Grandmother inspects our spellwork every Saturday when Papa drops us off for our weekly lessons. She says she trusts us not to do any major damage during the week, that her grandchildren will maintain the family name. But we also know that she sews surveillance spells into our scarves and gloves, threads it into our training bracelets. We pretend not to notice.
This week, our assignment was to create a luck charm for a non-magical person. Daphne made a broach for Mama, it has health and fortune runes crafted in semi-precious stones. If Grandmother approves, then Daphne’s going to give it to her as a gift for her birthday.
Iris just recently broke up with her boyfriend, they haven’t yet returned each others’ things, though it’s bound to happen soon enough. I don’t think Grandmother will strictly approve of Iris’ project, but it’s a pretty good showcase of magical skill. Even if it’s petty to make an ex-boyfriend’s favorite jacket the source of romantic catastrophes. Also, inexplicable itching.
Zoe and I aren’t allowed to work on our assignments together, even though our resonating magic means the enchantments would have been that much stronger. We honestly didn’t mean for the color change spell on Grandmother’s cat to be permanent, but Striker seems to be content with life as a purple cat.
But I digress, Zoe’s trying to do a multi-layered luck quilt. It’s somehow both ambitious and lazy–because she wants it to imbue the owner with bad academic luck while simultaneously giving good financial luck, and conflicting lucks is pretty difficult, but she has to make a quilt for one of her art classes anyway. I think she plans to give it to one of her classmates who owes her money.
As for me? Well…
“Arke, darling, what are those?” Grandmother asks, eyes narrowed and suspicious but voice still light and sweet. I’m pretty sure I’m Grandmother’s favorite, but I’m also sure she often despairs or regrets this.
“Cupcakes, I wanted to see if I could make edible luck charms.” The batch I brought today for grading was my fifth. The third successful one. Well… the first two might have been successful if the enchantment I had been going for was uncomfortable bad digestive luck. It was not.
“And could you?” My sisters laugh with varying degrees of bitterness, depending on which batch I asked them to test for me.
“Well, technically they are edible and they do bring luck to the eater,” I hedge, staring at the brightly frosted tops of my cupcakes.
“But…?” Grandmother prompts, impatient for me to get to the point.
“They taste awful.”
~
A/N: I really didn’t want to do this while I was writing it, but I honestly didn’t know what else to do?
JackSGreyson Says 