Heart of the Bayou Beasts

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f the mausoleum. The tips traced the

Piere La

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and Huma

ingers caressed each chip in the stone,I felt he deserved. There was nothing in the inscription, to note the little girl he left behind after his death. The only soul who still visited his grave every weekend, placing flowers in the vases at the door. The only one who still mourned his insurmountable loss. There is nothing here besides the lilies I attentively place and the tears that have been shed into the soil, washed aw

ns on the occult and non-occult happenings of our culture-rich home's past. Sitting with him in his study as he toiled away at his old tomes, looking for new ways to combine the strengths of multiple types of magic

Viper's will." That's what he called her as I sat by his bedside mopping the sweat from his brow. Her po

a bête qu'est ton coeur (find the beast who is your heart)." Soon the jumbled English and French of his old-school Arcadian upbringing in Cajun country became intelligible, I only made out the French word for safe and bayou as he mumbled about beasts in the swamp, protect my Bri, but there was nothing I could make sense of. His eyes shut before he passed and I wept clinging to his hand. It had probably been hours before she found me there. A 10-year-old

s, humans and witches alike, had come to know me. My loophole was their images and I teetered dangerously on that ledge. I had a whole other life outside of their house of grotesque expectations. I pushed the envelope with what I wore and what I chose to study, and I slipped past their wide arching network of cameras or tracking devices to plot and plan my way out of this mes

d be pleased I had worn the horror of yellow tulle she had picked out but it seemed I would never be good enough for her. I had once so desperately wanted her to love me, that beautiful woman with perfect blond hair, the lean length of her, the grace with which she moved. She was smart and calculating. I later realized the brightness in her blue eyes I had once seen as restrained warmth, was a cold kind of

tretch my wings in that department with too many hungry eyes looking to cage and devour me. I had to find 'the beast that was my heart,' that was safety, whatever The Beast was. Was it something within myself or wa

s subjected to. I didn't know what lay beyond my escape, that is if I made it out. 'Shut up Bri, you are making it out,' I chided myself. 'You