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A Witch and a Jar

one in one hundred

By Lucia LinnPublished 2 years ago 4 min read
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A Witch and a Jar
Photo by Rhett Wesley on Unsplash

“Only one in one hundred magical persons are actually born with an innate gift for magic. Perhaps there are more people on the globe who possess this power naturally, but aside from this one in one hundred, they apparently have the good sense to choose an alternate career to witchery. Concerning the other ’99,’ they all ‘borrow’ their skills. Chapters 3-5 provide specific details on this process and chapters 6-10 address the inevitable debts. It is in every witch’s interest to make sure these debts are paid by someone else.” -Supernatural Debt and Debtors by Dr. Brynne

I wrote that. Along with several other tomes on the topic of magic. The whole concept of it fascinates me. I have invested my entire life to its study. I live and breathe magic. Every moment of consciousness is donated to the subject. In fact, the only nonmagical thing in my life is me. I have absolutely no gift for it and absolutely no interest in acquiring said gifts. I just teach it.

However, I have taken a brief sabbatical of fifty years, give or take maybe three, since I have the current handicap of having no physical body.

No, I am not dead. I detest zombies and overall prove I am not one of them by being at all clever. My spirit is not departed. It’s just not allowed back into my body at present. As I said, I am not magical, nor trying to be. But anyone who claims to know everything ought to know that the best tutor for the magical is the unmagical. A powerful heavily indebted witch searching for someone to get punished in her place isn’t the safest supervisor for her growing competition. Unfortunately, when I rather sternly pointed this out to a certain group of the 99, they apparently did not want to hear it. And when the magical do not want to hear something, they normally are able to make sure they don’t. And that is why I am now disembodied. My physical self, though distant and maybe not in the correct shape, is still very near and dear to me and I’ve been keeping track of it. It is now beneath their ‘school’ and I am elsewhere.

The elsewhere that I am, in fact, currently at, is an old pickle jar sharing the space with some crickets and sparse greenery. It takes great focus to prevent a soul from dissipating unless it is in some sort of container and thus, the pickle jar. Still, the crickets are incredibly ticklish and if I had retained my vocal cords, I’d be forced to chortle without ceasing. Enough about the jar. It’s in a room.

It might have been painted a lovely color, but not a speck of the actually wall still showed. It looked generally like the display case for Obscure Hobbyists Anonymous or something of a similar vein. A section of the wall was covered in various art pieces such as overly watered watercolors of bodies of water and pastels that might as well have been drawn with crayons. Further along there were a lot of maps with no reason nor rhyme. California and Ireland overlapped with the San Diego Zoo and Middle Earth. Another section had bands and sports posters. I happened to know that the inhabitant of said room didn’t give a rip about sports if she wasn’t playing and only listened to sad classic country with gravel voiced guys mourning about their gal dying in the snow.

Ah yes, the inhabitant. She sat on her small pink bed surround by fishing tackle and jewelry kits and various other tools for the bored mind. She was slight and olive skinned with thin dark hair in a depressed pony tail that obviously had nothing more to live for. She was small enough that the giant shirt she was wearing looked empty. Her head was cocked and she had the expression of one who had been disillusioned but had high hopes for an imminent new illusion. Her name was Zoe Napal and she had just come to the conclusion that she was horrible at photography. Just like everything else. Funnily enough though, she never seemed to quit things because she sucked at them. That was just a consistent coincidence. She quit because she was bored. And photography had gotten boring. So, she had to decide what to try next.

“Maybe gardening…” she narrowed her eyes and her smooth forehead contorted to such an extent of concentration it would have impressed even Charles Dickens. “Or I could take another whack at entomology…”

She glanced at my jar, noting only the incredibly dull presence of ununique crickets. Bugs disgusted her. She hadn’t messed with them nearly long enough to get bored.

Magic. I wanted to tell her. I’ll teach you. Do MAGIC.

That’s why I chose this jar in this room. Because this girl, as spastic and uninterested as she was, horrible at everything she tried, was 1 in 100.

Fantasy
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About the Creator

Lucia Linn

”Some days I feel like playing it smooth and some days I feel like playing it like a waffle iron.” -Raymond Chandler

Bits of fantasy and poetry and whatnot here, comedic comics on Instagram @mostlymecomics

Reader insights

Nice work

Very well written. Keep up the good work!

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