[IC] The Witches Of Shipden Peak

[Benzaiten]

---

THE PLAGUE CONTINUES ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ March 22nd, 2024 JUST WHAT ARE WITCHES DOING? Rainstorms. Pitfalls. Voilent Fungi. Nature is revolting. Crops are dying. Delaware's coast still stands under water. Reports of fungi attacks keep trickling in. And now a Dretch - a vile, demonic creature - has been sighted in Wisconsin. Is this the peak of it all or is it only just beginning? It stands to reason, we ask ourselves what the witch community has attempted to correct these unnatural occurences of magical origin. As members of this society, we have welcomed witches into our midst. As a service to the greater good, witches should be expected to band together freely to protect humanity against such wicked influences. But where have they been? Coven Head of the "Los Angeles Witch Society", Eolin Bennig, seems barely concerned. "Occurences of such nature have happened before", she tells our reporter. Such devasting incidents were last recorded "around the years of 1690", Bennig confirms for us. With the Salem Accord having been sealed in 1693 [...]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Newspaper Excerpt ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

^{━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━}

The paper crinkled in Lina's hands, her fingers tightening involuntarily at the words in front of her face. Lina Calvo was not the type to get unnecessarily angry, especially right before a big event but even she had her limits. "Where have we been?" She questions in a murmur, brows furrowing. "Probably exactly where you have been."

The problem with humans was often that they didn't seem to grasp that witches didn't exist to keep each other in check. Whoever was behind the odd occurrences was not a part of her coven, it's hardly as if she'd know how to stop them or if she even could stop them. The power output behind the attacks was clearly quite high, and while she was well-trained, she could not make up for the magic of what was likely multiple witches on her own. Nor did she exactly want to involve her coven in a fight where the enemy was entirely faceless.

Stupid.

"And I could wring Eolin's neck," she continued in her silent tirade, it was better to get it out before she was in front of her people. "'Such occurrences have happened before', do you want them to think the worst? Tell them we're working on figuring it out-- something."

The paper crinkled further in her grip before she slammed it down on the table and growled under her breath. If there was nothing in this world that frustrated Lina more, it was situations being handled incompetently. Nightmarish.

---

Her nerves were still on end by the time of the event but she'd never been very good at shaking off her feelings, at least she wasn't projecting them.

She was dressed smartly, a white off-the-shoulder number that showed off the opal necklace she'd spent too long choosing. Her hair was pulled back away from her face. She looked open, honest even, which felt performative but she was not one to do without performance. At any rate, she looked good, maybe a touch too soft around the edges but not bad. She rarely looked bad.

The gathering was humming with activity, the telltale sound of people laughing and talking could be heard as she made her way out to greet them.

She drew in a breath, offered a smile to her coven. "Hello, everyone." Her eyes crinkled a little at the edges. "Alban Illir is a time in which we all celebrate the brief but wonderful balance of darkness and light. It's an important time for us all to remember that life is not without beginnings and that though darkness has its time to thrive, we will always see it through."

She paused to let her words sink in, to let them settle over the murmurs and conversations that came with large gatherings. She could see the faces of her coven, the people she loved most in this world were all scattered around her. With worry over the news ringing in the back of her mind, she couldn't help but wonder if she was enough to keep them safe. If something happens to all of you, who will you blame?

She swallowed despite herself, her vision clouded briefly at the edges. She did what she could to reign it in, not wanting to will her foreboding across the group. "We celebrate the coming of a time of light, but we do not forget the darkness." She said, trying to keep her voice soft. "It is all of our responsibility to make sure that this season will be fruitful for our coven members. So-- with that said," she spread her hands to either side of her to indicate the festival around them. "I invite our practitioners of light-based magic and shadow-based magic to join in the show."

She laughed then, a pretty sound that didn't match how she felt at all. "And to everyone else, enjoy the food, enjoy the soup. Have fun and remember that brighter days are on the horizon!"

She drew back a step and closed her hands together in a near-prayer position. As she did so, light gathered around her hands, casting a warm, golden glow on her face. Her eyes did little to give away the misgivings that clung to her, nor did her smile.

---

As Lina initiated the show presented by casters of light and shadow Evocation, she began to draw herself back into the crowd and was promptly chatted up by some coven witches.

As with every outdoor feast, the tents were all propped up in the Patch. Some stood empty, safe for the groups of witches gathering in them that stood with warm mugs in their hands and enjoyed the safety from the chill evening breeze. One tent offered beverages on a wooden table, mostly warm tea and some warm fruit beverage but some witches brought alcoholic beverages to share despite Lina's half-hearted announcement they should not. Another tent offered some food choices. You would find the traditional soup of cleansing that was always served at Ostara - or Alban Eilir, as Lina had called it - but you would also find bread, sausages, some self-made noodle and potato salads other witches had brought in, a cake, and a bowl of different sweets.

The show the Evocation caster put on under the clear evening sky lit the tents up to then swallow them in darkness as the sun crept behind the horizon. Around an open fire stood several witches in different groups, chatting. Some were holding bread on sticks near it to roast their slices.

In front of one particular tent stood a sign formed like an upside-down V. On that sign, two words were written. An elderly male witch pushed past the shrouded entrance to enter the dark tent and was obscured from the view of the party people. Minutes later, he returned. This was the tent of the Fotune Teller.

[+]

O P P O R T U N I T Y
This is an action. Your character may or may not take it.

˃ Characters may ask for their fortune to be told by the Fortune Teller.
GM Note: Entries will be limited. Fortunes require you to roll dice (3d100). If you roll, make a note "Fortune Teller (Character Name)".

If your character enters the tent, they will notice that behind a simple table, a young witch is sitting. Only 13 years old, she has brown hair down to her buttocks, sits straight and radiates authority. In her hand, she holds a deck of cards. A chair is provided for you to sit down on. She is a lady of few words and therefore will not chat with you but she will act polite, calm and straightforward. If you try to recognize the card deck, you will notice that you don't know these type of cards. It is not a tarot deck nor any deck you have ever come across. Before beginning, she will ask you: "Are you sure you want your fortune read? I can not provide you with clear answers, I will not take questions and you may not be satisfied by what I provide." This is clearly not a reading that will tell you your next love interest. If you answer in the affirmative, the girl will then shuffle the cards for you and lay them out downside in front of you. She tells you to pick three cards. (Do not describe the cards in your post.)

˃ Characters who have been at Shipden Peak for at least 6 months will know the following information.

The young witch is called Khalida. She is a very promising Diviner. She has decided to offer these simple readings at various feasts. Mostly this was born out of a joke about the "fortune tellers" of humanity but Khalida stuck with this. The coven knows she is legit, so people who come to her during festivities for readings usually know what to expect. Khalida does not offer readings of any kind outside of these festivities. The coven also knows that Khalida will be off to magic college soon.

_{(Lina's POV is courtesy of my Co-GM @Prosaic. Thanks, buddy.)}

[Mirandae]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Location ⋗ The Patch. Interactions ⋗ Lina Calvo @Prosaic School of Magic ⋗ Conjuration & Enchantment. Items ⋗ Black dress / nothing.	_______

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Hanna spectated someone she had grown to love with immense enthusiasm. Every syllable that poured from the woman's lips rang true. The edges of Hanna's mouth stretched as wide as they could with a brightening smile. Not only did Lina's words elate the atmosphere all around them, but this was the Spring Equinox. It was Hanna's absolute favorite time of the year. She had certainly dressed up for the occasion—a tightly fitted black dress with fur accents put her tantalizing shapes on full display, luscious hair bundled together in a flowy tail at her back, and dusky fox eyes to finalize the canine look. It was perhaps a bit chilly, but it would surely be worth it in the end.

