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Writer's pictureAdam Gaffen

And Now For Something Completely Different...


Hello and happy Thursday!


That sounds so odd. I mean, I never can get the hang of Thursdays, can you?

Maybe this will make it better. Our very own Olivia Brooks is back with another micro-fiction for you to enjoy!


- Kendra


It wasn’t too long after the lightning snatched away darkness from the sky that they appeared. The man had taken me in not even a week ago and was already conducting spells and bounds of remedies for a cure to lack of talent.

I was unsure whether to take that as a sign of insult or pity.

Autumn strikes again and my resilience continues to grow. The hunger for the library to feed my soul gnaws on, but I was lost in the forest too long and gave up resistance for help. He did not know I was a witch, or that I too grew up in the forest. But he also never asked, so I never told.

The spell today was stronger than most, with complications to summon Mother Nature’s dark core and give me some of the explosive power she endured during disasters. The man, Tedith, thought it was only right to bloom me off dark power. Although the enchanted forest was a surge of power I held loosely in my pocket, I didn’t deny. I already had bright, colorful, stupid rainbows and butterflies abilities, what would an elemental twist of ruins hurt?

The lightning struck, crackling the sky in a patchy crystalized glaze before sweeping itself right back into the pot that sat at the bottom of Tedith’s chimney.

“Well, next time,” he said grudgingly but also with no surprise on his face.

“I think we call it quits.”

That caught Tedith’s attention.

“It’s just that all this work you’re going through, what’s in it for you?” It was a question I was trying to figure out the short term span I have been here. No one helps another, especially out in a desolate forest, without an ulterior motive.

“The darkness is going to take over,” he spat the words into his coffee mug. Shoulders slump and elbows grinding into the wooden table, it was obvious he was about to say something once unspoken.

“What do you mean, take over?” I have a long trip ahead to get back home, storms should be the least of my worries.

As if he read my mind, “not the darkness of a storm,” Tedith acknowledged as his eyes slid to the round window behind me, “but the bleakness of Night. Mother Nature corresponds with the heat and chill of the day; the sun rising and falling, snow flurries and rain showers… but she does not have power over the signals of the ocean’s waves. Nighttime is for the beyond, the gray matter in the dark matter that we do not see.”

“So, why don’t you just channel it?” Here I assumed the man wanted a friend in divinity, but oh how far off I was.

“Because I can’t, child. I mean, teenager? Adult?”

I gave him a knowing look.

“Anyways,” he continued on, now in an eager stance. “I saw it on your fingertips, like debris lingering off branches of autumn trees. The power lies within you, now I just need to figure out how to get it out before it’s too late.”

That’s when I figured out even immortality had a deadline.

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