Work Text:
The dark clouds boiled overhead, thunder rumbling on the horizon, more a feeling than a sound. Jemima hurried back to her shop, wishing that she had thought to add a timer to the rain spell that she had just cast. Her boots clattered against the sidewalk, and her bag bounced against her back, flattened now that she had used the contents up with her spell casting.
It wasn’t as though adding a timer before the rain would have been tricky. All it would have required was some chicken feathers and the petals from a morning glory. But while this was not her first major working, it was the first to have been requested by the mayor. And in her haste to prove herself useful, she had simply forgotten to be sensible.
On a good day, and walking, it would take her twenty minute to travel from her shop to the clearing in the forest that she used for her larger spellcasting. With the threat of rain and on the run, it was less than ten minutes till she turned onto her street, boots slipping a little on the slowly dampening stones.
On the doorstep of her shop sat a cardboard box. She cautiously poked it with her toe. While generally it was considered lucky to have a talented witch living in the town, it wouldn’t be the first time that some of the more backwards locals had left her a ‘gift’.
It meowed at her.
The top of the box, where it was folded over, bulged out, and a black ear tipped in white poked out. The ear flicked curiously to her general direction.
Of course, the clouds chose that moment to open fully. Within moments, Jemima was soaked through to the skin, and the cardboard box was yowling in disgruntlement. Icy rain came down as if someone above had just upturned a bucket.
She fumbled in her pocket for the keys, the metal sliding coldly through her fingers, until she found the right one and shoved it in the lock. With a bump of her hip, and a kick of her foot, the door opened, and she was pushing the rather sodden box into the dry. And just in time as well.
With a disgruntled hiss, a black paw punctured through the side of the soggy box, swiping at the air. It was followed by another paw, claws extended, tearing a larger hole through which a pair of green eyes peeped.
A small black kitten, with white tipped ears, tumbled out, ears over tail, with such an expression of disgruntlement on its features that Jemima couldn’t help but laugh. The box collapsed in on itself and the huff of air startled the kitten, who leapt forward and landed straight on Jemima’s boots.
The kitten looked up at her, and Jemima smiled gently.
“Well, hello there,” she said softly.
The kitten lifted each of its paws methodically as if testing the surface of her feet, before it ambled forwards and began to climb up her trousers. The claws clung tight to the fabric, but didn’t pierce through, and Jemima followed the progress with interest. She could have reached down and lifted it off herself, but she was curious as to what the kitten was doing.
It climbed up her legs, over her waist, navigated the curve of her chest, and scrambled up the last distance to perch on her shoulder. There, it leaned forward, nuzzled her cheek, and purred into her ear.
***
CRASH!
Downstairs, the room shuddered from the crash that came from upstairs. The glass bottles behind the counter shivered in answer, their contents shifting. The bunches of herbs hanging from the rafters swayed, a few stray strands drifting down to land on the floor. The two customers browsing the shelves of crystals and rocks looked up, and then went back to studying the goods on offer. The lady at the counter also glanced upwards, but then looked back towards Jemima, curiosity evident in her eyes.
“Sorry about that,” Jemima said, while totalling the purchases with pencil on paper.
“That’s fine, dear,” the lady said automatically, while she started to count out her money. Jemima also knew that the lady was bursting at the seams to ask what it was that had made the noise, but considered herself too well-bred to come straight out and ask. And without a direct question, Jemima certainly wasn’t going to tell her.
Of course, Jemima herself had no idea what had caused the noise, but she could perhaps hazard a guess that it involved someone small and furry not taking kindly to being left upstairs, while Jemima had to do the work that put the fish on the table.
Curiosity unsatisfied, the lady left the shop with her purchases, and one of the browsers followed her out.
And just in time, as an eerie, echoing wail filled the room. It was metallic, distorted and plaintive, and went on for at least thirty seconds. The customer who was left in the shop yelped, and looked at her with wide eyes.
“It’s my cat,” she said dryly. “I don’t have a demon in the loft.”
By the way that his face changed, it was pretty obvious to her that he had thought exactly that. What he had been thinking she was doing with a demon in the loft, she didn’t know, and wasn’t going to start speculating.
Even with her reassurances, he still left in a hurry, and with a sigh, she flipped the sign on the door to closed, before ascending the stairs.
Upstairs, everything looked normal, except for the pitch black cauldron lying upturned on the carpet in the middle of the floor. It had been sitting on the table when she had left for downstairs.