The pause did not go unnoticed. Hanna wanted to think that she had a unique connection with the Coven Head, but she also knew that half a year of knowing someone was fairly short. Regardless, the minuscule moment of respite in Lina's words did register with Hanna at a subconscious level, although clueless of any cause. On the surface of the event, however, things went by so fast in a haze of dopamine-riddled emotions, a cocktail of every feel-good chemical the brain could possibly produce, that Hanna thought nothing of it. She simply kept on smiling like the dimwit she was at times, fervently clapping her hands at the conclusion of the speech. The following show of light and dark was equally mesmerizing, but Hanna was drawn elsewhere.

"Oh-My-Ghawd, Lina, that was AM-azing! You're so good with words, I don't get it." Hanna began with her endless blabbering, as usual, reaching with both hands to touch Lina's. "I did the solitary ritual this morning, and there was something special about this year, this particular spring. I could feel it in every inch of my body. You know, that buzzing feeling you get after fasting for a day? It was sooo intense, and my vision of the Spring Maiden was like a psychedelic trip! Not that I've ever taken mushrooms before. Do you think I should though? Isn't there some recipe for that? Anyway, BUT, my calling of the Green Man was a bit strange. He appeared all rotten, almost burnt in a way, as well—do you know what that means? Oh, I almost forgot, I made Apple Pie for tonight! You've got to taste some. Let me fix you a plate." She said and scurried away to one of the tents. Talking with Hanna was like talking to a talking wall. One could ask if there was even a point or if she ever truly stopped. Either way, off she went before any questions could be answered and heard. Hanna had likely already forgotten what she had asked, but at some point, she would think of the questions again, and then proceed to pester the subject once more. She did not mean any ill will by it. This was the way the girl was as a person. Her mind rushed a thousand miles an hour in all directions at the same time.

Hanna trotted along amidst the attendees. The tent with all the food was likely Hanna's sanctuary and the place she would spend the rest of the evening if she could freely choose and ignore all other social obligations. She grabbed a clean kitchen knife to cut the apple pie with and a narrow spatula made out of metal to scoop the piece up. It was the first cut of the evening, at least for Hanna's pie. She would surely bother everyone she knew and every other person present with a tasting, but the big gal was first. However, after scooping the piece up and putting it on one of those throw-away paper plates, Hanna manage to hit the thing over while putting the tools away, and down all of it went onto the ground. "Oh fucking Hell, you donkey." Hanna muttered to herself, spitting out typical Gordon Ramsay slurs. She picked the plate up and removed some strings of grass and other things that had stuck onto the piece of the pie. She put it to the side while cutting a new piece for Lina.

Hmm... I wonder if someone still wants that piece. I should throw it away, right? Maybe it can be used for something—perhaps a potion that makes you less clumsy. She thought to herself.

[Prosaic]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Location ⋗ The Patch. Interactions ⋗ Khalida @Benzaiten School of Magic ⋗ Divination & Illusion Items ⋗ Suit / Crutches	_ _

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Lina had a flare for dramatics, which... most people could see.

Simon found himself feeling oddly tired while he watched her speak, wondering how she managed to find the energy with so many people expecting something of her. Maybe there was some merit to that though because every time he looked right at her, she felt weird, she felt displaced. There was hesitance at one point in her speech, an unspoken feeling of paranoia that briefly raised the hairs at the back of his neck. It passed about as quickly as it had come.

Don't like that much.

He leaned the bulk of his weight on his crutches and settled in, listening to the coven leader as she tied off her speech with a pretty little display of light. A sigh escaped him despite himself, like a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. As soon as she stopped addressing everyone, he was free to reorient himself with where he was.

The festival of the Spring Equinox was as beautiful as expected, the air was pungent and heady with the smell of food which made his stomach growl despite himself. He wasn't sure he could eat yet, he didn't have a strong stomach and eating when he was anxious was a gamble. He disregarded the urge to stop and pick at the food available and instead let his gaze trail over the other gathered witches, most were talking amongst themselves or occupying themselves with something at the festival.

He couldn't see Sophia, but he presumed she was lost somewhere in the sea of... somewhat familiar faces. He made a note to himself to track her down before he inevitably left, it wasn't that he was terribly close with anyone else yet. Not that he was opposed to meeting anyone-- just that he was not terribly competent at it.

He eventually spotted the tent amidst his wandering observation just as the older gentleman exited, watching with keen interest. "Well, that could be something." He said, to no one in particular. "Don't mind if I do."

He readjusted himself and pushed forward, crutches sinking into the dirt as he approached the tent carefully. He let himself cast a look back over his shoulder to see if anyone was nearby, to make sure he hadn't cut anyone off, and then pushed the flaps back. When he entered the tent, he found that he felt odd again, although in a different way. It was like a tingling at the tips of his fingers, a building apprehension that he couldn't quite shake. The place was dimly lit, occupied only by a young lady with very long, dark hair and a sternness about her expression. There was no room for argument in a face like that.

He didn't often have himself divined.

"Don't suppose you mind another?" He says, voice light. "Haven't seen a get-up like this in awhile." He liked it though, the fact that it was outdated in practice didn't mean that it was bad. Contrarily, he found there was some merit in old methods, although he hadn't practiced them himself.

He'd always had a soft spot for tarot cards.

He lowers himself into the chair across from her, leaning his crutches against it. "I don't know my own future. Can't help but be curious."

[Bartimaeus]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Location ⋗ The Patch. Interactions ⋗ N/A School of Magic ⋗ Abjuration, Transmutation & Necromancy Items ⋗ N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

McDaniel's brow furrowed in annoyance as she felt a hand wrap around her arm once again and start tugging her along. Said hand belonged to one whom could be considered her only close friend -- Natalie. Natalie was Human, which didn't matter to McDaniel, and was the first person to really show any interest in the Aussie since her move to the U.S. And considering she had felt rather lost in the states at the time, it was rather convenient to make a friend who knew their way around. But Natalie was a bit.. different from McDaniel's coolheaded demeanor. She was care-free, energetic, and openly very adventurous. Which meant she pretty much dragged the redhead along like she was a dog on a leash. A big dog.

"This was a mistake.."

"Oh hush, this is so exciting! Plus, if I wasn't here you'd probably be sulking in a corner somewhere."

There was a slight pause that somehow seemed indignant, almost. "I do not sulk."

It wasn't exactly standard fare for a Human to attend traditional Witch festivals - nor was it technically against any rules - but McDaniel wasn't a huge stickler for precedent. Plus, Natalie wouldn't shut up about it once McDaniel had mentioned it in passing. As long as she didn't blurt out something airheaded, hopefully her Human curiosities would go unnoticed.

"Riiight, sure, sure. Oh! Look here, there's a speech or somethin going on!"

Said speech in question was spoken from the lips of none other than Lina Calvo. McDaniel brushed Natalie's hand off as they both began to tune into the speech that was already partially underway. In truth, McDaniel had always seen such speeches more as fluff - but at least it was good-natured fluff. And Lina seemed to enjoy it, at least. Probably. She didn't know the Coven Head very closely, considering she tended to avoid that sort of thing. But either way, as the speech came to an end, so did the mundanity. Lina soon presented a display of her Evocation magic, creating a sparkle that almost matched the one in Natalie's eyes as she watched on.

It was almost visual how hard she was trying to hold back a squeak of joy.

McDaniel rolled her eyes and let her gaze sweep over the crowd around them. "Fuckin' witchaboo.."
None of the faces in direct line-of-sight seemed particularly familiar to her, so she turned her eyes back to her friend.
"Right mate, I promised you an hour. Go bother someone else. And don't cause any trouble or you'll never see one'a these again, I swear it on-"
By the time she turned to deliver the warning, McDaniel found herself alone. Her eyes darted to the people around her, yet Nat was nowhere to be seen. Probably already talking some poor sod's ear off. The girl let loose a sigh of relief.

