The (Doomstar) Witch (an earlier write)
The witch. The witch does not wear black. Not anymore.
That would be too easy. No, the modern witch wears soft eyes and clean lines.
She may bring you a cup of something warm. She may compliment your shirt. She may remember your child's name.
And yet, when she leaves the room, the temperature shifts. People say things they didn't mean to say. A slight bitterness creeps into the air.
Someone who once spoke boldly now stutters. Another who never complained now begins to murmur. This is how you know.
There was a witch in the room.
- The nature of the witch.
When I say witch, I do not mean a figure from the fairy tales. Not the crone in the woods. Not the potion maker or broom rider.
Those are disguises.
Masks we made to keep the real thing hidden.
The real witch is something far more subtle and far more dangerous. She does not need to chant. She does not need to curse.
All she needs is presence.
Because the real witch distorts.
She bends the invisible. She walks into a room.
And without a word, old alliances begin to fray. People who were once sure of each other begin to glance sideways. Her magic is suspicion.
Her spell is discord. But here is the terrible part.
She always comes smiling. Witches are not violent in the conventional sense. Their weapon is not fire, but suggestion.
Not force, but friction. They tilt the world just a few degrees off balance, and then let nature do the rest.
- Witchcraft as a geometry of discord.
The real witch operates in patterns. She places pressure on the weak lines of a group or a mind.
Those hairline fractures already there. And with a casual question or a well-placed glance, she widens them. She doesn't break anything.
She lets you do it yourself.
This is the key.
She gives you the knife. Then she whispers, wouldn't it feel good to cut? And you don't even realize what you've done until the damage is long past.
That's the genius of her craft. It leaves no fingerprints. Only fallout.
- How to know you've met a witch. You won't know at first.
She may arrive at just the right time. She may seem to understand you in ways no one else has.
She will listen well.
She will echo your fears back to you, not to soothe them, but to make them sacred.
Witches are excellent listeners, but they listen in order to tune you to find your dissonant note. And once found, they will play it again and again. You will find yourself reacting to things you never noticed before.
You will question people you once trusted. You will feel justified in the slow withdrawal of love.
And when you finally push someone away, you'll hear her voice in your mind, not with regret, but with approval. That's how you know you've been played.
- Witch hunting and the real trouble.
Now I must be careful here, because throughout history, the accusation of witchcraft has been used to punish the strong, the strange, the wise.
Countless women were burned or drowned, not because they were witches, but because they were inconvenient. So let us not become that kind of hunter.
- The real danger of witchcraft.
The real danger of witchcraft is not knowing the difference between a woman of power and a woman of poison. A woman of power makes people better.
She challenges, yes, but to purify. A woman of poison makes people worse. She flatters, yes, but to corrode.
If you cannot tell the difference, do not hunt. You are not ready.
- The witch does not want to destroy you, not directly. She wants to watch the world rot and say, see, I was right.
The witch thrives on confirmation. She wants betrayal because it justifies her own brokenness.
She wants chaos because it proves there was never any order to begin with.
She does not create wounds.
She creates the belief that wounds were inevitable, and that belief, once planted, is harder to uproot than any spell ever spoken.
- The ring and daisy.
There is the story the witch who fiddles with her rings, looking out her winder at the daisies, as they shiver.
That's no metaphor. The witch is always playing with something.
A charm. A trinket. A phrase.
A person. She toys with the delicate while claiming indifference.
She watches for reactions.
She never says what she's doing.
But the daisies know. The young.
The innocent. The sensitive. They feel it in the roots before anyone else.
The child grows anxious around her. The dog won't sit beside her.
The air becomes harder to breathe. These are not fancies. These are warnings.
- Why we let witches stay.
If it's so clear. You might ask, why do we let them stay?
Because part of us wants to believe the lie. The witch doesn't operate alone.
She requires a host.
She whispers what we already fear.
She promises a world where our paranoia is wisdom. Our bitterness is discernment.
Our retreat is safety. And we like that world. Because it absolves us of the need to love again.
That is her truest magic.
- The counterspell.
You cannot banish a witch by naming her.
You cannot confront her in anger.
You must simply withdraw the current. The witch lives by distortion. She must be seen clearly.
Not hated. Not feared.
Just seen. Once seen, her glamour fades. Once unmasked, her spells turn to dust.
Because her power is not in her nature. It's in your reaction.
And when you no longer give her the story she needs, she leaves.
Not in smoke.
Not in fire. Just quietly.
As if she was never there.
- One final note.
Not all who trouble you are witches.
Some are simply wounded. Some are clumsy. Some are lonely. Some are lost.
But the witch?
She is something else. She knows what she's doing.
She chooses corrosion over communion. She smiles while she pulls the thread. And when you wake to find the whole garment gone, you will remember the way she looked at you that night, by the fire, just before the unraveling began.
- So listen to the daisies. Watch the rings.
Feel the temperature shift. And trust this.
The witch always leaves a trail.
But only the clear-eyed can follow it.