Wild Is the Witch

But that’s the thing about anxiety, it doesn’t care if something is rational or not. It takes hold of your mind and squeezes tighter and tighter until it can’t be ignored, demanding your undivided attention. It turns from insignificant to all-consuming in the span of a breath, a fog so thick it’s impossible to see through, and no amount of breathing or counting or visualizing undoes it.

Missing someone is just a form of grief. Grieving that they’re gone, grieving that they’re too far away, grieving that you’ll never see them again. Whatever kind of grief it is, the missing is just a symptom of it.

I am the cosmos and energy and matter of the universe held perfectly together with skin and bone.

What is coincidence if not a subtle form of magic?

But I don’t mind the rain. I never have.

I lie down on my back and look up at the stars, thousands of white lights in a sea of darkness. Sometimes I’m overwhelmed by it all, the vastness of this life, the absolute miracle it is that I exist in this moment in time. How much magic is out in the universe, stretching beyond what the eye can see, reaching distances the mind can’t even comprehend?

Now I wonder if he taught me that because he resented magic. That’s one of the worst casualties of being hurt by someone who was never supposed to hurt you: you start to question all the beautiful things that led up to the ugliness, start to wonder if some of the moments you thought were perfect were actually painted with a dirty brush.

Spring is when the weather in the Pacific Northwest gets confused, bouncing between hail and sun and rain all in the same day. Sometimes all in the same hour.

You looked…free,” he finally says. “Wild.” He pauses, and his gaze falls to the ground. “Beautiful.

I marvel at the way it feels to have this kind of connection to the world around me, what it’s like being one of the few people who can experience the universe in all its splendor. Magic has been here from the beginning of time, and I get to call it and direct it and feel the energy of the stars from which it came. I am infinite because of it.

Because you’re special, Iris. You’re strange and surprising, and I’m endlessly curious about the things that take up space in your mind.

I’m as wild as the magic in my veins and the dust of the stars, and so I run.

...a hatred so strong not even love could overcome it. The line between the two is paper thin and razor sharp, and we ended up on the wrong side of it. Maybe it was always inevitable, but if that were true, it wouldn't feel like losing something.

often feels like you think you have something to teach them instead of the other way around. I think maybe that’s the biggest reason: you act as if you have nothing left to learn.

I want to be known by you,” I finally say. “And I’d rather you know all of me and hate me than only know parts of me and like me.

The forest feels infinite, ferns and moss and huckleberry bushes covering the earth, large roots snaking through the dirt, and fallen trees resting on their trunks. It’s untouched and wild, exactly as it should be, beautiful in its abandon.

Sometimes I’m overwhelmed by it all, the vastness of this life, the absolute miracle it is that I exist in this moment in time. How much magic is out in the universe, stretching beyond what the eye can see, reaching distances the mind can’t even comprehend?

That’s one of the worst casualties of being hurt by someone who was never supposed to hurt you: you start to question all the beautiful things that led up to the ugliness, start to wonder if some of the moments you thought were perfect were actually painted with a dirty brush.

There’s something playful about it, as if the weather is enjoying every facet of its personality, appreciating all the ways in which it covers the earth.

That’s the thing about magic: people want to see it and feel it almost as much as they want to dismiss it entirely. It’s an echo of something just out of reach, a whisper that says there’s more to this life than what meets the eye.

Magic is a gift, one that Pike Alder is wholly undeserving of.

Witches are able to recognize the energy around us and reorder it in ways to produce certain outcomes. It’s a sixth sense that most people don’t have. We can harness all the chaotic particles and bring them together into something brilliant.

There is magic in my blood, but this place has its own kind of magic. I feel it every time the evergreens sway in the wind and whenever the treetops are swallowed by fog. I can feel it in the salty air and the fern-covered ground. This is my home, and I know it as sure as I know how Winter is feeling just by looking at her. This is where I’m meant to be.

I pet Winter on the top of her head, and her eyes close. I would die for her, too, even though she would never allow it.

That wolf would die for you,” Pike says from behind me. He says it as if it’s an accusation, as if I charmed Winter into loving me, and I turn and fake a smile.

That was nature’s give, ensuring that every human under the sun would know undoubtedly when magic was being used on them. They would know when all they could see was starlight.

Human flesh doesn’t burn the same as wood. It doesn’t crackle or spit sparks out in every direction. It isn’t cozy on a frigid night or romantic on a rocky beach. It’s horrifying the whole way through.