"Right.." She mumbled to nobody in particular, before she wandered off towards the food-tents, intent on staving off some of the light chill with a warm snack.

[Benzaiten]

GM Post

_{[Simon @Prosaic]}

Khalida's eyes were fixed on the boy in front of her. "A Diviner then?", her soft voice spoke. Though it was raised as a question, it was clear that she knew the answer and did not need it confirmed. The young girl lowered her eyes to the deck of cards in her hands and began to split it in half, put it back together and split it in half again. "Are you sure you want your fortune read? I can not provide you with clear answers, I will not take questions and you may not be satisfied by what I provide." Khalida awaited Simon's affirmation before her fingers began rapidly moving the cards in a shuffling manner. After precisely thirty seconds, she halted and began to spread out the cards face-down on the table. "Choose three", she instructed.

As Simon pointed at the first card, Khalida turned it upright. "The Axe", she said. Khalida waited for Simon to choose the next card. "The Occultist." The girl paused for a moment. Then the third card got pulled. "The Frost Queen."

The young witch spread all three cards out in front of Simon. "Something wicked is approaching." Khalida lifted one hand above the cards and a low light emanated from them, swallowed by the unnatural darkness of the tent. "They don't know. It hasn't been spotted yet. It's already in our midst. The Frost Queen lends us her helping hand, she points you towards a person. A specific person. A widow of a sort. Someone who has lost their lover beyond return. In the moment of truth, you will be an agent of justice. That is your role." Her eyes shot up to meet Simon's. "Don't forget this."

The light faded and the girl drew her hand back. "That is all I can tell you."

Cards

.
.
.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Location ⋗ The Patch Interactions ⋗ Lina (mentioned), Simon @Prosaic School of Magic ⋗ Necromancy, Illusion & Divination Items ⋗ 1 Dagger, small component pouch (empty)	_

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Zhalia slipped through the door of her room and walked down the hallway of the Covenstead. She took the stairs down to the first floor and hurried outside. A glimpse into the young night was enough to tell her she had missed the beginning of the festivities of Alban Illir. The witch made her way down the street and pushed past the trees into the park and straight through. She came out on the other side and headed straight for the crowded tent area. As she passed the bonfire, she gave some of the witches who looked up at her with slight frowns a soft half-hearted smile.

The smell of roasted bread and alcohol filled her nostrils as she moved through the crowd, slowing down now as she had reached her destination. Zhalia had only arrived at Shipden Peak three days ago. That would make her the newest member, as per her knowledge. Safe to say, she had met rather few of the coven members so far. She had been preoccupied getting all the paperwork filled out and unpacking the few belongings she owned. She weaved through the assembly of witches, not really sure where she was trying to go, just knowing she was not ready to pause and thereby invite people to talk to her.

To her own surprise, she ended up at the tent with the drinks. The smell of alcohol was even more prominent here. It was clear someone had spilled something onto the floor. Although it had mostly dried and was barely visible, the smell stuck. Unsure what to do with herself, she grabbed a cup and filled it with hot tea. The warmth emanated from the beverage and she wrapped both her hands around the cup to soak it up. The heat had a calming effect on her. With softer, less hurried movements she stepped out of the tent and let her eyes roam around. Touching upon some faces, she tried to recognize anyone she had seen before in passing. After just a few moments, she felt the strange sensation of being observed. Steeling herself, Zhalia turned her head and looked straight into Coven Head Lina Calvo's face. But the woman was not paying her any attention. She was in conversation. And yet, Zhalia has had the overpowering feeling that Lina's eyes had been on her since she had arrived three days ago.

She forced her eyes off of the woman and instead continued to study the faces of her fellow coven witches. Somewhere to her right on the other side of the Patch stood a tent labeled as Fortune Teller. Zhalia watched as a young man on crutches left the tent. For a brief second, she wondered how legit this "fortune teller" was and if she should give it a shot but then she disregarded the thought. If the witch was just imitating the fortune tellers of humanity for the sake of amusement, maybe with a side of truth to it, she was not interested. And if the fortune teller was legit, she was even less interested. Knowing her future was not something that sat quite right with her. Is this fear I am spotting?, she mocked herself.

"Isn't that...?", a half-whispered voice raised a question somewhere behind her. "Oh yes, she is!", another voice answered, much less hushed. Zhalia promptly walked ahead with the intention to settle somewhere by the fire. As she hurried forward her foot caught on something. Her body jolted forward. She caught herself by stumbling, her hand with the hot tea held far away from herself, but it was too late. The tea had spilled partly over her hand and her sleeve. As she turned to see what she had tripped over, she found herself looking into a handsome face. Oh no. "I tripped over your crutches. I am sorry, I was too hasty. Are you okay? What a great first impression, huh?" As the young man was standing steady before her, she concluded the situation was salvageable.

[+]

O P P O R T U N I T Y
All information below is at your disposal. You may base your character's reaction and decision on how much of this info they possess.

˃ Characters likely have heard rumors about Zhalia's coven

It is not a secret that Zhalia is from that "cult coven". However, since little is actually known about that specific coven, rumors float about. The most notable ones would include that the coven is a cult, that they kill humans because they "clean" the world off of those without magic, that they teach all of their members Necromancy, that they train them to be assassins, that they are "half-dead" due to lifting the Veil so many times that they're "half-way through the other side" already. Most notable rumors about Zhalia specifically include that she was sent here on a mission by the "cult", that she is to spew hatred between witches and humans to provoke a war, that she killed a woman (her supposed lover) but butchered it by not being discreet enough with her methods (it was ruled a murder by human police) and so the coven sent her away.

You may also use any rumors you come up with based on her backstory.

[PatientBean]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Location ⋗ The Patch. Interactions ⋗ Khalida @Benzaiten School of Magic ⋗ Enchantment, Abjuration & Divination Items ⋗ N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Manon had to admit to herself that she was still getting used to how things were done here in the States. Having been throughout Europe, the way celebrations were organized, especially among witches, were different. And each country had its own way of doing things. However, she had chosen America for a reason. The political climate here was... challenging to describe. If there was one place that could use some aid in ensuring things ran smoothly and that relations with the rest of the world were maintained, it was here in Shipden Peak.

Manon had only been here a short while, but she already fell into step with how things were. Did she enjoy sharing a home with others she did not know? Not really. In college, she could afford her own student house (with the help of her parents). She wasn't used to living with others. It wasn't bad per se. They had their quirks about them. And she was sure the others found her irritating. She wasn't here to be best friends with anyone. She was here to help. Sometimes that meant saying what you mean, even if feelings got hurt.

The celebration was beautiful, she had to admit. Whoever had put it together did a great job. She would have to commend them. While Manon did not have any light or dark spells to offer, she did help herself to some of the food. It was hearty and filling. She was used to light, delicate means growing up. That was another thing she enjoyed about traveling. Culture impacted food. And food was always a way to connect with someone else.

Manon wandered around, unsure of how to busy herself. She opted out of going back home less she look like she was a recluse. But she didn't really know anyone here that she could converse with. There were some she saw more in passing and some she was intrigued to get to know, but during this celebration was not the best time.

Eventually, Manon found herself outside of a tent. The sign had an upside-down V on it and two words. Fortune Teller. To the average person, even with magic in the world, they may not readily believe that fortunes could be told. She dabbled in Divination herself, though she doubted her abilities transcended to telling the future. Curiosity got the better of her as she set foot inside.

