Council
Katherine
I pulled up the strawberry plant that had been causing me trouble in recent days. The scent of concentrated strawberries flooded into my nose, causing me to sneeze several times before I found another place to put it in.
“Catherine!”
I yelled at the sound of my name and turned to find my mother.
“Come,” she said, her expression one that worried me so. Mother didn’t know how to hide her expressions from me. If you had said she tried, she seemed to fail every time. I could always see it , the fear and the worry , every time she looked at me.
“The witches are holding council. Your master is one of them.”
I wiped my dirty hands on my apron and ran into our cottage. I found my witch’s hat and my robe and ran straight to the tower where the council had been called. I was sweating buckets by the time I got there and thought of my drying spell in my mind before mentally conjuring it.
Blowing me suddenly was a soft ghost of cold wind that dried off the smell of sweat and, most of all, the scent of old clothes and earth. The tower was a massive structure just outside the main city of Aria, the capital city of the witches’ watch.
Outside were already pairs of my peers , of mine that sneered at me, however. I felt a sudden jolt of embarrassment and fear, causing me to pull my hat further down on my face, look to the ground, and simply wish it could open up and swallow me whole. I hated going outside, I thought to myself as I walked past them, afraid that I had somehow made them feel bad.
“Catherine smells like dirt. No amount of drying spells is going to change that fact.”
I felt my cheeks heat up and my legs move faster. I was grateful when the tower doors opened and I was finally able to get away from their jeers. But I knew what they would say.
My family was filled with those who could not use magic. It wasn’t a terrible thing in itself , it was just seen to be beneath many. It was also a preconceived notion that those without magic could not have a child who could make magic , until me. As rare as I was, it didn’t mean I was remarkable. It only meant that people didn’t care , people who should care didn’t. My master being one of them.
The tower was larger on the inside than it was on the outside, the tower itself making up an actual city, and only those with magic could get past the first floor, making it impossible for people like my parents to visit.
I entered the lift, taking us up to the 17th floor along with a couple of other witches who paid me no mind. I smiled slightly, lifted my head just a little bit, and allowed my eyes to wander past the lift.
The lift practically moved us up from one plane to the other, and we were currently surrounded by a great many rings of light that showed us how many floors we were passing and just how fast. I counted each one until we reached 17, and then I came off.
I stepped out of the circle of light and smiled as the 17th floor came into focus. With a small smile on my face, I walked down to the council room , a great circular hall that sat the twelve great masters, then their thirteen apprentices, and from those thirteen, their own apprentices.
It was a massive conference of witches and wizards made to discuss the future of our people. There were many councils like this that happened across various decades, but not all were able to experience it.
The twelve sat at the center of the room around the circular table. Their apprentices , being professors, amongst which my master was part , sat around them, numbering twelve times thirteen. It was a large affair, and with each apprentice having thirteen apprentices each, save for a couple of them, of course, we were quite a large number in the Council Hall.
Despite being surrounded by so many people, I felt at ease. I felt as though I was free for a brief moment, and for the most part of the meeting, no one bothered me , which perhaps formed a slight differentiality that nothing would go wrong that day.
The council meeting’s discussion bordered on an alpha called Damon. I heard a few shrugs and groans around me. “They’re so disgusting,” I heard one of them say. Many witches believed werewolves to be disgusting , and for good reason too.
They would say werewolves were too animalistic. They would say they were too rash and wicked and cruel, people who needed to constantly prove their strength, causing the deaths of others in the process. It sounded like us , but who was I to judge?
After all, we had to go through several quests in our life to move from one stage to the other. I myself would be included, and by the time I was going to stop being an apprentice and move on to being an intern, I would have had to go on several quests myself , several quests, they said, to find your true magical bearing, to find your true element.
Myself, I always knew all the elements, and the purpose of the quest was to become one with the magic such that my element became my strongest suit.
Some had interesting things like gravity and sound; others had boring things like water and fire and air. I wished for something interesting, like nature , the power to make things grow. I believed I would become one of those. I smiled to myself.
But werewolves, I thought , from what they were saying, it seemed as though we would go to war at some point. “They should all be killed anyway,” I heard someone close to me say. “We have the power to finish those beasts; let’s just do it and be done with it. They’re a stain upon this planet anyway.”
I let out a soft gasp. Why did they think like that? What was wrong with them to think that?
The meeting ended inconclusively, as many other meetings did. It was a known fact that sometimes the Council would spend a year or two deliberating on one thing. One time, they spent a decade trying to define the term “open” that was in a contractual term with our agreement with the sorcerers.
“Catherine.”
I found my master, who waved me over with a soft call of my name. She was one of those with wind magic but used it in a rather miraculous way , she could use the wind to make anything travel, including her voice, to my specific ears only. “Meet me in my hall,” she said.
“Blessing your time,” I gave her a nod and hopped, skipped, and jumped all the way to her hall , but of course, keeping my head down.
Once there, I found her other apprentices, people that were genuinely after my life.
“Oh, look what the fucking cat dragged in.”
My mood was dampened, and that was when I realized that I had placed too much hope in the day. From talks of war to meeting them, my day would get worse from there , and it was obvious.