bewitchinghaze | Deconstructing A Curse [Open]

Deconstructing A Curse [Open]

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.

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"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."

"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.

"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."

"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."

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?"

"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."

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?"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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..."

"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."

"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.

"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?

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

"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."

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

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

"You're not secretly the one who gave me the poison apple, or cursed plant or whatever, are you?" she teases with a grin.

"That's my plan, give poison to every hot girl I come across in attempts to sweep them off their feet by saving them later," Genevieve said, snapping her fingers in faux frustration. "But here you didn't really need much saving. Ruined the whole plan."

"I'm hot?" Val asks, preening a little at the thought. "And my apologies. I'll try harder next time to be a proper damsel in distress."

"Yes, you absolutely are, and if no one has told you then that's a shame," Genevieve said, smirking a bit as the girl seemed to like being told that.

"And it's okay, I like a girl that can generally rescue herself."

"I've heard it a few times," she admits with a grin. "I just like hearing it again. My parents probably should have named me Vanity instead of Valeria."

"You'd love my family then. Umma was raised to take care of herself, and she passed that on down to us."

Deconstructing A Curse [Open]

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