---

Khalida looked up as she picked up the cards from the last reading. She motioned for the woman to take a seat as she began to split the deck in half, put it together and split it in half again. "Are you sure you want your fortune read? I can not provide you with clear answers, I will not take questions and you may not be satisfied by what I provide." Manon was taken aback a bit. The girl could not be much older than 12 or 13, yet she commanded authority. Manon nodded her head, "Oui, yes." Once Khalida had Manon's consent to read her fortune under the stated conditions, the girl began to shuffle the cards. After precisely thirty seconds, she spread them out in front of the witch, cards face-down. "Please, pick three cards", Khalida said as she leaned back into her chair for a minute.

Manon gazed at the cards in front of her. Did she quickly pick them or choose carefully?

The watchful eyes of the young girl followed Manon's hands as the woman picked her first card and turned it around. "The Treasure Hoard." Khalida leaned forward. It was a promising card she had not had show up for a while. Maybe luck was turning? "The Headsman", she commented on the second card Manon had chosen. This card was neutral. It could fall on either side of the sword. And lastly, Manona picked - "The Sword." What a fitting conclusion to such a reading.

Khalida looked at Manon for a second before she raised her hand above the cards and waited for the familiar glow to emit from them. "Laws and rules are bendable, as I am sure you have tested before", Khalida began her reading. "You will be met with a choice. It may be easy to dodge at first glimpse but there are treasures far greater than jewels and gold if you remember to pause. The choice is yours but the gift awaiting you favors the lawful path. You will know what to do when you meet the knight."

Khalida pulled her hand back and gave Manon a soft, reassuring smile before the woman left her tent. At last, a solely positive reading.

Cards

---

Manon left the tent and felt the cool, outside air hit her face. She could not easily hide the smile she had. The fortune appeared to be positive and, if the girl was to be believed, Manon was in for some good luck. Manon's mind wandered. Who was the knight? What would the choice be?

The sky filled with the light from the Evocation spells. Manon, content, made her way towards the fire, where other witches gathered. Perhaps she should converse with some of the others. It was the perfect night for it.

[Mirandae]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Location ⋗ The Patch [food tent]. Interactions ⋗ Kelly McDaniel @Bartimaeus, Manon D'aureville [mentioned]. School of Magic ⋗ Conjuration & Enchantment. Items ⋗ Kitchen knife.	_______

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The new piece of pie was better than the one that had a visit in the dirt. Hanna topped it off with some creamy vanilla mousse that someone else had made and presented at the tables. Seeing as the cut was so perfect and she was able to keep her clumsy self together for two seconds, Hanna figured she would just slice the whole pie right away. It was during the surgical acrobatics with the kitchen knife that Kelly McDaniel showed her pretty self at the food tents. The gal had joined the coven not long before Hanna, so the two of them sort of made their way into the Shipden Peak witch scene at the same time. However, Kelly was a bit of an antithesis to Hanna in that she had a tendency to be reserved about personal details, or most things.

"Dani! Come here, have some of this." Hanna eagerly called the girl over. The nickname for Kelly was a play on her surname, McDaniel. "I made this Apple Pie for tonight that I'd like to get everyone's opinion on." Hanna began to twitter like a bird desperate for attention, continuing to cut the rest of the pie, not even looking to see if Kelly came closer. "I'm paranoid about the apple slices. They're too damn big. I should've made them smaller. Or, maybe they're good like this. I thought it was nice, but what I think is nice is never nice for anyone else, so who am I kidding, really? God, this fucking dress keeps crawling up my ass as if someone is actually controlling it." Hanna momentarily let go of the kitchen knife and metal spatula to pull her dress down a notch. "Anyway, did you hear Lina's speech? She is so good at that, I don't get it. Well, I do get it, but like, I get way too excited about stuff like that. I think it's just because of this event." Hanna put a piece of the apple pie on a paper plate and finished it off with that creamy mousse, and then set it aside for Kelly.

In the haze of the sound of her own voice, Hanna's mind began to wander towards other things far removed from what was right in front of her nose. It had been difficult to not notice the recent news plaster all over social media. There were shorts about the crops, Delaware, and even of the fungi. Although, there was a whole slew of people trying to fake the videos for likes and impressions—as one would suspect. Some digital artists had even made a few mock-ups of the Dretch thing, imaginary or not. It was quite impossible to hide things from the internet or even keep it quiet. Hanna was rather attuned to the hive mind of that place, browsing even the vilest shitholes.

Maybe I should do that fortune thing... Her thoughts interrupted themselves. Hanna had never cared much for the politics of it all—the witch thing that is. However, it had become exceedingly hard to stay out of it on a daily basis. It invaded even the most mundane, boring conversations about anything, especially when conversing with regular people. They seemed more concerned with it than some witches, naturally. Hanna could totally understand their perspective. In fact, she was not so sure if she always sided with other witches on all issues. Back in the mid and late school years, Hanna wished for nothing more than to just be normal. In her head, being a witch was a curse in every sense and all of them should just have been killed right away. It was an extreme thought in the head of a crypto bully obsessed with being popular and pretty.

Good God, did I really think like that? Good thing I don't anymore... right? Nope, you don't, hopefully. What do you mean by 'hopefully'? Nothing, you... eh, I'm on team Witch now. Of course, we are. The thoughts continued to wander. Hanna carefully cast a few glimpses around the outside of the food tent to see if some other willing subject for the tasting was close by. Hanna did spot Manon, the new girl, and tried a subtle wave to call her over, but she was headed towards the fire. If she did not see the calling, Hanna would certainly hunt her down later and make her have some apple pie. Although, Lina had to have hers first.

[Prosaic]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Location ⋗ The Patch. Interactions ⋗ Zhalia Ramshorn @Benzaiten School of Magic ⋗ Divination & Illusion Items ⋗ Suit / Crutches	_ _

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The reading left him feeling decidedly odd.

It was a creeping feeling between his shoulders, he felt like a dog with a flea that he couldn't shake off. So, by the time he nodded his farewell to the diviner, he was left to sort through his tangled thoughts. He gathered himself back up onto his crutches and made his way out of the tent, muddling through what was presented to him. The Axe, The Occultist, The Frost Queen. There was pattern to it. He appreciated that it wasn't jumbled, tarot could often be jumbled, it was no exact science. It was all interpretation and hope.

Nonetheless, this reading was cohesive. It was one straight line towards an end goal, but he couldn't imagine what the end goal was. At times he wished his abilities worked differently, that he had honed them to be a bit more broad but he hadn't so-- he'd have to figure this out himself. He wasn't certain he could figure it out but he'd be damned if he didn't try.

I'll be an agent of justice?

He had always been outspoken, the kind of person that didn't sit on their feelings. He wasn't one to judge unfairly, not usually, but an agent of justice? He wasn't paying attention well enough to have spotted the approach of Zhalia, he just felt the jostle of someone tripping over him. He stumbled in turn, wheeling to try to catch himself by digging his crutch into the ground. "Careful--" He says, before he registers exactly who he's saying it to. "Are you alright?"

He swiftly realizes that he's facing Zhalia Ramshorn.

He doesn't know her, not really, only in passing sentiments. She's an oddly pretty brunette with vibrantly blue eyes and a look of surprise and shame that almost makes him feel bad. He instinctively wants to reassure her that he's fine, maybe make an off-color joke but he can't seem to come up with one. He'd heard the rumors, of course, murmurings about cults, about necromancy. He'd never been one to fear what he didn't understand, but he was curious.

How odd for fate to pull us together like this after that reading.

He was certain he was being paranoid but it was odd, wasn't it? Something could be odd without being a pull of fate but he couldn't help but wonder. For now, he relied on whatever charisma he had to not let him bungle this conversation entirely. "I wasn't paying enough attention," he admits with a laugh, readjusting himself so that he's no longer standing like he might collapse. He extends a hand to her, "Simon Hart." He says in way of greeting. "Surely we were meant to meet."

