Shades of Purple
by Grace Singer
From Chapter Seven: The Seduction of Control
Kinaea's thoughts flew at her like geese; sometimes in a v-formation and other times confused and falling out of line. The wind buffeted the wings of these thought geese and scattered them all over when it blew really hard, like it was blowing today.
Everything was a jumble. It was an insurmountable wall. Every thought fell on top of the thought before it and before long the whole pile was threatening to crush her still delicate mind.
She could grasp some things, like every day tasks and small feats of magic. But the magic she was privy to before her pledge night was lost to her until she could tear the fabric that dulled her senses from over her head. It was a thick gray fog that muddled everything up, made it difficult to see the edges from the inside.
Occasionally the curtain would billow around the sides or the bottom and she would get a glimpse of the kind of witch she used to be. She would get a brief taste of the kind of power she could wield. That taste alone kept her alive, kept her in this frenzied state of exploration.
If she covered every corner of her mind she might eventually discover the way out of this mess. At least, that's what she thought in the depths of madness that was steadily rising like murky water in a basement flooding with insanity.
The once clear picture of Anikae haunted her from the shadows, always out of the corner of her eye. When she turned to look her youngest sister was gone. The sweet girl that she had shared the womb with would dissipate into the darkness before she could apologize, before she could explain.
She hadn't meant for any of this to happen.
The thoughts of anguish and loss rebounded off the wall of other thoughts. Small spells lay heaped at the bottom of the pile, the most recent things she'd done to get herself going today. Then there were thoughts about the outside world, how cold it was, how white everything seemed in the very early hours of the morning. A web had formed in her mind, just above the thoughts of the morning. It was a clear image that ghosted its way into her memory.
The web had a pinkish-brown thread, a peach colored thread that was dynamic in shade, and a black thread, dark and clearly defined against the other two.
The pinky-brown thread belonged to Nikaea. It was a sickly shade, the combination of an elusive beauty that was devoured by dullness. The peach was Anikae's and lovely with the subtle pale orange and the one side that was darker, reddened, almost bruised. Kinaea's thread hadn't always been black. At one time it was purple but madness had tainted it, warped it into something she was unsure of entirely.