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By Olivia Merchiston
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“ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE,” Hazel grumbled as the small panes of warped glass rattled loudly in their black lead frames. Her cottage, despite standing for hundreds of years in the wilds of Scotland, was not a fan of storms. And this was a storm and a half. For days now the wind had howled, the rain pelted against the walls, and the trees around the house struggled to stay upright. Everything outside was messy; debris rushed past as she stared out of the small, deep-set window above her kitchen sink and sighed.
“Yep, another day in paradise. Let’s see if we can figure out this spell.”
A loud thud and a scratching noise sounded from the lone door. Hazel wrapped her thick-knitted cardigan tighter around herself and went to open it. Along with a strong gust of wind, several leaves and small twigs, and a surprising amount of rain, a large black wolf entered the cottage.
“Willow, for the love of the moon, you’re dripping all over the floor!” Hazel cried with an exasperated flounce of her arms. “I have just cleaned in here and then you come in and—”
“All right, all right, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to transform outside, though. My fur is so much better against the rain than this stupid human skin,” Willow scoffed as their body twisted and warped, cracked and popped, until eventually, a very tall, very muscular figure stood where the wolf once did. Hazel’s mouth dried up.
“Very naked,” Hazel whispered as her thoughts ran away with her.
“I’m sorry?” Willow raised a quizzical brow and gave her a lopsided smile.
“Hmm?” Hazel managed to slowly drag her eyes up the distracting figure of her familiar until she made eye contact with dark brown eyes that sparkled with mischief. “Nothing. You’re just very naked, as usual... Do you mind?”
Willow looked down at themself and, with a wave of their hand, a simple black outfit appeared over their body. She had never seen Willow in anything other than a thin black tee-shirt and simple black trousers. They didn’t even wear shoes. Ever.
“Oh!” Willow suddenly exclaimed and began spinning about on the spot like a mad thing. “I brought you... I brought youuuuu... I brou—ah! Here it is. Brought you this; I know you need it.”
Hazel watched a blurry object fly towards her and land with a thud on the rough wooden table in front of her. With a small, surprised grin, she shot a look at Willow, who winked back.
“This is what you were doing in this weather? Are you mad? What if you get sick?” Hazel tried to admonish them, but she couldn’t help her smile.
“I’m a wolf, Haze. A little rain won’t make me sick. And anyway, you used all the last one and you can’t make the spell work without it. So, just shut up and say thank you and let’s get to work. Ok?”
Hazel’s chest flooded with warmth. No matter how many years they’d been with her now, Willow was always surprising her. To think they would go out in this weather just to make sure she could complete her work! She was a lucky witch with a very supportive familiar. She couldn’t possibly articulate all of that, though; it was far too embarrassing, so she merely smiled, nodded and said, “Ok. Thank you, Willow.”
She picked up the soaking wet, very dead rabbit and moved over to the kitchen counters. She needed to prepare all her ingredients with the utmost focus if this was going to work this time. All the books said this spell was hard, but this would be her sixteenth attempt, and she was getting frustrated.
As she pulled dried herbs, candles, and questionable bottles from their respective shelves, she glanced over her shoulder to see Willow settling down in front of the wood-burning stove with a book in their hands. Their long legs stretched out as they sat down, propping their huge bare feet up on the low coffee table and sinking back into the cracked, worn leather of the wingback chair.
“I still don’t know why you’re bothering with this. You look fine,” they said as they glanced up and caught her watching them.
Hazel snapped her eyes back to the pile of ingredients, a blush forming on her cheeks. She hadn’t been staring at Willow’s large hands and muscled forearms. Nope, not she.
“It’s not about how I look now,” she sighed. “It’s about how I’ll look in fifty years when you still look exceptional and I’m... wizened and arthritic and probably incontinent.”
Willow laughed, and it filled the small cottage like music.
“I won’t feel any different about you then than I do now, Haze. You don’t have to do this for my sake.”
I’d like it if you felt some kind of different about me, to be honest, Hazel thought as she collected her things and headed over to the side table near the front door. She ran through everything she needed once more in her head: basil, horsetail, distilled water, a rabbit heart (gross), sage to burn, candles, a mirror, and lastly, the book containing the incantation she needed to recite as she mixed the ingredients before drinking.