He's got a nice smile, one that's off-putting in a good way, it's one of his better qualities. He's not got many good qualities, so it helps to have that one. "Am I blocking you from the tent?"

[Blizz]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Location ⋗ The Patch. Interactions ⋗ Hanna @Prisk School of Magic ⋗ Abjuration & Evocation Items ⋗ F O O D	_

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

"Nature is revolting."

This is not new.

"Crops are dying."

Start caring about your planet and change that.

"Delaware's coast still stands under water."

You have never stood on a coast before, then.

"It stands to reason, we ask ourselves what the witch community has attempted to correct these unnatural occurrences of mag-" Stormy folded up the newspaper and tossed it onto the kitchen table, he had seen enough of already. Just a shotgun argument to get under a reader's skin before feeding them the notion that every witch was obligated to be a magical soldier. Stormy could have talked for hours about why that alone was nothing short of a red flag, but he tossed the newspaper away for quite the opposite reason. Today was Ostara- Alban Ellir, a time that wasn't worth spending on political echo chambers. There were times and places.

The sun would be dipping lower into the sky before long, and the celebration was already underway.

A two-minute drive down the road and everyone's favorite history teacher was at the Patch. Stormy arrived just in time to hear the start of Lina Calvo's speech. Stormy felt from time to time that Lina was the glue holding Shipden together, more than the cohesion of the witches themselves. Stormy couldn't tell that anything was wrong, but surely everyone else here had read the paper. He stashed the thought away for later that they would probably have some kind of talk about this together. That would be an interesting conversation, but hopefully it would just blow over... Right?

When the speech concluded, the light show that followed was rather beautiful. The people of this coven always knew how to put on some of the best light shows. It put a smile on Stormy's face, seeing other witches just existing peacefully together and enjoying the holiday. Stormy went back to his car and pulled out a foil-wrapped pan. He then made his way over to the tent with all the food and sat it down with all the other food. Pulling off the aluminum foil, it was revealed that he brought a whole plate of brownies for the others to enjoy. Right beside a plate of apple pie, and a slice plopped into the grass haphazardly. The brownies smelled fresh and sweet, and the plate felt warm to the touch.

Apparently that pie belonged to Hanna Whittle. Stormy had seen her around a few times, and they had talked. He was always pretty open to being approached and about his background, so he found it easy to talk to someone like her.

”Well. That looks great.” He said referring to the pie she had on the table, ignoring the one that was being fed to the brass currently.

[Bartimaeus]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Location ⋗ The Patch. Interactions ⋗ Hannah (@Prisk), Stormy (@Blizz) School of Magic ⋗ Abjuration, Transmutation & Necromancy Items ⋗ N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The sweet, full scents that filled the area around the food tents served not only to entice one to partake in the various cuisines resting on the dishes and flatware that dotted the tables around - it served also to compliment the warm glow of the area surrounding them. McDaniel had no qualms with the cool air, sometimes it helped her detach, but nobody could deny enjoying a subtle warmth.

The redhead casually carried herself through the tent area, trying to get a good look at what might look good to snack on. It was a bit hard at times to find what she was looking for, considering her rather short stature, she often had to try peeking over the shoulders of others by standing on her tippy-toes. Once she popped up though, she was greeted rather quickly and enthusiastic by a familiar face.

Hanna Whittle. A rather pretty familiar face, it was. Purposefully so, even - the dark-haired girl was a bit of a beauty queen. And oh so very.. talkative. But McDaniel, despite herself, couldn't bring herself to ignore that bright, excited face. She lithely slipped between a couple people to break the threshold into the area Hanna was in. "'Scuse me."

She wasn't really sure how she felt about the nickname-giving, considering their relatively brief history, but she figured if she insisted on people calling her by her last name, she couldn't really get upset if they wanted to shorten it.

Nevertheless, she approached the table at which the other girl stood and let her eyes swap focus to the flatware upon it and their contents. There were quite a few of the sweeter things on this one. The register of the request for her to try out the apple pie finally registered and the redhead let her gaze float back to Hannah as she continued to speak. And continue to speak she did. And did. So much. She truly was the antithesis to McDaniel, it seemed. Not that she was particularly chaffed by a talkative spirit, she just.. wasn't good at meeting that energy. At all.

"Dani" averted her gaze in a measure of embarassment at some of the brunette's comments, just waiting for her to get done talking. Eventually she was finally approached by the plated slice of mousse-topped apple pie. She took it hesitantly, looking unsure of whether she really wanted to eat it or not. In truth, she had been looking for something a little more.. meaty, probably. Pie was okay, but generally she found it to be a sudden-appetite dish rather than something she would eat regularly. "I.. uh, the speech? Yeah it was alright.. I usually find em.. all the same- Hey, y'know, I'm not really a huge fan of pie.." She started, her thoughts mostly hopping to and from the multiple subjects Hannah had just spewed all over her. She let her voice trail off as the brunnete in front of her seemed to shift her focus elsewhere, as seemed the usual for her.

It was in short order that the duo was joined by another - Scott Wheeler. McDaniel let loose an internal sigh of relief. Loading off social responsibility onto others was her specialty.

She let an artificially bright expression grace her face and half-extended her pie-holding arm as Stormy addressed the remaining pie. "Heyyy, be a mate an' take my slice, would ya? I'm just.. right stuffed already." She let her eyes dart to Hannah for a moment, slightly concerned that she might offend her by declining to try the pie. Hopefully the volatile cloud of energetic spirit that surrounded her would distract her from that fact. Or maybe she wouldn't even care.

As for the guy that she extended the pie to - Scott - she didn't really know him too well. Despite his time with the Coven, she only vaguely knew him as a teacher of some sort, and an Abjurer. It didn't matter either way to her - as long as he liked pie.

[Benzaiten]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Location ⋗ The Patch Interactions ⋗ Simon @Prosaic | Stormy @Blizz, Hanna @Prisk, McDaniel @Bartimaeus School of Magic ⋗ Necromancy, Illusion & Divination Items ⋗ 1 Dagger, small component pouch (empty), cup of tea (in hand)	_

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Zhalia's eyes fixated on the man's way-too-handsome face for a moment longer before moving to her soaked sleeve. She moved the cup of hot tea into the other hand and shook her wet hand softly at the ground to dry it slightly. "I'm so sorry", she mumbled softly as she began to dry her hand and sleeve off on her top as best as she could. Luckily the hot tea wasn't burning hot. That would have been a different story.

She looked back up as the man introduced himself as Simon Hart with a side note of charm and - dare she say, flirtation? Not directed at her, of course, but rather a flirtation with words. "I'm Zhalia." A charming smile turned her face into a more welcoming, engaging canvas. She quickly moved her cup back to her not-so-wet-anymore hand and offered Simon the other for a handshake. Upon his question, her head turned to look behind her slightly as her thoughts returned to the chatter she was originally escaping from. Zhalia shook her head softly, facing Simon, her brown hair bouncing around the frame of her face. "No, not at all. But I do think I owe you the offer of dinner... so to say. If you would have me as company?" A small laugh accompanied her words. "Allow me?" She began to find a path through the various people gathered around, leading him towards the food tent.

It seemed the spot was a wanted destination for many witches, for obvious reasons. Currently, the food tent had a gathering of three people, chatting among themselves, seemingly about pie. "Excuse me", she mumbled as she reached over to grab a couple of bread slices. She was certain she had seen the person with the beard before, be it only in passing. The other two seemed to have either slipped her mind or she had not encountered them before. To be fair, she had spent most of the past three days in her room, avoiding contact wherever possible, as she acclimated to her new surroundings.

