Bethany believed in magic. She was a witch after all. It was
kind of a gimmee that she believed in what she knew to be true.
She’d celebrated Summer Solstice the night before with all
her sisters and she’d stolen some of the sunflowers they’d used to decorate the
house, to fancy up her studio a bit. They were perfect props for the adorable
photoshoot she’d just done with a West Highland Terrier and a three-year-old
little blonde girl.
So, yes, an immortal witch in a coven who had just
celebrated Summer Solstice obviously believed in magic, but that wasn’t the
type of magic she was thinking about.
What Bethany meant was art. Okay, she admitted that sounded
cheesy. But it was also true. Art was entirely magical to her.
At first, she’d been drawn to painting but over the last
decade or so, she’d switched to photography. She was always hidden behind a
camera. Her sisters groaned when they saw her coming, but she didn’t care. Life
was intriguing through a lens. It was more beautiful if she could frame it.
Right then, for example, as she walked through the town
centre, the flea market was set up, with every stall selling second hand goods,
and each topped with a colourful tarpaulin that would have made a bright,
uniform image.
She stopped in front of a stall with a red striped canopy,
and rain from the British summer trapped in the material. The market stall was
selling old camera equipment, and Bethany noticed a particular camera. Vintage
and obsolete now, with the range of SLRs and camera phones available, but she
smiled when she saw it, because it was the make and model of the first camera
she’d ever held.
It had a silver body with black leather and looking through
the viewfinder had brought her intense joy. She’d snapped photographs of
everything when she’d owned this camera, wasting reels and reels of film on ordinary
flowers and overhanging branches, straight roads, wooded forests. None of it
had been boring to her.
Now, it was almost ironic that with the unlimited number of
digital images she could take, she was much more particular and took a lot
less.
The price tag on the camera was £8. It wasn’t worth anything
except nostalgia. She searched for the seller of the stall and made eye contact
with a man in his late twenties who immediately approached her.
“I’d like this please,” she said.
“Sure thing.” His gaze lingered on her face as she handed
him the money. Did she have food on her chin or something? “This is going to
sound really forward,” he continued, “But can I have your number.”
The abruptness of the request shocked Bethany. “Um…” What
was happening? She wasn’t like her sister Martha. She wasn’t searching for her
mate. She wasn’t hoping she would find love now that the goddess had forgiven
them and it was possible. She was still enamoured with the world, as terrible
and as heartbreaking as it could be, and that was enough for her.
“I don’t think so,” she replied, shaking her head.
“Okay, fair enough. How about instead, you let me buy you a
drink. There’s a place there.” He jerked his head at a small coffee shop with
silver tables outside.
He was handsome, this man. He had a dimple in his right
cheek and the beginning of lines around his eyes when he smiled.
“I have a family thing to get to.” Not entirely untrue. With
the number of sisters in her coven, there was always something she could tag
onto.
“One coffee. Ten minutes,” he suggested.
She played her old/new camera between her hands. This man
wasn’t her mate, and Bethany didn’t go on dates, but maybe it was thinking back
to the girl she’d been when she’d first discovered art and photography, maybe
it was thinking about how excited she was with what her future held. Something
made her say, “Yes.”
The camera sat on the table between them as Bethany spent
time with someone other than her sisters for the first time in as long as she
could remember. This wasn’t going anywhere. It was just a coffee. But it was
something.