“Ok, it’s all ready and I’m going to try really, really hard this time, so stay quiet. You distracted me last time,” she told Willow with a slightly nervous flap of her hands.
“Pfft, I did no such thing,” Willow chuckled as they flipped a page over in their book. “I was coming home from a hunt. How was I to know you wouldn’t be able to focus on your work once I transformed?”
“You just had to transform right in my line of sight though, didn’t you? What did you think would happen?!”
“You’re right,” Willow conceded with a serious nod. “Ten years and you still can’t keep your eyes in your skull when I transform.”
Hazel shot them a harsh glare in the reflection of the large mirror. They weren’t wrong, but still, the arrogance. Willow snorted a laugh and returned to their book, allowing Hazel to take a deep, calming breath and centre her mind on the task at hand. Slowed ageing was never something she thought she’d be dealing with, but then she never thought she’d have such an attractive familiar, whose species aged much slower than humans. A lot could go wrong with this spell, as she’d learnt the hard way the first fifteen times. Still, she was adamant that Willow would not be the only super-hot, young-looking eighty-year-old in this house, so she persevered.
She lit the candles, cleansed the area with the sage, and followed the recipe to the letter as she added the various ingredients to a wide-necked glass bottle. As she spoke the incantation, the storm outside seemed to fade away, and she felt her energy shifting and changing as the words echoed around the small cottage. Her eyes flashed with various colours as the magic around her began to work, and once she was done chanting, she lifted the bottle to her lips, took a steadying breath, and drank.
In the mirror, she watched herself intently. The spell slowed the ageing process, but it should also give her a little bit of a ‘freshen-up’ now. That’s how she would know it had worked. The residual magic still swirled in her eyes, mixing dozens of colours in a marbled pattern that she’d always found fascinating.
But nothing else happened.
Her eyes flicked to Willow’s reflection, who was still as a statue, book in one hand and the other halfway through turning a page. It didn’t even seem as if they were breathing. They watched her so closely that even a rogue strand of their tousled black hair falling into their face didn’t distract them from Hazel’s reflection.
Still, nothing happened.
It didn’t work... again.
Hazel clamped her eyes shut against the disappointment. What had she done so wrong that nothing at all happened? At least the last time she failed, she’d had to live with someone else’s nose for a week. But nothing happening was an entirely new, and deeper, failure.
She bent to blow out the candles.
“Wow!”
At the sudden exclamation, Hazel nearly jumped out of her skin, while Willow was suddenly on their feet, body twitching and cracking—readying itself to transform—and growling low.
“What the hell?!” Hazel cried as she turned in Willow’s direction. But clearly it wasn’t them, and as they nodded once towards the mirror behind her, Hazel got a sinking feeling in her gut. She turned slowly on her heel.
“This place is so cute, oh my goodness,” a voice said. Hazel’s voice. Hazel’s reflection’s voice. Her reflection was no longer... well, reflecting, and was instead, standing in the mirror with a huge dopey grin on her face. Hazel was speechless. What the hell had she done?!
“Ooh, look at that candle, sweet!” the reflection cooed as she stuck her hand forward, out of the mirror, and reached towards the still alight candle. Her fingers made contact with the flame.
“Ow! Gah, burnie! You should warn folk about that,” she said as she flapped her sore hand and then glanced around at the frame of the mirror. Before Hazel could even comprehend what was happening, the reflection’s hands were grasping the edges and hauling herself out of the frame. She clattered onto the side table as she tried to find her footing, and her boots, which matched Hazel’s exactly, skittered across the polished wooden surface, knocking everything else off.
Hazel watched for what felt like years as her reflection tried to gain her footing. It took an awkwardly long time for her to even get one leg successfully out of the mirror, with her grunting and puffing as she went. Hazel shot a look at Willow, who was still twitching and had their hands clenched tightly into fists, on alert. They glanced back at her and shrugged slightly, but she could see they still weren’t relaxing as they watched the reflection flail and puff.
The reflection continued to struggle her way out of the frame. She cursed under her breath now and then, but giggled at her situation, too. Hazel watched for a few more minutes until she couldn’t take it anymore.
