The next day, similar to the last, Taylor and Kait both woke up at the same time and had breakfast at the same time. Kait dressed nicer than usual, though she still wore hand-downs from someone. Meanwhile, Taylor wore a light jacket and jeans, prepared to leave for school again. Outside the window, frost sheeted the ground.

Kait sat at the table, eliciting a curious response from Taylor. After taking three deep breaths, she quickly and deftly arranged milk, cereal, a bowl, and a spoon together at the table, finding each ingredient with ease, then she carefully poured the cereal and milk into the bowl. Afterward, she looked to Taylor, unsure if she’d done it right.

Taylor nodded towards Kait, implying he approved of her cereal-making skills. Kait fist-pumped into the air and smiled in victory. Taylor finished a bite of cereal, “So, you’re up early again. I wasn’t expecting that.”

“Yep, I know I haven’t been sleeping correctly, so I’m just going to start forcing myself to sleep at the right time by waking up at the right time. Alarm clocks are useful!” Kait said determinedly.

“I guess that would work,” Taylor took another bite. “So why were you sleeping so late in the first place? Didn’t you all wake up on the sunrise back in the day?”

“Please don’t make me feel like an old person!” Kait turned her head.

“Sorry, I was so very callous, Kait. Please forgive me!”

Kait waved it away, “It’s fine. It just feels ridiculous when you make me sound old. I’m only like...twenty..or four hundred and thirty-four, your pick.”

“Speaking of which, when is your birthday?”

“I don’t know my exact age, but I just made it the fourth of December.”

“Huh, y’know, mine’s on the thirteenth. So why did you stop waking up early in the first place?”

Kait’s expression changed a few times. For a moment, she looked Taylor in the eyes, but she soon looked down at her cereal.

“I’d prefer it if you all didn’t pry so much...”

“Well, I’d like to know, so it’s worth asking.”

Kait sighed but relented, “I always slept less than the rest of my family,” She then put her gaze up to Taylor’s. “The reason I slept so much before now...” she stopped, trying to find the right words. “In the back of my mind, I kind of...feel...empty like I don’t truly exist. It’s difficult to explain. Sometimes I look at someone, and I just...start crying.”

Taylor held his hands up defensively, “O-oh, I mean, you didn’t need to-”

“A-and I don’t know what to do! Like, I purposefully make my emotions do all the talking!” she placed her hand on her heart dramatically, “It makes me strong, in a lot of ways! But once that-that emptiness boils to the surface, it just turns into tears!”

Taylor slowly reached to grasp Kait’s shoulder. “Kait...uhh really I-”

“I can take it, though!” Her sudden outburst made him recoil in surprise. “I hate myself for it. Sometimes I can’t even feel bad for what happ...” An awkward silence filled the room as Kait finally realized she’d been throwing her feelings like a bucket of ice on Taylor when he was uncomfortable.

Oh, and aside from that, the room itself was replaced by an endless black void.

The two fell.

Kait didn’t react much to the change in scenery or, rather, the lack of it. Instead, she assumed a calm posture and chanted in her language, holding her skirt down as the wind blew it and her hair up.

“Consciousness give ka Partle ta halt urs fall...”

Taylor tried to grab Kait as his body began moving in its freefall, slowly rotating in the space where space didn’t really exist, while he cursed the plant-themed cusses of his nation, “THISTLETHISTLETHISTLE, BRANDED THISTLE SAVE ME!”

Kait calmly grabbed Taylor’s right hand with her left and pulled him closer to her. Taylor, on the other hand, was still screeching, “Kaityoubettergetmeoutofthis!” She couldn’t make out Taylor’s screams over the deafening wind, nor could she have told what those words meant, but she got the gist of ‘discordant scared screams’.

She finished chanting, causing the two to slow down. They eventually came to a standstill in midair, whatever ‘midair’ was.

Kait matted her hair back down and straightened up her skirt out. Taylor was quieter now but kept talking to Kait in his unfamiliar language. “I’m not sure what’s going on here...but jeez, please...please get me out of this creepy place!” He motioned his hands to the endless void that surrounded them. He ended by putting his hands on his hips, staring Kait down.

Kait sighed, then pointed at the armband on her left hand, “Ja can’t parple” and motioned towards her throat.

Taylor understood what she meant to some degree. For some reason, the spell that let them communicate was not working. He (reluctantly) pulled his hand from Kait’s, then extended his arms and spread his fingers, moving his gaze across the void.

Kait guessed Taylor was confused. Not that it took a genius to figure that out, of course. She started signaling in a very calculated way.