With a handful of bread slices in her hand, she turned back to Simon. "Let's head to the fire." She was eager to leave the tent and find a spot in the open where it felt less crowded. Surprisingly enough, she really didn't mind Simon's presence and even felt relief at the thought of someone to chat with. Maybe that would be enough to steer people off of the idea they could come up to her and start an unprompted conversation. And Simon seemed alright.

[PatientBean]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Location ⋗ The Patch. Interactions ⋗ N/A School of Magic ⋗ Enchantment, Abjuration & Divination Items ⋗ N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

As Manon made her way to the fire, she felt eyes fall upon her. It was to be expected, given the fact she was crowded by an assortment of other witches, but she glanced back, just in case. Seeing no one calling to her, she continued her trek until she reached the fire pit. She smiled at the others surrounding it before she sat down, warming herself. She allowed her mind to wander in this moment. Her thoughts going back to her upbringing.

They rarely threw parties. Celebrations, in her family's opinion, left you open and vulnerable. Distraction was the enemy of preparation. Manon always felt this was silly. Her classmates in school would often have parties, celebrating life and years passing. After a while, Manon stopped getting invited because everyone knew she wouldn't be able to come anyway. And after that same while, Manon stopped expecting invitations, pretending they didn't bother her but feeling remorse all the same.

Now here she was, in the midst of a party and she was still alone. She didn't know anyone here entirely, but that was her choice. If she was going to be useful, she would have to bridge the gap and make relationships with others. Who knew? Perhaps it would lead to the reading she just had coming true. Wouldn't that be something?

As her thoughts raced, she felt a tap on her shoulder. She looked over to see one of the other witches she sat next to handing her something. It was a stick that held a piece of bread. Manon graciously accepted it. "Oh, thank you." The other witch nodded her acceptance and left Manon to grill her bread over the fire. It was a small gesture, but one she felt spoke volumes. As her piece grilled, Manon decided, then and there, to make an effort. If this party was any indication, it was that life was meant to be celebrated. Who knew what the next day would bring?

[Mirandae]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Location ⋗ The Patch [food tent]. Interactions ⋗ Kelly McDaniel @Bartimaeus, Scott Wheeler @Blizz, Zhalia Ramshorn @Benzaiten. School of Magic ⋗ Conjuration & Enchantment. Items ⋗ Kitchen knife.	_______

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

"Not a huge fan of pie—Oh.. my.. Christ." Hanna snapped out of her musings with that expression on her face where something is so outrageous that one begins to chuckle instead. "Kelly.." Hanna began, using the gal's proper name to indicate the absolute seriousness of the situation. "How can someone not like pie? Not to mention apple pie. It's, like, the pie of all pies. It was in that movie, you know, American Pie. That's the most American movie there is, basically a holy relic at this point. I'm quite shocked and totally mentally unprepared for this. But, you are just too pretty and too smart to be upset at so this has to slide." Hanna babbled away, likely talking to herself at the end of the first sentence. It was all in good fun, though. She was not actually shocked, just expressing her own love for her own things like the recovering narcissist that she was.

The sudden appearance of Scott Wheeler spared Kelly from any sort of retort or pressure to explain herself, although she did not have to. Hanna certainly wanted people to taste her food, but if their taste buds were not in the stars that day and time, then it was simply not meant to be. "Right?!" Hanna exclaimed with excitement at Stormy's profound opening comment. "Did you hear Kelly just now? She doesn't like pie. Can you believe it? It's outrageous." Hanna said with chipper tones, keeping a warm smile across her lips throughout the whole thing. It was for the most part to elevate the atmosphere and enjoy the event, but also to make sure that nothing was taken in bad faith. "Oh, here we go. Yeah, take hers if you want, or another plate. I've got plenty here." Hanna commented on Kelly's hand-off of the plate to Scott. She met the gal's glimpse and returned a modest nod that it was totally alright. "Try something else, Dani. I mean, it's all out here now. We shouldn't let it go to waste." Hanna continued and cast her eyes around all the delicious and gorgeous food presented at the tables.

Maybe I should call mom. Hanna's mind wandered. She had not seen her parents in a good while. As she came to think of it, there had been no more than two visits back home since arriving and settling in Shipden Peak. Perhaps it was time for another visit. Sure, Hanna spoke with her parents on the phone several times a week, but being there and seeing them in person was naturally different and much more fulfilling. Lina had been a bit of a parental figure, of course, but it was certainly difficult for anyone to match the real thing. Hanna had a lingering worry that Lina would be the only thing she would have left soon. Divination was not Hanna's forte, but something had recently indicated that her parents would meet their end prematurely. It was something that bred fear within her heart but also the courage to stand against anything that would attempt to force this premonition to be true.

Hanna's musings were interrupted by a person excusing themselves and reaching for some bread. The person in question was Zhalia Ramshorn. She was the very new girl on the block. Hanna used to live for gossip and, frankly, talking shit about people that did not belong. Fortunately, her rounds in different witch gatherings and covens had made her a bit more accepting of differences and quirks. However, in this particular case, Hanna could not help herself due to the fact that EVERYONE ELSE was blabbering all day long about this Zhalia chick. It was like being a recovering alcoholic forced to work at the liquor store. "Hey, do you guys know anything about her? The chick that reached for the bread just now. I heard that she was in some cult that eats people or something. It's almost impossible to get a read on her and everyone just keeps coming up with new stories every day." Hanna spoke with a mellow, slightly lowered volume so as not to make herself heard by surrounding attendees.

[Prosaic]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Location ⋗ The Patch. Interactions ⋗ Zhalia Ramshorn @Benzaiten School of Magic ⋗ Divination & Illusion Items ⋗ Suit / Crutches	_ _

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

"Zhalia," he says the name as if he's committing it to memory, "You've got a beautiful name, Zhalia."

He may have had a few mixed thoughts about Zhalia but that did not render him incapable of accompanying her for the night. It wasn't as if he had plans to do anything else. He'd never been a fan of large gatherings although witches were very insistent of their importance, they had a large gathering planned for everything, every turn of the season. While he understood the cultural importance of these gatherings, it was hard to not feel as if they were excessive at times.

He didn't dare miss them, for he knew that his long deceased mother would have never dared to miss them, but at times they felt... tiring to him.

All the same, there was no use in voicing these thoughts to his newest companion so he didn't allow himself to linger on them. "Dinner sounds wonderful," he says, earnest enough. He's definitely hungry, he hasn't eaten anything since early in the afternoon. "I think I'm just about starving."

He fell in step behind her, using his crutches to anchor himself against the soft ground beneath them. The tents smelled warm and inviting, he could even hear his stomach growl as they neared them. He felt a touch embarrassed about that but he continued forward. The tent was populated by a few different witches, some that he recognized and some that he couldn't place a name to if it was in favor of saving his life.

It hardly mattered, he didn't think his knowledge or lack thereof would stop him from grabbing himself a plate and stacking it with anything that looked good enough to eat. "Popular spot," he comments to Zhalia, "Looks like you had the right idea."

He'd already stuffed a mouthful of bread into his mouth by the time she addressed him again which left him to comedically attempt to swallow that down before he responded. He coughed, cheeks reddening slightly, "Fire? Oh, absolutely." He coughed again, burrowing his face in the crook of his arm for a moment while he tried to swallow down what remained in his throat. He gestured with his chin weakly for her to lead the way.

When he spoke again, his voice was a touch raspier and his eyes were watery. "How are you adjusting to Shipden? Have you met anyone nice?