“Can I... Do you need a hand?” she asked politely.
The reflection, who was now balanced on her hands against the frame, with both feet skittering across the table surface like a newborn deer on ice, paused and looked over her shoulder. She offered Hazel a sheepish grin and said, “That would be great, thanks!”
Hazel stepped forward and offered her a hand. The reflection tried to take it, but as she reached out, her feet slipped again and instead, both she and Hazel went tumbling to the ground, knocking over the side table in the process. Hazel let out an “oof” as her body made contact with the stone floor.
“Oh, my lord, I am so sorry!” the reflection cried as she tried to push herself off Hazel. This person, or whatever she was, had no sense of personal space though, as she placed a hand on Hazel’s face to push herself up. Hazel just lay there and let her cheek be smashed into the floor in resignation.
“Ok, why don’t I help you up, miss?” Willow’s voice finally sounded and then suddenly the weight was gone from Hazel’s chest and face, and she was able to sit up. Willow had the reflection by the waist, her feet dangling a few inches off the floor.
The reflection bounced around in Willow’s hold with that same dopey grin on her face.
“Oooh, strong! I bet I can’t get away. Watch this.”
With no further warning, she started flailing about uncontrollably in Willow’s grip, causing them to throw their head side to side and lean back to avoid her wild arms. Hazel, however, was not so lucky, and in attempting to stand, she caught the reflection’s foot right on her chin and fell back to the floor again.
“Haze!”
Willow all but launched the reflection away from them and crouched down to examine Hazel’s chin for any damage. Hazel couldn’t stop the warm, smug feeling spreading in her chest that they’d so unceremoniously, and quite literally, dumped the reflection at the first sign of her discomfort. And she definitely couldn’t stop herself from watching their dark eyes as they looked over her face with worry.
“Does it hurt anywhere?” Willow asked quietly as their hands ran over her jaw softly. The sheer size and power Willow had, Hazel found herself stunned by their ability to be so gentle; they handled her like she was a priceless artefact.
“No,” she shook her head slightly. “It was more the shock than anything.”
“Here,” Willow dropped one hand from her face, took her arm, and hauled her to her feet. Hazel couldn’t help but stare. Compared to her average height and size, Willow dominated any space they were in. They were easily almost a foot taller than her, and their broad shoulders and muscled arms seemed to wrap around her, as if she was protected from everything just by being in their presence. Hazel noticed she’d been staring for some time, but she also noticed that Willow’s hand was still resting on her cheek, their thumb working back and forth in tiny strokes. They also seemed incapable of looking away.
“You guys are sooooo precious!” a voice squealed and snapped them both out of their reverie.
I forgot she was here. Hazel cringed inwardly at her thought and shuffled awkwardly towards the reflection. Behind her, Willow cleared their throat and moved silently towards the kitchen, where they busied themselves by filling the kettle.
“Tea anyone?” they asked as the old faucet spluttered and splashed.
“Please.”
“Eww, no thank you.”
Hazel and the reflection exchanged surprised looks at their simultaneous answers.
“You don’t like tea?” Hazel questioned.
“Nope,” the reflection answered as she tried to hop up onto the kitchen table. She was halfway up when one of her arms gave out and she almost tumbled to the floor again. She managed to catch herself, but Hazel and Willow exchanged slightly bemused looks. The reflection continued on as if she hadn’t just embarrassed herself.
“I like coffee... Black with no sugar. Hey, isn’t this fun? New places, new memories, gah, I just love it.”
Hazel was dumbfounded. Coffee? New places? No sugar?! Something had indeed gone terribly wrong with her spell if even the screw-up was this screwed up.
“Hang on,” she started with a heavy sigh and rubbed at her temples. “You’re my reflection—” the reflection nodded enthusiastically. “You’re my reflection, so... so you’re me, right?”
“Umm, yeah... no,” the reflection replied happily as she picked up a spell book and flipped through it. Hazel rolled her eyes as a page managed to get torn.
“I’m confused,” she said as she snatched the book away. “Explain to me how you’re me, but not me.”
