Death Is Green

The eve comes before, and yet Eve came after. Always in two places, always somewhere in between, and never quite where she was supposed to be. At least, that’s what her professor at Aldebast had told her when she wilted her third bouquet in floramancy class last week, tutting at the way the clinging odour of death dripped from the withered petals like glue. It had been the last straw for Eve.

Aldebast is fairly flexible with the class schedules, but not so flexible that they’d allow her to take half a year off with no explanation. She tapped her quill on the edge of her desk, the dormitory lit up just barely by the flickering light of conjured fireflies in a jar. She hummed quietly under her breath, taking care not to rouse her loudly snoring roommate, and pushed her glasses up her nose when they began to slip. It was late, the little moment of time trapped between one day and the next.

She filled in the blank with a flourish, nodding to herself as she eyed the completed form. First thing tomorrow morning, she’d apply for a leave of absence, and then the world would be her oyster. Her hand brushed the jar ever so slightly and the light immediately died, snuffed out by the void magic that danced at her fingertips; she found herself blinking in the unexpected darkness. Oh, well. She was meant to be going to sleep anyway.

In the pale starlight, the cursive bend of her ink could barely be made out against the parchment.

Reason for absence: Finding myself.

---

“What colour is death?”

Eve furrowed her brow, clutching her trusty grimoire close to her chest.

“Excuse me?” she replied at last, unaware of the clover slowly wilting in her pocket.

Since leaving her school, she’d crossed paths with many curious individuals with even curiouser knowledge. Things she could have never learnt sitting in a classroom, and yet she found herself missing the steady day in, day out schedules of Aldebast. She definitely didn’t miss being the odd one out — the only arcane student who had yet to master even a simple runic inscription. It was embarrassing. Here in the outside world, no one had to know about the way her magic fizzled and died when she tried to cast a simple ward, or the way the heartbeats of the woodland creatures stuttered when she stroked the soft places between their ears.

But somehow, she’d come across people who just knew. She didn’t know how they saw what they saw or upon what wings this knowledge came to them, but she caught their knowing looks and their sordid smiles.

The old witch had rows and rows of beads dripping down her collarbone, each inscribed with a unique rune. Upon a closer look, Eve realised they weren’t actually beads, but bones — knucklebones, sanded down to round, pearly smoothness. Five rings sat on the witch’s bony left hand, but the right was noticeably bare and scarred all over. Of her face, shrouded by her witch’s cap, only her sharp smile was visible.

“I asked you what colour death was,” the witch repeated, extending her bejewelled hand.

Eve took one step backwards, then another. The clover turned to dust.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she stuttered eventually, her gaze dropping to the ground. “I just came here for some—”

“Guidance, yes?” The witch cut her off deftly, reaching out towards Eve and plucking the ash right out of her pocket. She rubbed the dust between her fingertips as if it was something to be studied, and then blew it right into Eve’s face, sending her reeling back in shock.

Only, right before it could make contact with any dangerous sneeze causing areas of her face, it puffed up into a cloud of emerald smoke.

“Death is green,” the lady said with a smile, rubbing the back of her scarred hand.

Eve had set out from her lodgings that morning with the goal of finding the most knowledgeable mage in the land. People came from all the universe to seek her guidance, searching for a path towards their own inner truth. Eve had hoped that perhaps there might be a way for her to progress her magical studies — a way that she hadn’t tried already — but this strange old lady was keeping her from getting to where she needed to be.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Eve mumbled, “but I really need to be going. There’s somewhere I should be right now.”

The old witch retreated into the shadows from whence she came, but her everglowing eyes carved a promise into the back of Eve’s skull: green, they were glowing green. Bright, effervescent, emerald green. A whisper echoed in the corner of her mind.

“You cannot escape yourself, Eve.”

Then, in a blink of shadow travel, the lady was gone.

Eve arrived at the oracle’s shack not long after, shaken by her chance encounter. It wasn’t until she was turned away at the door and halfway back to her lodgings that she realised she might have met the oracle after all, and that the answer wasn’t something that she liked.

She wasn’t escaping herself, she was finding herself. A clear difference, she thought with a nod, scribbling her latest findings on hemlock in the margins of her grimoire. Someday, it would all make sense, and she’d be just like everyone else. Normal.

She drifted to sleep with her spectacles digging into the bridge of her nose and her cheek smushed up against her open grimoire. The page was blank, but as she snored softly, a thin, arching script began to carve itself into the empty parchment. Runes of the void. In the morning, she’d wake up and stare at them in horror before tearing the pages right out, refusing to even entertain the idea of translation. In the evening, she’d pick the pages out of the bin, her curiosity unsatisfied, and try to understand.

And the following night, she’d dream only of normalcy once more, unaware of the wilting flowers on her bedside table.