The Witch
Katherine was staring at Shelby. There was a light dusting of pink across her cheeks, and her eyes were open wide, locked onto Shelby’s own. The expression on her face was unreadable, and Shelby couldn’t help the nerves that tightened in her chest in the brief moment that the princess stared at her.
The two of them were frozen for less than a second, locked onto the other’s eyes, but Shelby had lost any sense of time.
Katherine’s eyes flicked away, and she moved to stand behind Shelby once again. For a moment, nothing happened, and Shelby’s heart began to pound in her chest. Then, she felt a light tugging on her scalp as Katherine began to run the comb through her hair.
Shelby’s mind raced as she stood there, the warmth from her face burning into the hands she had yet to move. Before Katherine grabbed the comb, she had frozen, staring at Shelby. Why? And then again, just a few seconds before. Shelby was terrible at reading people’s expressions, but she was pretty sure Katherine had almost looked... scared. Shelby gripped her face a bit tighter in an effort to breathe at a normal pace.
Had Katherine figured out Shelby’s crush? Was she worried that Shelby might start acting like Joey did around her? Pinching her face between her fingers, Shelby tried to take a quiet deep breath. She would never treat Katherine the same way that disgusting pirate did. Katherine knew that. Right?
Letting go of her face, Shelby decided to focus on her breathing. Her mind was racing, and she never reached the right conclusions when she was panicking like that. After a few silent deep breaths, the witch could feel her heart slowing to a regular pace. Well, as close to a regular pace as it could be around Katherine, anyway.
Katherine probably hadn’t even figured out Shelby’s feelings. While Shelby might not have been the best at hiding her feelings, this certainly wasn’t the first time that she had been all flustered around the princess. Katherine would probably have found it strange if Shelby wasn’t flustered around her. She probably thought the witch was flustered all the time, and didn’t realize it was just around her. Yeah, Katherine definitely didn’t know about Shelby’s crush. So what was she so worried about?
“Hey Katherine?” Shelby nervously twisted the hem of her borrowed dress between her fingers as she took a moment to steady her voice, “Are you okay?”
“Huh?” The feeling of hands gently combing through Shelby’s hair abruptly stopped. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Since Katherine’s fingers were no longer entwined in Shelby’s thick hair, Shelby twisted her head over her shoulder to look at Katherine. The princess didn’t move, wide eyes meeting Shelby’s bright golden ones.
“I don’t know,” Shelby broke her gaze away from the princess, glancing back down at her fingers still fidgeting with the borrowed dress. “You just seem... anxious? I suppose?”
“Oh,” Katherine took a step back, dropping her hands away from the witch’s hair, twisting the brush between her hands as she spoke. “I, uhm, I was thinking about the curse.”
Shelby didn’t notice the pink dusting Katherine’s cheeks as she felt her own face rise in temperature. Obviously Katherine was worried about the curse! She had come over to offer potential solutions to the curse but had only been a cold, stuttering mess that had to borrow Katherine’s dress. Right, she was wearing Katherine’s dress. Shelby felt her face flush a bit darker.
“Of course!” Shelby hurried back over to the still-lit fireplace, summoning her grimoire from her inventory. She stumbled a bit as the big book fell into her arms from seemingly out of thin air, briefly interrupting her scramble to the chair. She regained her footing in less than a second, plopping down in the chair and opening the tome in her lap.
“I’ve been writing down what I can remember about curses from the Academy, but I don’t really have anything that sounds like yours. There’re a few curses that have to do with sucking life out of creatures, but not land. I wrote some down anyways because you told me about your hose, so I thought they might be related, but to be honest I don’t feel too confident that... what?”
Shelby blinked at Katherine, who was still standing there, holding the hairbrush, and staring at Shelby with a bewildered look. At the witch’s question, she blinked a few times, seeming to snap out of some kind of stupor.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to stare. It’s just... you’re really prepared, is all.”
Shelby blinked at the princess, confused.
“Of course I am. I told you I would help, didn’t I?”
“You did,” Katherine looked down at her feet, a pink blush decorating her cheeks. “I guess I just didn’t expect you to do so much, is all.”
Shelby’s eyes drifted back to her grimoire, her face turning its own shade of crimson.
“It’s nothing, really. I have to review what I learned at the Academy every now and then, anyways.”
“Oh, right.” Katherine’s blush grew a bit darker. In an effort to hide it from the witch, she turned around sharply and walked back to her desk to place the hairbrush back down, and took a deep breath, giving her face a moment to return to it’s normal shade before turning to face Shelby again. “Can I hear a bit about the curses you wrote down?”
Shelby’s face brightened, breaking out into a wide grin.
“Sure! Here, come sit down.”
The witch patted an empty chair next to the one she occupied, shifting her hold on her grimoire so Katherine would be able to see it from the other chair. A smile fell upon the princess’s face as she made her way over to the chair, leaning over to get a better look at the tome.
The two of them sat there for hours, going over the curses the witch had written down, along with possible spell incantations or potion ingredients to test on the dead land. Eventually, the two of them moved over to the princess’s desk so they could pour over reports of the spread of dying land. They became so enthralled with their work that they didn’t care to look at the time, until they were disturbed by an interruption.
“Katherine!” Both girls whipped their heads toward the source of the noise, which was followed by a loud knocking on the door. “Your father and I need to speak to you!”
Shelby glanced back at Katherine just in time to see the princess’s face fall. All the previous times Shelby had been there had ended with a maid knocking on Katherine’s door with a summons from the queen, but she had never known the queen to visit Katherine herself. Whatever she wanted to speak about must be important.
“I guess that’s my cue to leave.”
Shelby offered Katherine a soft smile as she stood up, walking over to the door to grab her broomstick from against the wall. Katherine stood to follow the witch as she walked over to the window, staying back to give Shelby space to open the window and stand on the ledge. The rain was still pouring outside, so the witch wanted to make her departure quick as to not soak Katherine’s room in rainwater. She shot the princess a wide grin as she mounted her broom, gripping the handle tightly.
“Sorry I wasn’t able to come up with anything. Send me a message the next time you want to brainstorm, yeah?”
Just as Shelby was about to take off, she was stopped by Katherine stepping forward and opening her mouth and reaching out towards the witch. Katherine inhaled sharply and paused, freezing a few inches away from making contact with the witch, before hesitantly reaching out and squeezing Shelby’s shoulder.
“Thank you. For trying to help.”
Katherine quickly pulled her hand back, clasping it in her other hand and glancing down at them with pink cheeks. Shelby knew her own face was bright red as she stared at the princess for a moment as her brain short-circuited.
After a moment of silence where neither of them moved, Shelby shook her head slightly, reminding herself of the rain pouring over her form and into the room in front of her.
“Of course,” she smiled, softly gazing at the princess. “You have enough to worry about as it is. I want to help in any way I can.”
With one last big, toothy grin, the witch shot up into the rainy sky on her broom, flying back to the Evermoore.