“Well, I don’t really know how you did it, but you brought me to life. I’m separate from you now. But I’m your reflection, like you said, because you’re so smart, you see, you figured that out straight away. Not like me. I’m a total moron. I’d have been here for days wondering what the hell I’d done and getting nowhere. Oh, my—”
Hazel held up a hand and cut her off. This was going to get them nowhere.
“Please,” she sounded as tired as she was starting to feel. “Please, just stick to the facts.”
“Right, I can do that, no problem-o Hazel-o,” the reflection shot a pair of finger guns at her. From the kitchen counter, Willow snorted and snickered into their hand, tea abandoned and long forgotten.
“The fact is that I’m you, but reflected. I’m your reflection after all, so everything is... umm... backwards? I guess that’s the best word for it. I’m flipped, like in the mirror.”
Confused silence fell in the cottage. The windows still rattled, and Hazel could hear the roof slates shifting above them. She’d have to ask Willow to check they hadn’t lost any once the wind died down. As this thought occurred to her, she watched as Willow rounded the kitchen table and came to stand right in front of her. They took her by the shoulders and manoeuvred her to stand next to the reflection, and then they stooped slightly so they were at eye level with the two women. For a while, no one said anything; the pair just watched as Willow studied each of their faces closely, until eventually, their hand dropped from their chin and they smiled.
“She’s right. She’s a flipped version of you. I wonder...”
Hazel looked closely at the reflection while Willow politely asked her to take a seat at the kitchen table. They pulled out one of the rickety wooden chairs and sat the reflection down, then turned and did the same thing to Hazel. Hazel took in the face of her reflection. It looked identical to hers, as far as she could tell, but there was something almost... off about it. Something that didn’t quite seem like she was looking at herself. She thought about how she looked in a mirror. The dark freckle under her left eye, the slight left-leaning curve of her small nose (which she was grateful to have back after last week), the way her right eye squinted slightly more and had more lines around it when she smiled. It was all there, but it was all on the other side, she realised. If the reflection smiled widely now, it would be her left eye that became slightly smaller. Her nose favoured the right, and the freckle was under her right eye.
The sound of another chair scraping the stone floor broke her from her thoughts, and she glanced at Willow, who was looking between them with a glint in their dark eyes.
“Let’s see how far this goes,” they said cryptically, and then turned towards the reflection, who beamed at them with a toothy smile.
My crooked right incisor is on her left, Hazel noticed.
“Do you have a name?” Hazel suddenly wondered aloud.
The reflection thought for a moment and then shrugged.
“Nope, I’m just your reflection. I’m you... essentially.”
“Well, we can’t call you both Hazel or it’ll get confusing,” Willow mused as they placed their chin in their hand. “What about Fawn? It’s a synonym of Hazel.”
The two women looked at each other and shrugged and nodded non-committedly. Fawn it was, since they had no better ideas.
“Ok, Fawn,” Willow started again. “Answer this for me—what’s your favourite food?”
“Cheese!” Fawn exclaimed.
I’m lactose intolerant, Hazel thought with a blanch.
“Favourite spell?”
“I don’t use spells. My magic is strong enough that I don’t need them.”
Lucky cow.
“Introvert or extrovert?” Willow continued.
“Extrovert!”
Good lord, she’s nothing like me!
“Who am I?”
Fawn shot a quizzical look at Hazel, who was staring incredulously back at her and wondering how the hell she’d ended up creating a reflection of herself like this.
“W–Willow?”
Willow nodded encouragingly, their hair bouncing slightly with the movement. Hazel was momentarily distracted by how soft their hair looked. In the decade since they’d met, she’d wanted to touch their hair countless times, but it never happened. Willow probably never noticed.
“And who am I to you, Fawn?”
Now Hazel was sure Willow was up to something. They were trying to see if everything Fawn said was the exact opposite of the answers Hazel would’ve given, but this question seemed loaded, and Hazel didn’t want to hear the answer.
“You’re like a sibling to me,” Fawn answered quietly, but her tone indicated she thought the answer should be obvious.
Oh no, the opposite of someone ‘being like a sibling’ to you is...
“Yes... I... am,” Willow said with a wry smile as they turned slowly to look at Hazel. She panicked and looked down, but not before catching the small wink they sent her way.
