Deconstructing A Curse [Open]

[bewitchinghaze]

 It's been three days since Val dragged Lou home from the police station and found the cursed plant by her bedside. Three days of trying to figure out what kind of plant it was, exactly. She's at the end of her rope with the goddamn menace, and that feeling of uselessness brought on by Yura's visit, and the news of her grandmother's passing, has reached its peak. It's time for drastic measures.

She tosses her mage kit onto her shoulder and writes a quick note to Riley, pinning it on the fridge to let her know where she is. Gathering the plant into her arms, she heads out in the the woods behind the house. She knows of a clearing surrounded by hawthorns (known for their magic enhancing abilities) and various wild flowers that will help contain negative magics so she heads straight there.

Setting the plant down in the middle of everything, she lays a circle of herbs around the edge of the clearing and calls up a bubble of magic to contain her workings. Everything set, she sits tailor style in the middle of the clearing and begins to clear her mind and falls into her magic. The green fire at the centre of her is blazing in response to her surroundings and ready to dig itself into this curse. Val lets a vine of it reach into the slimy feeling black magic around the plant, searching for the chinks in the curse. She sorts through the different bits and pieces of magics, tugging away a curse for hallucinations, another for distrust... Finally reaching the centre of it all and the toughest bit of magic, she shoves a blaze of her magic at it.

The backlash is spectacular. She's physically knocked back from the plant, the release of the curse exploding it, and the pot its in, sending sharp shards of pottery to slice cuts into her cheek and arms. Hitting the ground, she has a brief moment to think 'Fuck' and 'I hope someone finds that fucking note' before she blacks out.

Comments

[weatherornot]

"Did you find out who made it?" Genevieve asked, looking closer at the plant. Curses were something she had a lot of experience. Voudon loooooved their curses and anyone in New Orleans with a bit of magic had been cursed at one point or another. This looked like a much more serious curse though.

[bewitchinghaze]

"Nope," she grumbles, crushing one of the leaves into dust. "And for me, that's really frustrating. Plants and curses are my specialities. If I can't find who combined them both then there's some serious power, or serious intent not to be found at work."

[weatherornot]

"I've found with curses it's sometimes easier to work from a non-magical angle," Genevieve said. Just throwing out there that she had enough experiences with curses to know that was kind of gutsy on her part but she didn't like hiding from who she was. Plus, she maybe just saved this girl's life.

"Find out who wants to curse you then work back from there."

[bewitchinghaze]

"Ugh. It wasn't directed at me, unfortunately. And the person it was directed at has too many possible suspects for me to even begin filtering through," she sighs, idly petting a vine of wild ivy that had wriggled its way over to her, sensing her irritation. "I'm going to have to go back to her house to search through her things, I think. I hate doing that. It feels so nosy..."

[weatherornot]

"You want some help? I don't mind being nosy and I know a thing or two about curses, being from New Orleans."

Not that being from New Orleans automatically made her an expert but she hung around some scary enough people in her rebellion against her mom that she knew about curses. Her magical talents didn't lie in that area either but she was happy to help. Well, to be nosy.

"Also, you look like standing is going to be an issue."

[bewitchinghaze]

"Help getting home would probably be best for now," she says, giving the woman a crooked smile. "My head is pounding right now. I don't plan on poking around more until tomorrow, at least. If you really want to help, you can meet me at my flower shop tomorrow. The Avant Garden? We can talk out a plan then."

[weatherornot]

"I don't think I can quite carry you, but I can probably steady you," she said, standing and offering the girl a hand up. Sometimes it paid to be a good Samaratin, like you got to escort pretty girls home after saving them from unconsciousness. Never mind that she didn't really do anything to save her, that wasn't the point.

[bewitchinghaze]

"Oh god," she laughs, taking her hand and getting to her feet. "I would never ask you to carry me. Just let me lean on you a bit. My house is just at the edge of these woods. Not far at all."

