Why I summoned my witch

„Every family has an odd one“, my witch said as I posed in front of the mirror while wearing my new mask that matched the brand new underwear that I had bought. „My hair had always been the brightest and the curliest.“

In our very first wine nights, we had already discussed where Layla had come from, and she had given me a detailed description of all the dangers that her little town had faced, and how her life had slowly fallen apart. She had also not been too shy to tell me about giving birth to a baby with a really deformed head, what had me not wanting to spread my legs for anything or anyone ever again.

I still had enjoyed talking to her.

Later in autumn, when we had been standing on a field that I had just recently found, and in hope for a change of things had called my „happy“ field, she had went on about having been really confined to her house and too scared to ever leave it, and even worrying about sending the maid outside.
Sure, when facing hard winters and crop failure, just turn to the Lady with the dead husband and the also dead baby with the deformed head, until she shows her needles.

„To keep the pain to a minimum we do all kind of stupid things“, was Layla‘s answer to this later, when we had ice cream at 4 AM.

Ice cream. I scream. Maybe something in between, these nights.

I had summoned Layla when I had needed someone, just anyone, to talk to.
Maybe even, because I was bored.
But being bored seemed way too innocent for this state of staring at the wall and hoping for things to change, until the head felt ready to be smashed into it, or to find a little relief in drowning with wine.

I had summoned Layla, because I needed a way to live through evenings so difficult, I was out of breath from doing nothing, and had to get through this several times a day for several hundred days already.

Layla had waited a lot.
Being trapped in her house with the remains of a life that she had not fit.
Being locked away and expecting death, when suddenly the town around her had been dying, and she was taken away by her masked, mysterious stranger, roaming the streets together with death.
And my witch also had waited when she had fallen in love with him, and had waited for him to return from his duty, until one day he had not.

„In a way, it was a relief“, Layla commented on that, when the first snow was gently covering the world outside our kitchen window. „Our tale was over, but it had been one. A real one. One I never forgot. And I still had a few years left to have fun with all the little demons and shadows knocking in his door to find some help with all their little problems.“

Yes, I enjoyed talking to Layla, because after being the innocently odd Lady that had seen a whole reality fallen apart, she had turned into the weird one surviving Dystopia and enjoying herself, while having a nice word or a few frog legs to cook for those in need.

That is why I summoned my witch.
Because she appeared when waiting had turned into laying on a field feeling dizzy from too much wine and being way too happy about Cassopeia in the sky.