[Blizz]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Location ⋗ The Patch. Interactions ⋗ Hanna @Prisk | Kelly @Bartimaeus | Zhalia @Benzaiten | Simon @Prosaic School of Magic ⋗ Abjuration & Evocation Items ⋗ ???	_

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

"Oh, I heard. Sometimes, you'd rather eat something that's less sweet but still counts as a guilty pleasure, right?" He joked along with them, sliding the absolute pyramid of fresh brownies across the table just a little into Hanna and Kelly's general direction, and then accepting the previously turned-down plate of apple pie. "I'll take that off of your hands, thank you. But, both of you should try one of these if you're still hungry. They're still warm, and I brought plenty for everyone." The brownies Stormy brought looked to be about as big as someone's hand, and they smelled like they were just pulled out of an oven. He then proceeded to grab a plastic fork and help himself to the pie before him. "This is great, Hanna. Now I know why I came here.” That was an obvious joke to anyone who was familiar with him at all. Stormy would’ve come to this celebration even if there wasn’t any food, because people would be there and they would be there together. In Stormy’s eyes, that was the part that mattered the most during any of the countless celebrations that witches adhered to- Togetherness. In a world where their mere existence was seen as a problem, it fell on the collective shoulders of witches everywhere to look out for each other when things got rough, and put off the hard times to come when food was put out on tables during a light show.

Regarding Zhalia, though? Stormy wasn’t sure what to say when Hanna asked. ”Ive heard rumors about her being in a bad situation, but that’s it. I don’t usually pay attention to rumors.” He was, after all, a high school teacher, who was around hundreds of teenagers daily. Kids were cruel and spread rumors like politicians spread paranoia… too soon? If Stormy paid attention to every rumor he heard about a student being gone for more than a day, or about what he said and then she said after he said, then he’d never get anything done. Stormy knew there was usually a person on the other end of those rumors, and even if they were true, rumors were typically negative things about people. This wasn’t the right evening for negativity. ”Whatever it is, I’m sure she’ll mention what is and isn’t true when she wants to.” That was pointed at Hanna mostly. Not for the sake of singling her out, but Stormy knew she liked to talk, and that she couldn’t really help it. It was just how Hanna was. ”Some people have things they don’t enjoy talking about during celebrations.” He said between bites of that pie.

When he saw Zhalia come over with someone else- what was his name? Simone?- he wondered if they heard him and Hanna talking about her, but all they did was grab some food and leave again. That would've been awkward. "But if those rumors are true, then she must be here to get away from her surroundings. Anyone who has been in a cult would tell you it's a completely different world once you've left, and it makes sense that she'd be here. Lina wouldn't stand for someone being here if they weren't well-intentioned." He paused for a minute, finishing the pie. "I think that's why we have these gatherings still. Witches have celebrated the turnings of the seasons throughout history, but we need each other just like humans. It's only fair we keep up the traditions when they welcome people into safer places." And now Hanna had him talking nonstop. She just had that effect on people, didn't she?

[Benzaiten]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Location ⋗ The Patch Interactions ⋗ Simon @Prosaic, Manon @PatientBean School of Magic ⋗ Necromancy, Illusion & Divination Items ⋗ 1 Dagger, small component pouch (empty), cup of tea & food (in hand)	_

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Zhalia was quick to leave the food tent behind them. For one, she didn't appreciate that this place would see a constant flow of people entering and leaving, disrupting the quiet she craved. And for another, she didn't think getting to know someone was easiest here. The fire would be a much calmer spot, even though it technically had more people surrounding it than the food tent.

As they weaved through the crowd, Simon asked her about settling in. Zhalia smiled. "Well, I met you." She shot him a quick glance. It was true, he was the first person she actually considered having met here. Unless you counted the Coven Head, one Miss Lina Calvo. She let out a sigh and raised her eyebrows involuntarily at the thought of that welcome greeting she had received. Her head spun around to look for the woman but she couldn't spot her at the moment. Funnily enough, that made Zhalia's stomach turn. Something about her...

"Here we are", she gestured to the open fire with her mug in hand as if there was any possibility Simon could have missed it. As they moved closer, she could feel the warmth caress her skin. Anticipation put a small smile on her lips. She had always enjoyed the warmth of a fire, sitting in the dark night with a warm drink, a soft ending to a long day.

As she walked around the fire, her eyes scanned the area for any free seats. There weren't too many seats in general as the entire thing was a makeshift situation but there were some outdoor chairs provided and some of those benches that would always squeak whenever someone would sit on them. At her coven, they would sit on wood logs and on the floor in the dirt. She quickly chased the thought away. This was not the time or place to be reminiscent. "There is some space", Zhalia pointed out. As she began moving in the general direction, heading towards the free seats, Zhalia carefully managed to actually not bump into any person this time around. She did not need to repeat the incident from earlier. One hot tea spill on her hand was enough for the night.

"I am still adjusting", she began to answer Simon's earlier question. "But it seems like a really nice place. Lina Calvo... She seems really... invested... in her people." Zhalia turned her head to look back at Simon for a moment. "How long have you been here?" She closed the last few steps towards the empty seats, shooting a shy "Hi" in the direction of the blonde woman who occupied the farther end of the bench before sitting down and scooting a little closer to make space for Simon to sit as well. "I was gonna head towards the woods in a bit to collect some herbs. It's tradition." She shrugged nonchalantly, as if it meant little to her and was just a habit, but that would've been a lie. "I know the soup is provided but I'd like to pick the herbs myself. Or at least what I can find. You're welcome to join me if you like." Zhalia brought the mug to her lips to take a sip of her tea. It had cooled down enough to not burn her anymore.

[PatientBean]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Location ⋗ The Patch. Interactions ⋗ Zhalia @Benzaiten, Simon @Prosaic School of Magic ⋗ Enchantment, Abjuration & Divination Items ⋗ N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Manon was content, eating her bread when she felt eyes on her. She had always felt eyes on her for the past few months. She was new there. An anomaly that no one knew. She had grown used to it. She glanced up to see who it was and her eyes fell on a young woman with brown hair and piercing eyes. The girl acknowledged her with a shy greeting. Had Manon seen her around before? Perhaps, though Manon often kept to herself. Manon gave a warm smile in return. Manon's eyes shifted to the individual next to Zhalia.

Simon Hart. He was someone Manon knew better, at least through passing. While the two of them never conversed fully, they had passed by each other on more than one occasion. A quick "hello, how are you?" in passing. What Manon did know about Simon was his technical prowess. She had heard many things since coming here, but one of the popular ones, especially in her current residence, was Simon's ability and intelligence. It had made Manon want to meet the man to see how his mind ticked.

That was the other side of the card that is Simon Hart, though. Simon never seemed willing to converse with anyone. What lay beyond that exterior? Perhaps Zhalia cracked him open and was proceeding to find out what secrets there were. Manon could not pass up this opportunity and she did say she wanted to open up more.

Manon made her way over to the two of them. "Sorry, but do you mind if I join you two?" Manon's french accent, something she took pride in, was center stage. "I don't believe we have ever been introduced. I am Manon D'aureville. A pleasure to meet you both." She did not bother to take a seat as the two could tell her to take a hike if they wanted. But she was hoping for an in. Her eyes glanced over at Simon to see his interaction. Though she knew nothing about the other woman, it was Simon who intrigued her more.

[Mirandae]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Location ⋗ The Patch [food tent]. Interactions ⋗ Scott Wheeler @Blizz, Simon Hart [mentioned], Zhalia Ramshorn [mentioned], Kelly McDaniel [mentioned]. School of Magic ⋗ Conjuration & Enchantment. Items ⋗ Cell phone.	_______

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Hanna felt as though she recognized the man with the crutches accompanying Zhalia Ramshorn. He had a rather handsome visage, easily standing out in a crowd. It was a momentary distraction for the lass otherwise engaged in conversation with aspiring fine pastry tasters.

