Rose: Briar's Thorn by Erik Schubach

across my legs.  I almost skittered back, but I was already in the corner and I remembered she wasn't affected by me.
    I smiled and dug my fingers into her soft fur and smiled.  Mari came to sit beside me and smiled at me and bumped my shoulder as she ruffled Daria's ears.  I couldn't help it, she had cajoled a smile from me.  I loved the foreign feel of a smile on my lips.
    There was a light knock on the door and Gretta virtually glided in without a sound.  The white-hot power of her presence warmed my soul.  Ella said to her, “Parker ordered up some grub.  She's insisting we eat and sleep before we talk.  The pushy bird.”  She smiled down lovingly at Parker, who leaned back into her.
    Snow winked at Ella and said, “We know, we all have wolf hearing you silly Brit.”
    Ella teased back, “Hey now you Romanian fairy, you don't hear me disparaging your heritage now do you?”
    Gretta seemed to pull in the world around her, I tensed.  I thought they were playing, but was she going to attack?  She released a burst of power that smelled like a mountain breeze, which was centered on something that was lodged in Ella's hair.  A little purple flower bloomed.  It had been a tiny seed, how had she known it was there?
    Gretta winked, “There there, princess.”
    Ella blurted out, “I'm not a p...”  Then stopped mid sentence and pointed at her.  “..well played.”  But then she lifted a hand and lightly touched the flower but left it in place.  It was an almost bashful motion that belied the tough appearance she tried to project.
    Then Gretta made her way in front of all of us.  She reached a hand toward me and asked as she antlers grew out further and her feathery white cloak started to appear around her shoulders.  Her voice took on that ethereal tone of her nature goddess form even though she kept herself half way between.  “May I see your vines child?”
    I knew I was a little older than her human form, but Perchta walked the Earth long before man, so to her I guess I was but a child.  I timidly raised my hand and she grasped it in one of hers.  I could feel her magics soothing the black magic in my toxins.  Coaxing them into something else, something not deadly to her.  I allowed a black, twisted, thorny vine to slither out of my cloak and she took it in her other hand.
    I blinked. “Where she held it, it became a lush green color.  A healthy vine.  And she opened her sight.  I could feel it like a rush, like I had been pushed back three feet yet pulled forward four.  And she was looking at my soul.  I could see what she saw and I could feel tears rolling down my cheek.
    I could see the dark energies inside me like a web now, it was such an intricate casting that bound it to me.  Where my heart should have been, was the dark writhing mass of spells, it truly had consumed my heart.  She looked up at me. “You poor child.”  Then she asked as she tightened her grip on the vine, “May I?”
    I looked down then nodded.  With a swift movement, she snapped off the end of the vine and I withdrew it into myself.  She soothed me with a smile and then sat down near us and seemed to get lost as she examined the section of vine.  I felt my awareness slip back to normal and I was so relieved I didn't have to see the evil that had shaped me into this monster anymore.  A monster that was good for nothing but death, die, kill.
    She murmured to herself as she examined the now green vine and its thorns.  “This is such a complex casting.  Almost to the level of a forest guardian, it is pure death and malice.”  Then it was like the structure of the spells that imbued the vine seemed to hover around it like a floating code of light.
    She glanced at me.  “I could help you, but it would take a lot of time since it has tied itself to your life force.  It would always be there, but I could possibly contain the negative aspects.”  I blinked at the impossibility of what she was saying.