment, the one you occupy with Dorian, that beautiful cat that is now lying by your feet. So far from your reunions with your coven on every Full Moon and from the Winter rituals you just love.

You look at the window-frame, where the little bowl lies. You know you did something your own coven would not approve of, after all, the only rule in witchcraft is not to cause harm to nature, to others or to yourself. Yet you did a little bit of all of them through one simple spell…

Poisoning your mother berries, the ones only she ever eats. Not just with any kind of poison, but with quite a special sort.

Ghost poison, you named the practice. It was difficult to get it to work. The poison had to reach their town and then effectively get into those berries. Everything so that after eating them, a spirit would be able to enter your mother’s mind. But not just any spirit, one your ordered to remind her of you, of the way she’d wronged you. One that could play with each and everyone of her feelings (and you did allow it to play a bit with her body too, for you've always been quite generous with those that agree to work with you).

The payment for the ghost? A little bit of your own life. You could already feel some of the effects of having given that up. Yet you were so willing to do it.

After all, you would do anything for your family. Let no one say otherwise.

With a smile on your face you blow the candle that is positioned next to the bowl. It's blue, just like your mother's berries. And you know as you do it, and you know as you smile, that back "home", mum is also losing her light.

Poor dad. Guess his efforts weren't enough.