[private] no other sadness in the world would do, apothica

[stevie]

you knew it still hurts under my scars
From when they pulled me apart

Stevie doesn’t recognize a world in which there is no pain. Bewitched may be a kind woman to those who know her, but she is not a kind mother. She had lain with a magician - a forgettable night for the both of them - out of sheer curiosity to see what their conjoined bloodlines would produce. A stronger version of the woman’s witchcraft, perhaps, or a twisted form of magic. She had not realized that the magician’s powers were demonic in origin, and her twins were borne from that dark magic.

Evanora had shifted one time, into something dark and twisted, and their mother had nearly killed her before she had shifted back into an innocent child; only her self-healing had kept her twin alive. The girls had fled their mother then, hardly old enough to sustain themselves, their mother fraught with grief and begging them to stay. Stevie, in all of her naivety, had wanted to stay, but her twin had shifted into something fearful and dragged her away.

To this day, Stevie can’t remember exactly what it was Eva had turned into, only that it had scared her nearly to death.

Eva had never been able to control her shifting much. It’s what drove Stevie away, in the end.

She also doesn’t remember ever shape-shifting the way her sister would, only an aching in her bones in the early light of the morning and a metallic taste in her throat. She knows her shifts aren’t like Eva’s - hers aren’t made of fear, but rather make fear. That’s all she knows of the demon beneath her skin, and it’s all that she finds herself wanting to know about it.

It has been several months since the last time she woke up with no memories of the night before, but as morning looms she cannot help but to shiver as she skirts the edge of the meadow. She has turned to sleeping most of the day and waking in the evening, because the demon only likes to emerge when she’s asleep - apparently she has no control of the shift - and shies away from the daylight. If she’s vigilant at night, she is safe.

Or so she thinks.

— Stevie

@Apothica