[weatherornot]

"I suppose I can let you lean on me," Genevieve said, sighing dramatically before flashing the girl a smile. Sometimes it really paid off to be helpful, which was a mercenary way to look at being nice, but that didn't bother her.

"Sorry, I'm Genevieve by the way, don't know if I said that while making sure you weren't dead."

[bewitchinghaze]

Val laughs, rolling her eyes playfully. "Well, gosh. If it's such a hardship, you can just leave me on the forest floor to wither away."

"Nice to meet you. I'm Val, in case I forgot to mention that. My sister and I live at the cottage at the edge of the forest. I take it you're new to town?"

[weatherornot]

"Well if I just leave you in the forest to wither away I'll never know how this fairy tale ends," she said, giving the other girl a playful wink as she started to help her head in what she assumed was the direction of the cottage.

"I mean, I was walking through the forest and stumbled on a beautiful, unconscious girl trying to undo a curse and lives in a cottage in the forest. If this isn't a fairy tale, I don't know what is."

[bewitchinghaze]

Val raises her brows, realizing the woman's hitting on her. Well. That's interesting.

"So you're my valiant knight in shining armour then?"

[weatherornot]

"That might be a bit too generous of a description," Genevieve admitted. She wasn't particularly valiant or shining in any way.

"More like your witch in this outfit. The important thing here is that you're saved."

[bewitchinghaze]

"I'll take a witch in a nice outfit if it means I'm not left lying on the forest floor," she concedes with a half-grin. "You lay there too long and you end up with bugs in your hair and I am not okay with that."

[weatherornot]

"That's where you need the dwarves to make a special kind of casket for you," Genevieve said. The girl did say she lived in a cottage, but just with her sister, so no dwarven crafstmen for her it seemed.

"Or someone to just come along right away to rescue you."

[bewitchinghaze]

"My sister's pretty short but I don't think she'd be okay with me calling her a dwarf," she snorts. "And I think I'd get pretty bored waiting around for some prince charming to show up to kiss me awake."

[weatherornot]

"Well, unless she has a beard she probably won't get called that," Genevieve said with a bit of a chuckle. Unless Val's sister looked a lot differently than she did, there probably wasn't much risk of being mistaken for a dwarf.

"And hey, you didn't have to wait long for me. At the very least I could have dragged a prince here for you."

[bewitchinghaze]

"Not at the moment, but she grew one once while experimenting with a new potion recipe," Val laughs. "It went away after a week but she refused to be seen in public, no matter how dashing I told her it looked."

"That would've been nice. Maybe brought his horse too, so we could just ride it back to my house..."

[weatherornot]

"Can three people even fit on a horse?" Genevieve asked. Horses were not something that she really had a lot of experience with outside of movies. Two people she'd seen before but probably not three.

"Which means I'd be stuck on the ground so you and your prince can ride together."

[bewitchinghaze]

"Naah. If he's a proper prince, he'll be all chivalrous and let us ride the horse while he walks, right?" She grins at the other woman, feeling just the slightest bit silly. She wasn't sure if it was Genevieve's presence or the after effects of being knocked out by a curse but, either way, it sure was fun.

[weatherornot]

"You're probably right. I hadn't thought of that, gallant princes coming to my rescue isn't really my forte," she admitted. Honestly, Genevieve would rather sneak up into the tower the princess was kept in and pay her a little visit. They've got to be pretty repressed up there, right?

[bewitchinghaze]

"That's because you're the gallant princess coming to other princesses rescues, right?" she asks, with a silly little grin.

[weatherornot]

"Can I be the mostly good witch that rescues other princesses?" she asked, running her fingers through her hair before giving Val a wink. "A princess sounds like they have too many obligations."

[bewitchinghaze]

Val laughs. "Mostly good? So you're not entirely good then?"

[weatherornot]

"I'm definitely a little bad," she said with a smirk, more than happy to admit that she wasn't the Snow White sort.