Spring Rose

I carefully knock on the door. Any reasonable person would be asleep this early, but Rose’s sleep schedule has slowly acclimated to a life online. It’s a mess.

“Yes?”

She doesn’t know any other way to answer the door, even in the middle of the night. It’s always ‘yes’, always fine for people to enter. Most don’t bother to knock.

I open the door to find the room illuminated only by the light of the large display.

“Hey, Agatha doesn’t need me for today’s ritual, so I was thinking we could do a little ritual ourselves.”

Rose cocks her head, blinking at me before nodding. “Of course, I’d love to help you with your ritual!”

She’s far too enthusiastic. Most rituals are tedious and whenever she’s asked to join it usually involves giving up blood on her part.

“I don’t want y–” I pause, shaking my head with a smile. “Great. It’ll be fun.”

The smile on her face is fake. She doesn’t intend to deceive. It’s rather because she thinks this is how she’s supposed to react. It doesn’t matter. When she sees what I prepared for her, she’ll give me one of the genuine ones.

Already, she’s closed all the programs on her computer and shut it down, leaving us with only the light of the hallway. She bounces off her chair and joins me on our way through the gloomy dungeon and up the stairs. She’s wearing the bright dress she had me order for her from a catalog last month. I cast a heating spell on it and she pauses.

“I should put on the cloak instead.”

I put a hand on her back to push her forward. We can’t waste time if we want to catch the sunrise. “It’s fine, I’ll make sure you won’t be cold.”

“But I don’t want to mess up my pretty dress!”

Of course. She thinks I’ll get blood all over it, possibly cut through it.

“We’re doing a different kind of ritual today. You’ll be joining me as just another person.”

Again, Rose cocks her head. The motion always goes a tad too far, betraying that something is off. “But I’m not a person.”

I’m not having this discussion with her. She’s too new to this plane to understand and it’s not like anyone else will reinforce what I tell her.

“Pretend for me, okay?”

I am her steady supplier of cookies and garishly pink decorations for her room, surely she’d love to accommodate me this once.

“Of course!”

She bounces up and down with a fierce nod and a wide, genuine smile. I open the door, leading her outside and across the driveway, towards the backyard, where the goats are already out and grazing in the weak light of dawn. There’s a little hill that will allow us to watch the sunrise over the surrounding spruces.

“Do you know what day it is?”

She probably does. Magical knowledge comes naturally to her, and it only took a year for her to learn the human words to describe what she inherently knew.

“Ostara, the spring equinox.”

I motion for her to sit on a blanket I had already spread out on top of the hill earlier. She delicately settles down, making sure not to crinkle her dress too much. Her movements and manner of speech stand in stark contrast to her body. She looks to be no older than ten.

“This isn’t how the ritual is supposed to go,” she notes, eyes wandering over to the goat pen. Now that she stopped trying to chew on them, she’s getting along better and better with the animals.

“It’s just a little thing for you and me. For fun. We’ll watch the sunrise together. Humans have done this for ages to celebrate life and new beginnings.”

Rose nods solemnly, eyebrows scrunched together in thought. She’s still so young, yet at the same time carries a deep wisdom sourced from her eldritch nature.

“I’m not human, though.”

I can’t deny that. “But you’re alive, so you can celebrate life as well. And you did have a new beginning a few years ago, when you joined us in this plane. Besides, you’re far more human than Agatha.”

Arguably, she’s more human than I am.

She considers this for a moment, eyes focusing on a dandelion growing next to our blanket. She absentmindedly makes to grab for it, but I stop her.

“Hold on.” How long until basic human behavior will no longer confuse her? “Maybe you should have a look around to see if there’s something more suitable to eat somewhere?”

She clearly doesn’t understand my request, but rises to her feet regardless. I stay behind as she steps through the frosty grass, making uncertain circles around the blankets while scanning the ground. It’s like a game for her.

I didn’t hide her present too well. I wanted to make sure she experienced the joy of finding it herself.

When she eventually looks behind the larger rock I set up earlier, she dives down in an instant, coming up triumphantly with a chocolate bunny and painted egg in hand. She returns to the blanket, plopping down next to me without a care this time.

Already, she’s unwrapping the chocolate as I taught her only three years ago, discarding the wrapping safely.

“This isn’t just a human tradition, it isn’t even a magical one,” she comments between too large chomps. “It’s religious. Children go out to find eggs, but they don’t eat them all at once.”

“True, but we can still enjoy it. I used to do it with my parents as well.”

She turns to look at me for a moment before finishing the chocolate bunny.

“Thanks, Artur.”

I start to nod, a self-satisfied smile on my face. Then, she grabs the egg, taking a bite out of it, shell and all, and I freeze. She must have picked up on my reaction for she pauses as well.

“The outer part doesn’t usually go into the human body. You have to peel it, like a banana.”

How has no one fed her a hard-boiled egg before?

“Are you sure? It tastes like calcium and it’s crunchy.” Rose inspects the egg more closely, pulling off a piece of shell and holding it up to her eyes.

“Actually, no idea. I mean, you’ll probably be fine, so go ahead, I guess.”

She finishes the egg as the sun begins poking over the spruces. I nudge her, pointing at it, and she looks up.

“Oh, yes. Today, the sun will be up for exactly half the day,” Rose explains what Agatha already drilled into me years ago. “The druids celebrate the spring goddess of the past, but those bound to the occult perform rituals of balance, the harmony of light and dark, the mixing of that from the outside and that of the inside.”

Her eyes go wide, and she holds up a hand in front of her face, flexing her fingers. “I’m foreign, but I also have a physical existence here.”

“And I’m a native to this world, but am bound to a creature from outside. Sounds like we’re both allowed to celebrate this one, doesn’t it?”

We’ll celebrate her new beginnings as a human and mine as a warlock, even though it’s been a couple of years now.

Rose leans back, staring east. “I suppose so.”