“One last question, Fawn, otherwise I won’t be able to sleep tonight. What is your witch philosophy?”
The air around Hazel seemed to vanish. Of course, if everything was the opposite, then this would be, too. A witch’s philosophy was the guiding force of how they lived their life and what they did with their time. There were three philosophies witches chose from: the betterment of mankind; the advancement of witchcraft; and the protection of nature. Hazel’s philosophy was the protection of nature, and the opposite of that was...
“The destruction of nature,” the reflection supplied with an innocent smile.
Oh.
Willow and Hazel shared a worried look, while Fawn merely leaned back in her chair and rocked it back onto the two rear legs with a passive smile.
“So we should...” Hazel began and waved her hand vaguely to fill in the blank.
“Right, but then what about...?” Willow supplied.
In her peripheral vision, Hazel watched as Fawn almost tipped right back in her chair. Her hand shot out and grasped the table edge to steady herself, and her eyes widened at the near miss.
Idiot.
“Well, we could always...”
“I don’t know about that, Haze. What if...?”
“You’re right.” Hazel thought for a while.
In a flash, she was on her feet. The sudden commotion startled Fawn, who gasped and then suddenly, with an almighty crash, she was gone from Hazel’s sight.
A groan sounded from the floor, along with some shuffling and the muted jangle of broken wood. Willow leaned over towards Hazel and whispered, “She doesn’t seem like she has the brains to actually destroy anything, right?”
Hazel shot them a withering glare and rounded the table. The sight of Fawn on the cold stone floor, surrounded by bits of broken chair barely registered with her before she hauled Fawn to her feet with a clipped, “Come on. Up you get.”
“Ooh, you’re strong too! Not as strong as Willow, obviously, because... I mean, well, you know. But still pretty... Hey where are we going?”
Hazel tried to ignore the sound of Willow snickering again, and instead pushed Fawn towards the mirror. She had to admit, the girl could talk, and it seemed like she didn’t have a bad bone in her body; but she was the direct opposite of Hazel herself. Fawn’s philosophy meant that she could destroy everything Hazel worked to protect.
“It’s been really great meeting you, but we just can’t have someone with a destructive philosophy here, so...”
Fawn dug her heels into the floor with a rapid shaking of her head and an emphatic, “No, no, no, no, no! Please don’t put me back in the mirror! I promise I won’t do anything bad!”
Hazel and Fawn fought for dominance. One pushed on the other’s shoulders in an attempt to get her to move towards the mirror. The other leant all her weight backwards and grappled onto the edge of the kitchen table in an attempt to stop her forward march. After a few more moments of struggle, Fawn seemed to be tiring, and Hazel felt confident in her victory.
“I’m glad you se—”
Fawn collapsed on the floor like a dead weight. Her backside hit the stone and her arms crossed as her entire face contorted into a pout.
“Are you... throwing a tantrum right now?!” Hazel scoffed, once again ignoring the muffled laughter coming from Willow, who had watched the entire situation unfold with a hand clamped over their mouth. But their eyes were practically sparkling with amusement.
“You can’t make me,” Fawn huffed. “I promise not to do anything bad. I’m not destructive, I swear!”
Hazel looked around her cottage. The side table lying on the floor, surrounded by now broken candles and smashed glass, and the broken chair lying by the kitchen table were evidence enough of Fawn’s destruction, and that was all accidental. In a last-ditch attempt at handling the situation, Hazel did the one thing she always did when she was stuck with something. She turned to Willow.
“Oh no, no,” they laughed as they registered the helpless look on Hazel’s face. “You created her, you deal with it. This is so far above my pay grade.”
“Please, Willow,” Hazel whined with her best doe-eyed look.
Willow seemed to get lost in Hazel’s wide eyes, their face embarking on a journey of a thousand emotions ranging from amused to determined, all the way through to helpless and weak. They just opened their mouth to reply, no doubt to give in, when Fawn’s head popped up just in front of Hazel and peeked over the edge of the table.
“Yeah, please Willow?” She also adopted a ‘lost puppy’ expression that had Willow’s gaze flitting from one woman to the other, seemingly completely confused now. Hazel elbowed Fawn in the back of the head.
