Page 4 of They Were Broom-Mates

As they finished their tea, Regina regaled Amelie with the history of the convent and how everyone ended up where they did.

“I’ve been the Seer here since I was fourteen.” Regina walked her cup over to the sink and placed it in the copper basin. “So it’s been… seventeen years?”

Amelie walked up next to her, setting her own cup down. “Seventeen years?” Amelie shook her head in shock. “That’s crazy. Is it typical to place witches that young?”

Regina turned, leaning gracefully against the counter, her blank gaze heating Amelie from the inside out. Despite her appearance, Regina had a quite warm personality, which all things considered, was surprising. Especially given how long she’d been here.

“It’s not abnormal.” Regina mused, touching one of her sharp, pointed black nails to her bottom lip. “I come from a long line of Seers, so many members of my family were placed before they turned eighteen. But with other stations, especially ones that demand abilities that are not necessarily quite as lineage-based, witches can be placed at a station anywhere between eighteen and their mid-thirties.”

“Wow.” Amelie rinsed off the cups and dried her hands on an embroidered towel that had materialized next to the sink. “Nobody in my family has ever been assigned a placement before, so this is all very new to me.”

Regina made a soft noise of acknowledgment, raven hair falling to the side slightly as she tilted her head, watching Amelie put the cups to the side to dry.

“How old are the other two?” Amelie looked back up at Regina, doing her best to maintain eye contact despite how much the taller woman flustered her.

“Hestia is the baby.” Regina smiled, a fond look coming over her face. “Only twenty years old. And Delia is a year older than I am, so thirty-two.”

Amelie pursed her lips in thought. “So I’m only the second youngest. I’m twenty-five, by the way… wait, do you know that already? Being a Seer and all?”

Regina laughed lightly, her hand covering up her mouth. “I’m a Divination Witch, not all-knowing.”

Amelie felt her cheeks heat up as she realized her mistake.

“It’s quite alright, my dear.” Regina stepped forward into Amelie’s space and took a lock of her golden hair in her fingers, tucking it gently behind her ear. “Besides, even if I did already know, I don’t tend to share many of the insights I get from my visions. I find it’s in poor taste to imply you know someone more intimately than they’re comfortable with.”

Regina smelled like almonds, coffee, and wood; earthy and grounded. So far, she had been nothing like what Amelie had expected, and it was proving to be quite the problem. Regina, tall, dark, and curvy, was actually Amelie’s exact type to a tee. If she continued teasing her the way she had been, Amelie was not confident how productive she was going to be in the other woman’s presence.

“No, that makes sense,” Amelie murmured under her breath.

“Come.” Regina took a step back, allowing Amelie to get hold of her senses again. “I’ll show you how it does work. At least, my portion of it.”

Amelie nodded, then with a flick of her wrist, she floated the teacups back up to their home in the cabinet and set off after the taller woman.

Regina led her back through the door she’d come in through and back across the nave, but when they reached the other side, they started down a new hallway. Amelie had felt the presence of the space when her magic had settled into the building, but walking through it and seeing everything for herself was still very new.

The halls themselves were lined with massive, decorated windows that began at waist level and ended at a point only a few feet from the ceiling. They were partitioned out and decorated in various designs of stained glass, leaving colorful swathes of light on the opposite wall. As Regina walked through the different colors, Amelie tried her best not to get lost in how she looked like a muted rainbow. Understated and discreet, but beautiful and mesmerizing.

By the time they turned the corner into the corridor that Amelie had sensed earlier, inundated with Regina’s magic, she was fully questioning how she’d ever considered the option that she had been straight a day in her life before her 20s.

“This is the records chamber.” Regina paused outside a heavy mahogany door, carved with runes and cycles of the moon. “Whenever I have a premonition, it goes in here for safekeeping.”

Pulling out a long skeleton key, Regina fit it into the lock and opened the door, gesturing for Amelie to follow her inside. The room was dimly lit, and a sort of mist covered the floor, making the space seem endless. Rows and rows of shelves towered above the both of them and from the very bottom shelf all the way to the highest point Amelie could see, were little bottles holding small bits of light.

“Are those the prophecies?” Amelie stepped further into the space, tilting her head to look closer at a singular bottle. She watched as what she had previously thought was a static light twisted and undulated in on itself, shifting like its own mini-universe.

Amelie felt Regina’s presence behind her, close but not quite touching as she studied the bottles, it made her heart race and she secretly hoped that the other woman couldn’t tell.

“They are.” Regina’s voice caressed Amelie’s ears. “Though most of them are not mine. They are a collection from every Seer Pumpkin Hollow has ever had, since its inception.”

“Wow.” Amelie stood up straight, gazing upwards at the towering shelves. “How do you know what they all are?”

“It’s part of the initiation, when a Seer is stationed. The previous Divination Witch gifts the new one all the knowledge they carry - though it takes quite a heavy toll on the body, sometimes causing changes in the witch’s appearance.”

Amelie’s gaze snapped back to Regina, realization dawning on her. “Your eyes.”

Regina smiled and held up her hand. “Among other things, yes.”

Unconsciously reaching out, Amelie took Regina’s pitch-black hand in her own, bringing it closer to the lamplight. Her skin was soft, and despite the inky darkness, she was warm. It wasn’t until she stepped a little closer that she realized what she had done.