Fireflies

by yowcherspooks

Summary:

No matter how many hunts they pursue, The Hunters' Guild will never know when their job is done. All they will do is run around nilly from the sun's awakening until its slumber; all they will hope for is extermination in full; and all they will believe is that, as of late, a thing with green hair and a hat so pointy and wide-brimmed it could never be human was their finale―a final means to an end. Though it may in some way resemble a human, a girl, in fact, it could never be―witches are not occupations. They are born.

He often hears stories of the beast from hunters. Hunters of higher experience, hunters of his own status, but never ones from below him, though, for there is none applicable. None could be worse than the one who cannot bring himself from his bed in winter; None could be worse than the boy who has never beheld the bewitching of the magical.

Notes:

I wanna say these two are so gay like i do most things but they literally aren't. They're so hetero you guys!!!

Chapter 1: A glass vial to lose

Many times has Nene been chased from places by farmers with pitchforks and commoners with makeshift torches. Additionally, she's been banned from the majority of the villages in the area, one by one, in the order that she’s visited them.

The witch blames it on humanity’s idiocy involving the unique, considering how the “devil-powered” stuff she does is mundanely positive. Specifically, the time she was shunned for talking Outjoy’s local grizzly bears out of depopulating the river’s fish. She’ll forever be salty about that. Nene is salty about a lot of things if she’s honest, but it all revolves around the commoners being unable to see her potential.

——— ——— ———

Yelled orders coming from witch-hunters are also very common. Very loud, too, when not blocked out by Nene’s panted breaths and foggy mind. She fumbles for her messenger bag’s two buttons with one hand, the other holding vials and containers of plants and specimens and what-nots securely to her stomach. Well, the grasp was secure when Nene had first started sprinting, but they slowly began to slip away as time passed. Her forearm keeps them as still as they can be — which isn’t very stationary.

Arrows are shot around her frame and she finds herself glad one wasn't a lucky shot. Her wand was snapped in half by one of the nameless witch-hunter’s leather boots, so she finds herself at her most vulnerable. She flips her bag flap up haphazardly. Watch your step, she thinks, even if she knows how unbelievably hard it is to do so when juggling both three things and duties at once.

A gasp escaped her as her vial of frifflebuffs escape her hold, making her stop with her heels to look back. But by then the hunters were already too close.

One of them throws their crossbow at her, which she finds odd, but can hardly dwell on. It might’ve given her a little boost if not a large stumble. She messily shoves her remaining items into the bag and doesn't bother to button it, her heart dropping at the sound of glass cracking. Her vial. That's the second thing they’ve broken today.

The more or less conspicuously placed trail of pebbles led her to a familiar pond accompanied by a small cliff ledge, and if not for her situation she would have stopped to gaze at it for the millionth time. The witch jumps into the shallow pond. A feeble splash emerges as she vanishes in the clear, teal water. The group of hunters are left behind in a state of confusion.

Shouts of disarray get muffled before going silent as Nene falls out of the water, landing on her back in a flowery plane, dry. She huffs repeatedly, staring at the floating water above her.

She eventually lets out a breathy laugh, sitting up. The smile stays at the sight of her untouched cottage in front of her.

Notes:

I had to search up messenger bag anatomy to remember what a bag flap thing was

(im tiering for the in the corner of a resonant town event so like see you in 10 days maybe)