Rejected, unloved, and lost.

Chapter 4

Distracted by the pain in her chest, Sky felt like her heart was about to explode; she overlooked the roots and vines growing over her hands and arms. Her heart was racing, and it was getting harder to breathe. She was starting to feel a little sick. The elders were looking at each other with concern evident in their eyes. The rest of the coven was mumbling, though Sky didn’t actually notice any of this. She let out a scream as she pulled her arms back; it felt like her chest was being split open from the inside with a sledgehammer being wielded by an armour-bashing, weapon-making goblin. Tears were streaming down her face.

Sky figured she must have passed out for a moment or two. She opened her eyes; there was a medium-sized dragon on her chest, though strangely enough, it didn’t actually weigh that much, chattering incoherently at her, and she was lying on her back in the mud. She was wet and muddy and cold. The dragon felt warm, though. She shook her head, hoping to shift the hallucination. But when she turned her head to the side, many coven members stared back at her in shock. Maybe the dragon wasn’t a hallucination? She reached out tentatively with one hand to touch the dragon, and she could swear it giggled… Sky somehow knew she was tickling it… that was the weirdest sensation she had ever encountered. She sat up quickly, forcing the creature onto her lap.

“What’s her name, child?” Peter asked, somewhat more firmly than was strictly necessary, Sky thought. She didn’t even know how to get the creature to speak coherently, let alone tell her the needed information. And what the hell was it, to begin with? It was a lizard now somehow; it must have changed while she looked at Peter. Sky certainly didn’t see it happen. “Um… Peter wants to know your name… urm… little lizard dragon thing?” As she expected, Sky got no answer. The lizard did seem to respond to Sky’s voice; it was nuzzling into her and trying to push under her hand. The heat was pleasant against her body, she had to admit. Sky hesitantly lifted her hand a little, letting the lizard get where it wanted to be; it might look slightly wispy and insignificant, but once you touch it, it was corporeal. Sky couldn’t get her head around how this little creature could live inside her chest if that was what was happening. Skylar Adams with a familiar though? Who would actually believe that? She was bad enough with her own magic; how the absolute f**k was this going to work?

Once she was in skin-to-skin contact with it, the strange chattering, chirruping, and huffing noises suddenly made sense. “I am your familiar… you may call me Rylee… I will be here when you need me or when you don’t. I can be almost whatever you need me to be, Sky.” Rylee told Sky. “It’s called Rylee”, Sky called out to Peter. “Not it, child, she, your familiar will be a she. We can close the circle now. You must be exhausted,” Peter replied, his tone slightly softer now. Sky didn’t even pay attention to how they closed the circle. Unable to gather the energy to move, she just sat in the mud and hoped for the best.

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Sky felt her dad, or maybe one of the other men from the coven, pick her up. The lizard creature, Rylee still on her lap. Once she was by the car, her mum helped her rinse her hair off as much as possible with the water her father could summon and the water bottles in the car, and then change into her pants and hoodie. “I don’t think I can do the party later, Mum; sorry, can I just go home and sleep?” Sky asked, tucking the lizard into her hood. “I’m sure that will be fine, darling. Everyone will understand,” Jane, Sky’s mum, replied quickly.

Her parents dropped her and her familiar at home. Sky dived straight into the shower, and Rylee sat on the towel rack. It felt uncomfortable to have her too far away, Sky had tried to leave her in the bedroom, but she was in tears in a heap on the floor when Rylee finally found her. “We can’t be that far apart right now,” Rylee told Sky kindly while squirming into her pocket. It was getting easier to understand her now. After the shower, Sky and Rylee went to bed. They didn’t even eat. Sky slept for nearly 3 days. That was pretty unusual; most people were tired after the ritual but didn’t sleep this much. She needed near enough 2 weeks off school to recover and start to get used to Rylee, convincing her to slot herself back into Sky’s chest. It wasn’t an easy process, and Rylee didn’t want to be there, but she seemed to have a habit of setting things on fire randomly. The grass, the sofa, the kitchen table, Sky’s bed, curtains even. She did teach Sky how to make a controlled fire that wouldn’t burn things. They put it in a box or fireplace for Rylee to lay in. That made her happy. Sky was delighted when Rylee was happy and vice versa, their emotions feeding off each other.

