Corollary

Aftermath +1

The garden was trying to push in. Its scent felt like it was everywhere, in my nose, down my throat, brushing up against my skin. I couldn’t remember it ever being this strong. I felt surrounded and hounded all at the same time. This wasn’t familiar. This was being treated like a noob. So, I stopped. I refused to move. This mass of greenery weirdness cosplaying as a suburban garden wasn’t going to get me.  The scent whiffed round me even stronger… and then, it dissipated.

What in the actual hell had that been about? It was as if the garden had tried to swallow me up. This wasn’t what I came back for. A part of me was screaming to turn back, walk through the house till I was at the front door and keep walking. Even though I was now breathing more air than scent, I could still feel the urge to move. Like the garden was still trying to hurry me up. But I stuck with my instincts and followed the narrow path, step by step, as it wound its way through. It felt like a bloody long walk, eyes shut, one step in front of the other, accompanied by a growing sullen silence till it popped like a balloon and I knew I was at the end of the path. I opened my eyes and in front of me was this large tree that ought to have been visible from the patio door. The tree was super leafy, unlike its cousins outside, who were already shedding their browned belongings. It was flourishing in the middle of its own personal forever summer. Well, hello there.

The path had ended just before I had to step underneath its shade. Something glinted and blinged from deep within, beneath the tree. A proverbial pot, I smirked to myself. With one foot on the path and the other hovering over the grass, I again thought about turning back. I wanted to go back to the safety of sitting in my nooky flat, staring down at the people going about their everyday lives. I wanted the mundaneness of knowing nothing more about the world other than what the tv and the internet told me. Okay, the internet was for shit, with all kinds of crazy folk but at least they didn’t know magic was real. They only thought they did.  If they knew how much magic was like real life, with the haves and have-nots, and the haves wanting more and more, believing that they were better than everyone else. That even with a world with magic, shitty people were still shitty and made worse because now they had access to explosive power in tiny amulets. It was all yay and fun until it wasn’t and folk were shooting said amulets at you even though you were just kids. The bloody cherry being that these folk with their amulets were seriously OG sexist. If I was that fifteen-year-old girl again on the bus, listening to the boy who told me about magic…