Kait wiggled her fingers at chest height-magic,

she straightened a hand vertically, then had her other hand pass by it, held horizontally-exit,

she held out an arm then started pivoting her hand up and down and bouncing it a little as if she was throwing something up then catching it-item.

Taylor had no idea what was happening, of course. He didn’t know sign language, let alone a 412-year outdated sign language. “What?”

Kait sighed, sad her sign language was useless after all the time she put into learning it. After a moment of thought, she held her hand out, then spread her fingers.

Taylor grabbed her hand again, then she pulled him closer to her. The two floated closer but didn’t stop, their heads hitting each other. Kait grabbed Taylor’s waist, which caused Taylor to start freaking out again, squirming uncomfortably and throwing out words Kait didn’t know in a flustered and slightly squeaky tone, “What?! Why’d you do that?! K-Kait...?” She then balanced their kinetic energy, slowly putting them into rest. By the time she had properly balanced the two, Taylor had finally stopped his whining. Kait let go again.

Kait rarely put it to good use, but in situations like this, when her magic had eaten most of her emotions, she could interpret others’ emotions through their tone and posture without flaw. She had used that skill to determine that Taylor had become quite flustered when she’d manhandled him. Perhaps, had she not been almost void of humor, she would laugh. He was so similar to her...That tiny amount of humor made her a little happy, but it didn’t give her enough emotion to cast a spell. She looked up at Taylor and threw a snide comment at him that he clearly wouldn’t ever understand, “Haia like ka, hour keeke!” she chuckled to herself.

Taylor exclaimed something impatiently, “So what are we waiting for again?”

Suddenly falling through a black void had racked Kait’s brain with adrenaline. It was a massive detriment to her ability to cast magic as, if she wanted to cast a spell using a feeling, she’d have to thread the magical needle past the adrenaline, which would take a while. There were a few emotions that could penetrate adrenaline, though.

Feelings and emotions were entirely different in a witch’s dictionary. While feelings are the body’s perception of the world-sight, feeling, hearing, taste, smell-emotions are the mind’s perception of the world. Feelings could sometimes be turned into emotions, should the body find it necessary to compel the mind to perceive the world the same way. For example, pain was an ever-present feeling in people. Yet, it didn’t manifest as an ‘emotion’ unless the body found the pain significant enough to alert the mind through emotion. While some may disagree with calling it ‘emotion’, for witches, feelings like that were the difference between using magic and being powerless. Adrenaline was an emotion that blotted out feelings and emotions, so naturally, witches devised ways to dredge emotion or feeling past adrenaline to cast spells.

Kait remembered all the ways to do so, and one way that worked immediately and effectively came to mind-pain. She knew firsthand how helpful pain could be as a witch...ignoring an unsightly memory regarding it.

Taylor saw Kait slow-motion punch her own face while speaking to him in an instructional tone, “kipa ki facee.” was she trying to tell him to punch her? Taylor raised an eyebrow in confusion.

Kait said, “Eaavy,” with an apologetic tone and with a sigh and look of dead seriousness, slugged Taylor in the face with the force of a twenty-year-old girl who had worked on a farm mainly eating vegetables up until two months ago. That was to say, fairly hard.

Kait flinched in sympathy as Taylor cried out, “OWWWW!”The punch caused Taylor to rotate in the air, unable to face Kait properly until a few seconds had passed.

That was the second time Taylor had been punched in the face, and it was decidedly unpleasant.

Kait then pointed at Taylor, then back to her face. Taylor felt slighted but was reasonably sure Kait was asking to be punched. He threw his fist as hard as he could, closing his eyes to avoid the guilt of seeing his punch land on Kait, of all people...He tried to, at least.

Just before the punch landed, he pulled back a little. Taylor had hit her alright, but Kait needed more pain than a weak punch that he pulled back at the last second. Despite the punch’s pitiable force, Kait began to rotate with just as much awkwardness as Taylor.

Once they faced each other again, Kait yelled at Taylor, putting her two hands out and goading Taylor into throwing another punch with some passive-aggressive words he couldn’t understand and gestures, “Come tow, ye seseki!” Taylor threw another reluctant punch, still closing his eyes.

Kait watched as Taylor...entirely missed her. She would need some more drastic actions to get the pain she needed to overcome her adrenaline. She grabbed Taylor by the waist again, which elicited an expression of fear from him, and some meek words, “Wait...did you actually not want to be punched? Please don’t tell me I just slugged you for no reason...” He rubbed his hurt cheek.