"Of course you don't, Scott—flying high and mighty up there in the faculty clouds next to the Gods of education and outstanding morality. But, you know, us mere mortals down here on the ground do enjoy a bit chit-chattering. Although, I suspect that the 'eating people' thing was a bit out there." Hanna gabbled in the typical fashion, but with a sense of lightheartedness and humility. Even if some words of hers could be perceived as headstrong, she usually made up for it with mellow tones in her voice or a pretty smile. "People talk the most during celebrations, though. It's been scientifically proven, you know, I think. OH WELL, I'm going to taste one of your brownies, because people also EAT at celebrations." She continued, snagged one of those gorgeous brownies—although a bit warm to the touch—and took a comically giant bite that puffed up her cheeks when it was all in there, being chewed at.

When some of that brownie had gone down, the word factory spun right up again. "I'd like to be in some kind of cult, though. Wouldn't that be something? I mean, not in one that eats people, because I don't think I'm into that, even if I haven't tried it. Maybe it's good?!" Hanna exclaimed with a hint of sarcasm. "But, maybe in a Love Cult or something like that. Can you imagine? I think I'm the type they'd try to recruit. I bet I wouldn't even realize it's a cult until someone is trying to put something weird up my butt." Hanna chuckled at her own joke. "Jokes aside, I hear what you're saying. It is indeed important that we do this thing properly. We're under enough scrutiny as it is. Believe you me, I've been on that side of this coin once all the while trying to figure everything out on this side we're on now—what a fucking ride that was, jeez." Hanna finally stopped talking for a second to take another bite of the brownie. "These are delicious!" She tried to say with a stuffed mouth.

Hanna's gaze lingered on Zhalia and Simon as they departed the food tent. The gal's process of swinging back and forth between flamboyant chatter and profound pondering was a rather harsh roller coaster ride. She plunged into her mind once again. Of course she didn't eat people. I don't know why I said that. I think I just have an issue with Necromancy, that's all. Should I judge someone on that merit alone, though? Obviously not, but it's easier said than done. I've still spent most of my waking life judging people for petty things and acting on it, often with hostility. I wonder where Janet McMillan is these days—I'd like to apologize to her, I think, and buy her something nice. Even though Hanna's thoughts could take her for a long walk on the beach, her presence in the real world rarely faltered because of it. She could certainly do several things at the same time.

Hanna grabbed a clean plate and put down the brownie she was gorging. Then, she spent a second or two focusing on her internal energies flowing throughout her whole body, centering in the pineal gland, reaching up and out through her crown. A faint distortion of light in a tiny space above the table began to form. Hanna reached her hand into it. It would certainly be a bizarre sight to any ordinary person observing it from just a few steps away. It would look as if Hanna's hand just up and vanished into thin air, leaving her arm visibly chopped off by the wrist. From this tiny pocket dimension, Hanna retrieved her cell phone. "Okay, here we go, selfie time!" Hanna almost cheered as she tried to catch the light and angles next to Scott and Kelly. "Come on, big smiles you guys." Hanna snapped the picture, which would capture the beautiful food on the tables as well as the two wonderful people she was with. Now, whether Scott and Kelly actually posed along Hanna was another matter altogether. All too often Hanna would participate all by herself, but she did not mind.

[Blizz]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Location ⋗ The Patch. Interactions ⋗ Hanna @Prisk | McDonald @Bartimaeus School of Magic ⋗ Abjuration & Evocation Items ⋗ ???	_

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

People did like to talk during celebrations, Stormy couldn't argue with that. What good was an Ostara gathering where you couldn't share the joy with another person? A trick question, really. "I'm sure that you mere mortals enjoy it. But, yes, the "eating people" thing does seem a little extreme, really. We'd probably know already if something like that were true." To say nothing of the fact that he heard they sacrificed newborns. Rumors usually didn't sit well with Stormy, especially when he was a witch. Over the years, he heard a lot of rumors about witches; that they were an evolutionary crisis, that they were signs of god's existence, threats to national security, the list went on. Whenever Stormy heard such rumors about witches, he typically went out of his way to discredit them and anyone who was considered a "source" on such supposed facts. His favorite "rumor" was the one where witches were the result of scientific experiments and that they owed their existence to the American military as a result. That one made him laugh. A lot.

"I think being in a cult would be a pretty bad thing, cannibalism or not. People only really enjoy being in a cult when they're on the inside. You'd be brainwashed among other things. A lot of humans think covens are cults, if I remember right." Stormy was mostly just following along with the conversation so Hanna wasn't talking non-stop for nothing. "At least, I hope most people don't like being in cults." That was a joke. Of course people don't like cults. Stormy cracked a grin when Hanna tried the brownie. "Go ahead, help yourself to them. There's enough for everyone." Back when Stormy had first been introduced to Shipden, he was in an absolute mess. He hadn't eaten in days and was living out of a car that was probably only half a mile from running empty. He always enjoyed baking or cooking, and it was one of the first things he did when he had the chance. That was the emotional equivalent of peroxide on an infected wound for him, and it was even better that people actually liked the taste of what he made.

Oh, selfie time? Selfie time. Stormy tossed the now empty plate into the trash and leaned in beside Hanna and Kelly and smiled for the picture. It might've been just a touch difficult to actually see if he was smiling, seeing as he had an entire lion's mane draping down from his face, but he was smiling. And it was a genuine smile. The world outside this coven was often a nasty place. People hated witches, and wanted them dead and gone at every turn, but nights like this were a reminder that there wasn't a single witch on this earth who had to just lie down and die. They deserved a good life too, even if they had to struggle to get it.

[RisenSun]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Location ⋗ The Patch Interactions ⋗ n/a School of Magic ⋗ Abjuration, Divination & Enchantment Items ⋗ satchel with medical supplies/dirty scrubs	___

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The week had been unceremoniously busy. One baby girl born after two sweltering days of induction. Another only hours behind. Then an emergency with a 30 week gestation that nearly ended in demise.

Sage was running on the fumes, only getting hour naps in here and there before continuing her work. Her mind was set on getting home, stripping down and climbing into some cool bedsheets.

But as she walked home, she caught the smell of fire, tea, sweet baked goods. That’s right, Ostara, she’d nearly forgotten as the days slipped by. Her stomach yearned, wanting it all. When was the last time she’d ate? She couldn’t recall. Leering down at herself, she viewed presentable enough. Changing out her work pants and apron, she now had on her most blue jeans and an oversized green sweater to cover her thin white tanktop. Sage usually carried clothes to wear on the way home, she’d scared enough people walking home in bloody outfits to amend it.

Yanking the hat from her head, Sage began marching her way over. The smell only got stronger and her stomach let out a bellow so loud she could’ve toppled over.

Despite her hunger, Sage’s first mission wasn’t any food. She needed coffee.

Breaking into the tents, her eyes took in the crowds of people. Everything glowed with the comfort of the fires, comradery alight.
She did enjoy these events but missed them often due to her work. Exhaustion would be well worth the price later. Maybe she could even bring something back for Gran.

Taking rushed strides to the drinks, Sage smiles at the clerk. It was a lazy, sheepish smile, all that she could muster.
”Hot coffee please, just black.”
Pointed in the correct direction, Sage found what she needed. Grabbing the largest cup possible and filling it to the brim, a sense of calm overtook her. Something about coffee always found a way to ground her as she clawed at the base of herself to revitalize her energy.

She takes a stance beside the beverage tent, letting her eyes weave through the groups. They finally settle on a fire that was unaccompanied, the flames dancing as her mind sunk into a gray ease. Sipping away, she melted into silence as she enjoyed the scenery and her warm bean juice.