When life gives you apricots

Melissa dreamed about her childhood, the simpler times where she was asked by her mother to go and pluck apricots in their orchard. She lived a quiet and happy life with her parents and three siblings. Out of the four of them, she was the second oldest so she saw herself as a model for her two younger brothers who always followed her out to the orchards where she had a large basket in-tow that she uses to carry the apricots in.

One day a woman came across the orchard. She had pure white hair and was clad in strange black clothes that when shined by sunlight it would take on a dark navy-blue hue.

The strange woman said that she's only passing by and asked Melissa if she could have an apricot from one of the trees, to which Melissa, hoping to instill a sense of kindness into her two little brothers, said that the passing woman could. To return the favor, the woman took off her hat that had a large brim around it and a conical crown at the center that slumped, and she made Melissa wear it.

The woman tells her that it suits her. Melissa's two brothers shouted that their sister has become a witch, running around her before bolting into the house. The father of Melissa soon came out and quickly confronted the strange woman, and the young Melissa didn't understand why her father scowled at the woman who didn't show any fear while facing Melissa's intimidatingly large red-haired father. No, the passing woman instead eats one of his apricots, the juices of which trickled down the corner of her lip.

Melissa can't remember a lot after that, only that she was told to go back inside by her father. She sees her mother after going inside, staring out the window with concern in her eyes.

Just as the young Melissa was about to ask her mother a question, the wind blew into their house and caused the hat that Melissa was wearing to cover her eyes. She hadn't realized that she had kept the hat on her than giving it back to the strange woman.

Melissa also didn't realize that she was blown off her feet and knocked onto the wall, and then to the ground. She didn't know what losing consciousness felt, but that's what happened to her.

She woke up to a strange sunset, one that reeked with the combined smell of burning trees and carcasses. Melissa looked around and saw that the house she lived in had collapsed and the bodies of her siblings were sprawled on the ground, scorched beyond recognition. Her mother's burnt corpse was riddled with melted glass. Her father was nowhere to be found, but what she does see standing is the white-haired woman whose heels not only clicked as she approached Melissa but upon stepping on one of Melissa's brothers, it crushed his head into ash and cinder. Melissa had the black witch hat taken away from her and the woman placed it back on top of her head.

She smiled at Melissa, thanked her for the apricot, and apologized that she and her father couldn't get along. Melissa didn't know what to do. She had not experienced something like this in her quiet life. All she could do right now was stare and accept what life had dealt her while the large burn in her back becomes a stigma to remind her of this day.

The ghost inferno incident of the west-side is currently being controlled and put out. Its culprit, Melissa Arfox is currently detained within the west-side barracks' holding cells located just outside of the affected area of the ghost fires. The holding cells weren't accommodating, to say the least, but Melissa can safely say that it beats sleeping outside or in the sewers. It's at least clean and there's a separation between the prison cell and its bathroom. Although she hasn't received anything to eat in the past 4 hours she's been held there, not like it was necessary after all even though Erize told her that the 12 Councils will deliberate her sentence, it's clear to Melissa that her fate had already been decided.

Death. Either at the stake or the gallows.

"Talk about pretentious formalities, why don't they just outright kill me, it'll save them the holding cell. Is it because this place rarely gets used?" Melissa mocks the people who cannot hear her, or so she thinks.

"I couldn't agree more. Formality is just a step away from sarcasm, and sarcasm is the coward's lie." Cecil makes her presence known by trying to talk to Melissa, which she responds by getting up from the prison cell bed and scowling at the anti-mage.

"You –I didn't know they allowed kids here," Melissa nonchalantly speaks her mind out.

"I'm eighteen! Do you want to get hurt, huh!?" Cecil shouts back while grabbing onto the holding cells' iron bars.

"No way, we're the same age?" The crimson witch shows genuine disbelief, earning her a verbal outburst of profanities from Cecil.

But then Cecil slumps as she quiets down and, after a moment of silence, she lifts her head while looking at Melissa with a scowl of her own.

