Featuring poetic beats, lyrical storytelling, and other assorted jazz.
Shayla had noticed Lisbet before the woman who ran the dairy farm told her to go mentor the new girl so she could learn how things were done. Shayla had apologized profusely when she realized Madame had only done it so that Shayla could provide distraction while Madame tried to seduce Lisbet’s beau.
“Don’t worry,” Lisbet said. “I was about done with him anyway.
She’s welcome to him and his diseases.”
It wasn’t long after that they found they had a shared
interest – magic.
“What can you do?” Lisbet asked.
“This.” And in a blink Shayla cast an illusion that blurred
her edges so that unless you knew where to look, your eyes would slide over
her. “And you?”
“This.” Lisbet said, casting a small orb of glowing light.
The witch trials were coming up. They had both secretly
wanted to go for several years now, but it was only upon meeting each other
that they decided to do it.
“Nothing stopping us from going as a team,” Lisbet said. Shayla
agreed.
They whispered back and forth during the orientation session
about what they thought the trials might be. Shayla was sure the witches were
dropping hints in their words. A serious faced witch interrupted them to ask for
their names.
“I’m Moth. She’s Firefly,” Shayla said.
The witch went away muttering something that sounded like “not
likely to hug bears but still silly.”
“It was a little silly,” Shayla agreed later that night in
the woods. “But names have power, and I didn’t want to share mine right away.
Not until I was sure we’d pass.”
“We will. We’ve got 6 out of the 7 things we need to find
with plenty of time left. Why those names?”
“Based on our powers,” Shayla answered. “And one time Madame
compared me to a moth because I was a pest.”
“Shows what she knows,” Lisbet said. “We need your magic
now.”
Shayla’s magic covered them both as a bear wandered through
the clearing, ignoring them.
“My turn,” Lisbet said. Her orb illuminated a mushroom, the
last item on the list. “We make a great team.”
“That we do,” said Shayla, following Lisbet back to the
cottage and their future.
Song Choice: We Are Going to Be Friends by the White Stripes
Liner Notes for This Groove: This piece of flash fiction was created for the Weekly Scribblings prompt at Poets and Storytellers United, Butterflies and Moths. It was also inspired by the short story I wrote a couple of weeks ago, Witch Trials, just to see if I could find more to say.