They were in a dream world of sorts, where only their minds existed, so Kait knew no matter what, so long as they woke up, they would be safe. Because of that, Kait was ready and willing to endure loads of pain, even if doing so only saved the two of them from losing a few minutes to sleep. Kait dragged him to nearly point-blank, then patted her belly with her open hand.

Please no! Why did she need him to punch her, of all things? The first punch had hurt Taylor physically and emotionally. Punching Kait in the face felt like hitting a dog-a crime against humanity. He had decided he wouldn’t try to punch her again if possible, knowing his heart couldn’t take it. However, she dragged him uncomfortably close to her body and invited a gut punch by(cutely) patting her belly. As if he was going to do that!

Taylor pushed Kait backward with all his strength, causing the two to fly away from each other. He held a pained expression on his face and held his hands in front of himself to show a lack of hostility.

Kait realized she wasn’t the only one who would need to experience pain. She had punched a friend before, and she knew how much it hurt to do it, especially to a friend of...particular importance. She would never invade on someone’s feelings for the sake of saving time. She mimicked Taylor’s motions and pushed her hands away as if pushing someone away while nodding with understanding.

Taylor didn’t know if Kait had fully understood his feelings, but she acted like she did, so he trusted that. The way she slightly smiled while motioning for Taylor to stop pummeling her made him nervous though...Just how much did she pick up on?

The next ten minutes were peaceful. Kait meditated peacefully, and Taylor nervously waited for Kait to finish whatever she was doing. In the meantime, the kinetic force of Taylor’s shove had sent him and her reeling across the universe, teleporting to the other end of the void each time they hit the ‘walls’ of it like they were in Pac-man.

Finally, Kait gathered the emotion needed to escape. She stretched to get her blood pumping and feel wakefulness, focusing on the emotion it elicited. She motioned to Taylor, who was nervously floating about upside-down above her with his arms crossed, with ten fingers up, then pointed upwards. Kait raised her fist in a triumphant pose then yelled, “Wake the thicket up!”

Something had roused Hailey from her sleep, some sort of emotion she couldn’t place her finger on. She had never woken up from an emotion before, but this one had hit her like a ton of bricks, even though she couldn’t tell what it was.

As she walked down the stairs, she saw the strangest of sights. Kait and Taylor were passed out on the kitchen table. She apprehensively approached Taylor and shook him as hard as she could. He didn’t wake up. In a triggered panic, she threw his body to the ground, cushioning his head’s fall with her leg, then gently laid it on the ground. She held two fingers to his throat and placed her ear on his heart in a frantic search for a pulse. She heard a faster than normal heartbeat, but otherwise, he seemed fine, with a healthy pulse and warmth. She started searching his body for wounds, and after identifying none, she sniffed the air. Just in case any gasses were threatening them, she opened the front door, letting in the cold air. Hailey then walked to Kait, laid her on the ground, and did the same for her. As she pulled Kait’s shirt up to look for injury-

“Wake the thicket up!”

Hailey’s head was, unfortunately, directly above Kait’s. Her positioning resulted in a potent head smash that sent her reeling to the ground, squirming and crying in pain, “OHHHH NONON-THAT HURT SO FFFFUUU-GAHH! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?” Hailey writhed on the floor with her hands to her head in pain.

Kait wasn’t doing much better, though she had a greater tolerance for it. Despite her groans, she crawled to Taylor, using the table as a support, then picked up an empty bowl still left on the counter and gently, though not too gently, bopped Taylor on the head with it, activating a spell.

Taylor woke up feeling like he’d had a bowl crashed on his head, sharing in Kait’s pain. “Owww! By Grass Blades, that hurts so much!”

Hailey rolled over to a wall and leaned on it, pained but just glad her brother wasn’t dead...oh, and Kait too. “Welcome to the club,” she groaned.

Kait slowly rose to her feet, then threw herself onto her chair with a massive yawn, calming herself down while waiting for the pain to fade away. She relaxed in the chair, and a moment later, Taylor followed, relaxing in his own.

Taylor stared daggers at Kait, though still dizzy, “I have way too many questions.”

Before Kait could respond, Hailey pitched in with a much more aggressive tone, “Me too! don’t go scaring me like that...” She didn’t want to admit it, but she had been terrified for a moment.

Kait waited for the pain to fade away before asking her own question, “I’m fine with answering questions, but why were we just on the ground, and why does Taylor not have a shirt on?”

“It’s called first aid, but you wouldn’t know much about it since you’re such a nieve old lady!”