I position my hands. All this power, it’s like this huge intricate web. Glistening with a glow that grows day by day, spell by spell. Wondrous. Dangerous even. Do one thing incorrectly and it’ll have severe consequences. It feels amazing, though——like I’m a part of something bigger than just what can be seen. Each fairy has a special web. The web of their power and their spells. Today, I’ll get mine. And my wings. To get them, though, I need to use magic for the first time. Except, I can’t use magic without a web. Once I cast my first spell, a web will create it’s way for me. In order to do that, Mother is letting me use hers. “Excited?” Mother beams, her chartreuse green wings shining in the sun, as she flashes me a bright smile. More like scared, but I nod. I’m nine. It’s around the age most people start magic, but it suddenly feels so young. I don’t know what’ll happen if this goes wrong. …but Mother wouldn’t have asked me to do this if she doesn’t trust me, right? I know that. No more delaying. I take my hands out, starting the spell I memorized long ago. A simple growth spell. I don’t need to think about the spell words anymore. My tongue has said them so many times, it speaks them like a second part of me. I focus on the image in my mind: a small lavender pink dahlia blossoming into a beautiful flower. Synchronously, I weave my own piece of string into the web carefully. For a moment, everything’s perfect. Until it isn’t. I don’t know when things go wrong, but for a moment, along with everything else, I hear Mother scream. “Fern! Stop! What are you doing?” I finally tune into the words I’m saying. I’m not saying a spell——I’m saying an incantation. Something I didn’t even learn before. I try to stop, but I can’t. My voice goes on against my will, darkening and dangerous. Luring me into something vicious. The garden around me is dying instead of flourishing. Every single plant, every single tree is aging rapidly and withering away to dust. Mother shakes me vigorously now. “Stop!” she’s shrieking at the top of her lungs, her voice high-pitched and pained, though I can barely here her. “Please, stop!” At first, I don’t get it. Then I look at her web in horror. It’s withering away at top speed, dissipating into nothingness. And then it’s gone. As quickly at is began, the spell is over. Mother is staring at me, as if she’s staring at a ghost. I look at her, and I go white as well. Her wings, her beautiful amazing wings that I’ve always admired, aren’t there. Gone, as if don’t exist. And so is her magic. ———Seven Years Later——— Dark purple smoke wafts through the air in a dark haze of fog, making everything indistinguishable. I cough. Three old witches float above me, shining in an eery way, smirking too confidently, as they rotate around me in a circle. Altogether, they start an incantation, but one that will take a while. I vaguely recognize it as one to steal magic. A longer one. And my first incant. I listen closer and huff at their words. ‘Monster’ they call me. The words tug at an old wound in my heart that never completely healed. Not that they’re wrong. This lets room in for fury. I’ll never forget the shame I had when the fairies chased me away. Said I wasn’t one of them. That I was wrong. Unnatural. And a thief. I kept crying that I’d find a way to give Mother back her magic, but they didn’t listen. Mother didn’t listen. The ever beckoning question, were they right? Yes. But I accept that now. I raise my hands, pulling on my magic, and starting my own incantation. It comes naturally, without me thinking about it. A big black beacon of hate develops into my hands, building great power. For years now, I’ve grown my magic. But no matter how hard I try to do a spell, it ends up as an incantation with disastrous consequences. After doing my first feat of magic, I never got a web. Nor wings. Instead, I stole someone’s magic and it developed into something else. A dark layer I felt around me. My true magic. But it never goes the way I want is to, unless the order is destructive. When it wears thin, in order to feed the layer, I’ll give it hate. And when I don’t have enough hate of others? I’ll give it of myself. I throw the blast of magic. It turns into fire, when I intend a shield. Typical. It hits the left witch, and suddenly she falters. Proving that the blast is more powerful than I knew, as soon it hits the witch, she disappears into a cloud of thick black smoke. The right and middle one stop their incantation, suddenly defensive. Another blast extinguishes the right one, this one shrieks and for a moment, I see fires erupt on her before she disappears quick as a wink. The middle one snarls at me, and is suddenly gone but not from a fireball. “Teleportation,” I scoff, inspecting the area she was just in. “Coward.” I let the magic clear away from my hands. I can still feel the essence of it on my skin. Can feel the magic taking its irreversible toll on me. I sigh, acknowledging the sadness for a moment, before leaving the clearing. The place where the fairies once lived before I burnt it down. I know the truth deep down. It’s apparent and unescapable no matter how much I try to run from it. I knew it from the moment I cast that first incant, spells being the language of the fairies and incantations the language of the witches. I’m a monster. Worse than that, I’m a witch.