“Don’t you ask them for favours! They’re my familiar!”
“Shush, I’m busy,” Fawn hissed as she shot a rather angry glare over her shoulder and up at Hazel. She then turned her face back to Willow and resumed silently begging for their intervention.
“No, you shush,” Hazel retorted as she stepped in front of Fawn’s very effective begging face.
Fawn slapped Hazel on the back of her knee, causing it to buckle.
“Are you kidding me?!” Hazel grumbled as her hands shot out to steady herself against the table.
Before Willow knew what was happening, Hazel and Fawn were in an all-out slapping war. They watched as Hazel and her reflection, of all things, slapped each other’s arms, backs, and legs, all the while arguing in tense growls about who Willow should help. If Hazel had been on the outside looking in, she would’ve been very unimpressed with the lack of maturity displayed. She wasn’t though, was she? Nope, she was in the thick of it, repeatedly slapping her own reflection on the backside, since Fawn now had her in some odd pseudo-headlock.
“They’re my familiar, Fawn!” Hazel’s voice was a little muffled as she tried to pry herself away from Fawn’s grip.
“Yeah, well, they’re like my sibling, so they’re—ow!—closer to me!”
“I was here first!”
“So what?!”
“So they’re closer to me! I l—”
Suddenly Hazel stopped, frozen by the notion of what she was about to say. Awkward silence fell over the three, and Fawn very slowly released Hazel from her headlock. Hazel couldn’t meet Willow’s eyes, which she could feel burning into the top of her head as she looked down at her feet and prayed the ground would swallow her up. Fawn cleared her throat. Repeatedly.
“Maybe I would rather go back in the mirror,” she said quietly. Hazel threw her a light elbow to the ribs and a glare. Fawn started to laugh as she stepped aside to avoid another one of Hazel’s elbows. Her booted foot made contact with one of the candles she’d knocked off the side table earlier, and she slipped. Before she could fall and probably crack her skull on the stone floor, a hand shot out and grabbed her wrist. Hazel pulled her up to standing again with a reluctant twitch of her lips.
“Umm, ok, well, I think we should give her a chance to stay, Haze,” Willow said as they watched the small exchange with a hopeful smile. Hazel still wouldn’t meet their eyes, and instead chose to watch Fawn with an intense stare.
“If I let you stay, we have to have some ground rules,” she said firmly.
Fawn nodded, and a small grin formed on her face.
“No unsupervised magic.”
Fawn nodded again, the grin growing.
“No touching my spell books.”
More nodding, more smiling.
“No puppy eyes at Willow.”
Less enthusiastic nodding, grin faltering slightly.
“And you,” Hazel turned on Willow, and their eyes widened in surprise. Why were they being given rules? “No caving in if she gives you puppy eyes.”
Willow couldn’t help but laugh as they stepped closer to Hazel, slung a heavy arm about her shoulders and gave her a little squeeze.
“It’s not the puppy eyes that have me caving in, but sure,” they said with a wink towards Fawn, who chuckled lightly in response. Hazel was lost, but it didn’t seem like either of the others wanted to let her in on the joke.
“This is going to be great, guys!” Fawn exclaimed as she clapped her hands and bounced on her toes. “I promise to do my share of housework and I won’t do anything destructive, and I’ll make treats for us all the time. Oh, it’ll be so much fun! Like a sleepover, except I’ve never had a sleepover, you know, since I’m new here. Like new as in just started existing today...”
She trailed off, just chattering away about sleepovers and making them a celebratory hot drink as she bounced towards the kitchen counters. Willow and Hazel exchanged a look.
“Well, I guess we have a new roommate, huh?” Willow asked with a smile.
“Ugh, you’re enjoying this way too much.”
“Just smile and nod Haze, it’ll be fine. I promise.”
There was a loud, metallic crunch from the kitchen and then the sound of rain got louder. Willow and Hazel looked over at Fawn, only to find her standing at the sink, kettle in one hand and the handle of the faucet in the other. Water sprayed from the tap with enough force to cover both her and the kitchen in heavy droplets.
Fawn shot them both an apologetic grimace and shrugged as if she had no idea what had happened.
“Oops.”