“Oh, Eclipse,” she sighed, as she lifted up the cauldron and set it back on the table. Revealed underneath was her cat companion, who started licking his paw quite nonchalantly. “Do you think we could try to go at least one day without scaring the customers off?”
Deciding that his paws were clean enough now (cauldron, what cauldron?), Eclipse stood and twined himself around her ankles, purring loudly.
“Now then, if you’re finished dropping things on yourself, I have to go back downstairs and open the shop again.”
The purr stopped Jemima looked down. She couldn’t be sure, but it looked very much like Eclipse was staring at the bookshelves that were filled with books, crystals, herb packets and sundry breakables.
When she finally went downstairs ten minutes later, it was with a purring cat perched on her shoulder.
***
With her arms hanging loose by her side, and with her palms facing downwards, Jemima closed her eyes and tried to steady her breathing. She could feel the prickle of the glass at the edges of her senses, stretching up and down the street. She could feel the pulsating anger of the shopkeepers, and the lingering traces of malignant mischief. She accepted them, let them wash over her, but would not be distracted by them.
She started the invocation, slow and steady, focusing on the glass and what she wanted to happen to it. She felt the seconds ticking by, each settling on her mind like a snowflake, building up one after the other. More second snowflakes began to fall through her mind, but now they began to fall away from the glass. As time rolled on for the street, it reversed for the glass.
Invocation complete, Jemima hung in the space between the past and the present, the snowflakes of the seconds swirling around her in a dizzying dance, the past spinning away and the present unwinding into the future.
She knew it was done when the accumulated weight of the past hit her like a sledgehammer, taking her down to her knees. Even with her eyes closed, the world spun around her, and she lurched, but found herself steadied by a strong pair of hands. She opened her eyes.
Where before the street had been filled with shattered and broken glass, every shop having been attacked, now it was filled with little piles of sand. Already, the hardware store was breaking out the dustpans and brooms, and the clean up was starting.
“Easy there, lassie,” and the voice, and the supporting hands belonged to the metal worker from two doors up. “I’m thinking you need to go back inside and take a rest. You’re the colour of a ghost and shaking like a leaf in a strong breeze.”
“Ghosts aren’t white,” she smiled, still feeling woozy. “They look just like you and me. If you see a white ghost, it’s somebody being stupid in a sheet.”
“Be that as it may, you need to rest,” the metal worker said firmly. Jemima wished that she could remember what his name was. Ory? Dory?
She was too busy trying to puzzle out his name that she didn’t object to being scooped up into his arms and carried into her shop and up the stairs to her home above. She was carefully placed onto the couch, and her knitted blanket was draped over her.
“Now, don’t you be going and pestering your mistress,” the metal worker spoke again. “She’s just done something marvellous, and while I don’t understand it, she’s exhausted. So no jumping all over her, hear me?”
“Mew.”
She heard the steps of the metal worker as they slowly faded away, and silence returned. It was only when she heard the door close that four paws jumped onto the quilt. With grave seriousness, Eclipse padded up the blanket until his nose touched hers. Staring straight into her eyes, he made a questioning chirp and tilted his head.
“I’m just tired, Eclipse. Time doesn’t particularly appreciate being tweaked, and tends to steal all of your energy. After a nap and a good sleep tonight, I’ll be fine tomorrow.”
Eclipse bobbed his head, and then jumped up to the back of the couch in one fluid motion, disappearing from her view. She was too tired to sit up and track his movements, so she settled for lying there and listening for the sounds.
There was the soft pad of his paws over the floor. The squeak of the kitchen door as he pushed it open with his nose. There was a faint scrabble that might have been him jumping onto the table. Silence for a while, and Jemima found her eyes closing again as she drifted.
There was a thud, followed by a scraping noise.
Scrape, scrape.
Scrape, scrape.
Slowly, it grew louder and louder. When it was directly on the floor beneath her, Jemima opened her eyes and wearily turned onto her side.
Eclipse was sitting there, white tipped ears pricked, fairly beaming with pride. Beside him was the wicker basket that she stored her cookies in. As she watched, Eclipse batted at the catch of the basket, hooking his paw around in order to free it, and flip open the lid. He succeeded, preened with delight, and then nudged the basket to where her hand could easily fall into it.
“Aren’t you clever,” she murmured, and Eclipse bobbed his head again, jumping up to snuggle into her shoulder and under the blanket, purring quietly.
He purred even louder when she shared the cookie with him.