It was nearly the end of her time off when Sky dared to ask her parents about what had happened at the ritual as she couldn’t remember much of it. “Well, darling, it appears that you have all the elemental powers. This could be why you are not so good with traditional spells,” her mother explained while her dad, Mark, took the seat next to her and wrapped an arm around her body. “It’s ok sweet pea, now we know we can teach you things differently, and you’ll do much better, you’ll see”, her father added with a proud smile. “My daughter, the most powerful witch in the coven. Who’d have known? You will go far if we can find a way for you to master your powers. You could even be in charge of the elders in a few years, my girl. Peter will have to start taking proper notice of you now.” Mark seemed to be full of pride at Sky’s powers, boastful almost.

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Skylar Aged 14 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It had been a challenging year since her unleashing ritual just after her 13th birthday. And Sky had changed a lot. Gone was the little girl. She had boobs now. A full C cup, sometimes even a D. Gone were the pink little girl tops and leggings, the floral bedding, the white and pink room, even the long hair; though that was more a necessity than a choice, Rylee had burned some of it, so it had to be cut to just below her shoulders. And the other coven girls had started to take the piss out of her at school. They didn’t like that she was getting more attention from the elders than they were. They thought they should have been the elemental witches, not Sky the disaster. So Sky had her hair cut into a short pixie cut, and she started training with a mixed martial arts fighter. She was still slim, but now she had muscles. She had strength, and she was getting taller. She was almost 5 feet tall to the other girls, 4 foot something. She wore ripped skinny jeans and t-shirts or vest tops, with large scarves and hoods most of the time. Everything was darker now; even Sky herself seemed to be darker. She wasn’t so bubbly and approachable anymore, people said. They meant that she was no longer a pushover and that they couldn’t always tell her what to do.

Sky had training twice a week with the elders; there were always at least two of them (in case someone got hurt). No one else in the coven felt up to the task of training sky. She wasn’t as straightforward as the other teens because she could control all the elements but couldn’t learn the traditional way. Sky had to find her own way to make her magic do what they wanted her to do. Things took a little longer to get the hang of, and she still had plenty of disasters. Her training with the elders had taught her some things. Her elemental control was growing stronger. She might be able to burn the candle down to a stub and blow the book away at the welcoming. Though she had no plan for what to do with that blasted bell.

Control of fire and spells based around fire came easiest even though it was hard to keep it proportionate, but that seemed to come with a downside; she was constantly cold. Some days it was so bad that she wanted to curl up in the fire with Rylee. Speaking of Rylee, they had managed to reach a tentative agreement. After a very near miss art school, Rylee had forced her way out of Sky’s chest to help her defend herself against the bullies. Sky had only just managed to get somewhere safe where no one could see her; Stuff Rylee back in her bag, and try to carry on with her lessons. It didn’t last long, though. At lunch, Rylee managed to escape from Sky’s bag. She set fire to the table, and Sky was excluded for 2 weeks, with another 2 weeks of internal exclusion upon her return. Peter told her that she would be pulled out of school if she didn’t get Rylee under control. “The humans cannot find out about any of us, Skylar Adams; I will not risk the safety of my whole coven for you, nor will I let you put it at risk. You are not worth that; you are not that special,” Peter had told her; he also didn’t seem to feel that Sky should have been the one in a generation witch who would most certainly take his place when she comes of age. No doubt he was hoping for one of the boys. Rylee had eventually promised to stay inside Sky for the school day if Sky let her out as soon as they were safe within the coven again.

Sky was campaigning to allow women to wear what they wanted to ceremonies, rather than forcing them to dress feminine. Give them the same dress code as men, smart casual. She had run a successful campaign at school to allow girls to wear pants, backed by many of her human colleagues. She wasn’t convinced of success within the coven however, the leadership there was much more attached to their traditions.