Chapter One

The (un-named) main character finds herself in a new home in the city, far from the forests of her childhood. She is now forced to adjust to a 'regular' teenage life, with no magick and no Grandma.

I fell back onto my queen sized bed whose sheets smelled of lavender fabric softener. I sunk into my gray feather downed sheets and closed my eyes, hoping the scent and the over fluffed sheets would suffocate me and maybe take me somewhere else. Maybe to a joyful memory, or maybe to Summerland, where I liked to think Grandma was. My naturally cherry red lips turned up in a light smile as I thought of Grandma running through a lavender field, her long silver braid flowing behind her. A tear slid down my cheek and I sat up abruptly.

"Okay! What to tackle first?!" I exclaimed to my empty new room that was filled with cardboard boxes holding old memories and clothes I'd never worn. 

I'd do anything to get my mind off of Grandma. She had died three months ago and the emptiness in my heart still stung like a fresh wound. Mom had seemed to go through it all like a machine. She sobbed as I dialed 911, sobbed all the way to the hospital and was a snotting, red nosed mess when the doctors told us it was just old age. Her heart just gave out and she probably died peacefully in her sleep.  Then, Mom went through the motions of making calls, setting up her cremation and then figuring out what to do with her ashes. We both decided to dig a large pentacle in the middle of the forest and pour her ashes into it then cover them. Grandma would have wanted to be returned to her beloved Mother Earth, her Gaea.  The idea of the Pentacle was my idea. Grandma was a Wiccan, and I thought it right since she had always talked of the Pentacle and it's magickal values, and to me, Grandma was a magickal being. Mom didn't argue with me about that.

What Mom and I did argue about, was moving from Grandma's secluded house in the beautiful Oregon forest to a city somewhere. She said that the reminders here were too painful for her to bare and of course she didn't even consider my feelings. Ever since I could remember, we had lived with Grandma and always had nature surroudning us. To think of all the old pine trees being replaced with brick buildings was unimaginable. But, no matter how hard I cried, or how logically I pleaded my case, Mom was set on moving, and so we did. She found a pine green house that was two bedrooms, two bath, and had a garage. The rent was expensive I heard Mom say to her friend Wendy on the phone but it was 'worth it' to get away from 'everything'. 

Personally, I didn't mind the house too much. My room was large enough for my queen bed and room to move around in. It was the unpacking I wasn't too keene on. I'd rather go and find some type of wilderness to draw or paint, but around here, the most wilderness was the shrubbery in people's front yards.

I looked down at a box that read 'Bookshelf Stuff'. I sighed and kneeled down, prying the box open. The contents were picture frames wrapped in old newspaper, my incense holder which was a dark blue, my array of incense sticks (lavender scented was the most dominant of my collection), a few books on Witchcraft, spells, drawing, and a few fantasy novels, as well as the whole Twilight, House of Night, and The Immortals series'. I smiled a bit as I rubbed dust off my books and grabbed as many as I could. I stared at my six foot tall book shelf and decided on where to put my books. I settled with the bottom two shelves and filled them with my book collection. On the top shelf, after I had unwrapped them all, I placed the all the pictures on it. Some of the frames I had decorated myself with different dried flower petals. My smile widened as I touched an old picture of my Mom and I when I was seven years old. We had been close once, but that was eleven years ago.

I opened another box and pulled out five white pillar candles. I had bought them at Walmart with Grandma a month before she died. They were next to the pillar candles that usually are adorned with the virgin Mary or Jesus. She told me that these candles were very special to me, and I was to pick them myself. I was so eager and happy to finally have my own set of pillar candles, that I could one day use to draw a circle with on a sabbat or for a spell. I stared at my green, red, yellow, blue, and white pillar candles and kissed them each before setting them down on the second shelf. Then, I set up my other random candles I had aquired over the past few years. I had four small lavender ones, a thick vanilla candle, two small cinamon candles and two lighters that I placed behind the candles. Just decorating my book shelf already made my room look more livlier and less depressing, and for awhile, as I set my room up, I wasn't as sad as I had been for the last three months.