"I heard from Andrew that the reason for all of this is because you wanted to find him. I'm going to ask you, why?" Cecil puts her arms through and around the bars, leaning to it as she waits for Melissa to respond.

Melissa lets out a sigh as her legs curl up and her arms wrap around them. She then rests her head on both of her knees and sighs a second sigh. She felt pain in her stomach each time she breathed in or out, and she blames Andrew for it.

"Ah, since I'm going to get executed anyways, I might as well tell my life story to someone."

"Oh, please don't. I'm not interested. I just wanted to know why you did something as stupid as terrorizing Mires." Cecil clarifies while waving both her hands in the air.

"Die, flatty." Melissa spits out with a cheery grin.

"You first, bitch." Cecil hisses while smiling.

They got to like one another while talking, to the point that they both thought that they could've been good friends. Cecil thinks to herself that this might not have been her first interaction with a witch that she could talk with, she probably has encountered a lot but has never bothered nor attempted to reach out to them.

The reason she's doing it now is at the request of Erize –In fact, Cecil wasn't supposed to be the only one here, Andrew was supposed to come as well but said that his arm needed treating and that he had something else better to do.

"So, a witch with the same blue flames as Andrew appeared in your town once, pretending to need help, and burned it to the ground?" Cecil wanted to clarify as she listens to Melissa's story, maybe the last thing she tells to anyone before she dies.

"Yeah, and before you say something obvious, yeah I know that he's a man but-"

"I think you got the wrong person." Cecil suddenly interrupts Melissa and the anti-mage looks to the side with a distant stare. "For one, Andrew and I went to the same College for six years. Before that, he and I were good friends ever since we were kids. So, I can't see him having a double life –much less as a woman." An empty smile forms on Cecil's lips as her chin rests itself against the iron bars.

"Then how can you explain his arm? My runic spell is supposed to target a specific person. I used the cerulean witch's blood to stain the rune, and it was that blood that guided me here in the first place." Melissa argues with quiet passion.

Cecil already knew, the moment she saw that Drew was the only one burned by those ghost fires, that it was a target-specific runic spell, and she also deduced that it had something to do with the strange blue flames that Andrew bared, the flames that did not burn but freeze everything caught in its blaze. Cecil only knows one type of person that could carry such flames, but she wasn't ready to accept that fact –until now that is.

Both Cecil and Melissa looked at each other and at the same time, they came at a grim realization.

"Andrew isn't the Cerulean Witch. But he may be related to her. That would explain why the runic spell affected him –tell me, did you hope that the runic spell would kill the Cerulean witch?"

"…–Yes. I turned the belltower into a magic construct, and I thought that would be enough to both catch her by surprise and kill her in the ensuing inferno." Melissa already knows what Cecil is about to say next, but she won't be able to accept hearing it, it would mean that she caused an unnecessary amount of trouble for everyone, especially Erize.

"Andrew's arm wasn't burned to ashes. It was only a second-degree burn. So, even if the Cerulean Witch could disguise herself as a man and if that man was my best friend all along, it wouldn't explain the little damage he took from that inferno. I'm sorry." To Melissa, the apology at the end might as well not have been said.

It was clear to the crimson witch that she had failed miserably in avenging what she had lost.

A dead silence hangs above the holding cells. Cecil pulls away from the bars and turns her back to Melissa, who wanted to curl up into herself and disappear.

Melissa was impatient, she acted on instinct, and even if she did have her moments of clarity it was too late for her to wish she could've done things differently.

She thinks that the Cerulean witch was playing with her from the beginning and all she had worked for, all the sacrifices she had made, and all the opportunities she had to give up her on her journey for revenge, was all for nothing. In the end, she will just be another witch trialed and killed.

Of course, she's frustrated to the point she can imagine her blood boiling, but that's all it is. Her imagination. In reality, she had mentally given up, and now she looks at the floor with a thousand-yard stare.