From Coven to Covenant

The dim light of a fire could be seen glowing between the trees, painting the thin blanket of mist covering the woods with a yellow hue. Through the golden haze and timber was a solitary, isolated, and - what looked like from the outside - abandoned, dilapidated shack, hidden away from the prying eyes of civilization. Within that shack was far from abandoned or dilapidated, however, and it housed an equally solitary, isolated woman, and the source of the light piercing the darkness of night. Far away, a coven of witches in Salem had found its numbers at a dozen, one of the sisters having gone absent.

That absent witch found herself here, in this shack, wherever here actually was, far, far away from home following a spell that had gone awry and teleported her away. Not even her black cat, St. Áan, had been teleported with her, and she missed him and his company dearly - he was such a devil. She found herself doing what she must to survive and get by in the wilderness, though, really, she wasn't in the wild, she simply knew not where she was or how to get back to Salem and her coven, so had set herself up in the woods of a nearby town. It would be too much of a risk to try and find refuge in the town itself, given what she was, so she found herself a hermit.

Still, she was getting on well enough without having to feign interest in an old, boring man just to get a roof over her head and keep her belly full, and keeping up appearances might have been more trouble than it was worth. So, she had gone it alone, without a husband she pretended to love and without a coven of sister witches whom she actually did love. Setting up shop not far from the nearest town, Scarlett kept a low profile for the most part, slowly - over time - gathering and crafting her essentials - such as a magic broom and cauldron - and she got by doing favours for the locals and taking their coin as payment, favours that they could only ask of a witch. Speaking of which...

Footsteps crunched on the moist forest floor of twigs, moss, and leaves, and a second, smaller light pierced the fog. It was emanating from a lantern which was slowly approaching the shack, being held by a lone stranger. The stranger seemed skittish, slightly hunched forward to make their figure smaller, constantly looking over their shoulders to make sure they weren't being followed, as though they were here doing something they shouldn't. Scarlett could hear the footsteps approaching and saw the light getting closer, and prepared herself to appease another of the townsfolk.

Scarlett anticipated the knocks at her door, which didn't come as soon as they might have had she not been what she was. Her unexpected visitor was anxious, naturally, and stood at the door of the shack building up the courage to knock, and knowing this caused Scarlett to smirk deviously - she did like it that her mere being made people nervous. It felt powerful. While they were delayed, the knocks did eventually come, and in a frantic, hurried fashion.

*Knock, knock, knock*

The witch stood up from her chair and walked over to the door, unbolted the lock, and opened the door confidently. She looked at the figure outside her door up and down, inspecting their demeanour and posture, and they were standing with their hands together in front of them, their fingers twiddling anxiously, their hooded head bowed and looking down at the witch's feet. "Hello," Scarlett greeted them confidently and assuredly, slightly dragging out the 'o', her head not at all bowed, her posture straight and strong. The person at the door didn't respond.

"Can I help you?" she followed up, again with confidence in her voice and with intonations that exuded charm, influence, and power - it was seductive. The person finally looked up at Scarlett, revealing their shy face to her, and they plucked up the courage to reply.

"Are... are you..." they stuttered.

"A witch?" Scarlett finished their sentence for them, having done this dance countless times in recent memory, familiar with how nervous the townsfolk were around her, and how afraid of her they appeared to be. "Yes, I am," the witch continued, answering both her guest's and her own question. "Are you here to ask a favour?" she queried, despite being fairly certain that she already knew the answer to that. The person at the door nodded sheepishly, and Scarlett invited them in. "Please, come in, and don't be afraid - I am a witch, not a monster."

This did little to ease her unannounced guest's nerves, yet they entered her shack all the same. With how frequent these occurrences had become, Scarlett had furnished her makeshift abode with a chair not only for herself, but one also for these impromptu visitors, and she invited this visitor to take a seat.

They did just that, though not without apprehension, and Scarlett took her place in her own, comfier-looking chair. The visitor took their hood down now that they were in the privacy and, hopefully, the safety of the witch's shack, unveiling themselves to Scarlett. "So," the enchantress began, "How can I be of service, Miss...?"

"You don't look like a witch..." Scarlett's visitor commented doubtfully, suddenly unsure whether she had come to the right shack - as though there was more than one previously abandoned shack to be found in these woods - and Scarlett wasn't sure whether that was meant as a compliment, or as an insult. She took it as the former.

"Thank you," she said, conscious that common folk were masters at spreading rumour, misinformation, and made-up tales that oft became the ubiquitous narrative, including those about witches being old hags and having large noses and ugly moles on their faces. However, Scarlett had none of these features and did not look like what the general public believed witches looked like.

"But... you're beautiful," her guest remarked, "I thought witches were supposed to be... you know..." Scarlett's guest had just enough wisdom to not finish that sentence, and Scarlett took it upon herself to take it from here.

"Witches come in many shapes, sizes, and ages - we're people, just like you. I can assure you; I am a witch. Now..." Scarlett said sternly, yet still with the provocative tone in her voice, "...What is the purpose of your visit?" Put in her place, Scarlett's guest abandoned her line of questioning about her witchy credentials and got to straight to the point. Mostly.

"Well, you see..." she started, "...I've been trying for, you know... with my partner..." the woman looked around sheepishly, now with a look of embarrassment on her face rather than one of anxiety.

"A baby," Scarlett finished her sentence for her, this woman having been far from the first from the nearby town who had come to her in search of some miraculous potion to cure their husband's sterility or their impotence. "Don't worry, I have just the thing," Scarlett said, moving to get up out of her chair.

"Wait," the woman said, stopping Scarlett in her tracks, "It's not what you think."

"Oh?" the sorceress responded, raising an eyebrow curiously. "Go on..."

"It's... well... he doesn't actually want to... do it... yet, not until we're married." Scarlett looked down at the ring that the woman was proudly boasting upon her finger, and then back at her eyes.

"You're not married?"

"We're engaged, but the wedding isn't for a while yet, and my husba- fiancé, sorry... is a devout Christian, and he won't have sex until we're married, which means we can't conceive a child until then, but..."

"But you don't want to wait," Scarlett said knowingly, and the woman nodded. "I see." Scarlett's moral compass might seem questionable to some, but it was her own, and she had no qualms about helping this woman if it meant getting paid.

Most of her customers were the women of the town who were after potions that would make men fall for them, or wives after potions to make their husbands lust for them and revive their dead sex lives, and the odd one here and there who simply wanted a potion that would bring their 'marriage' to an untimely end. Scarlett's questionable moral compass lent itself to accepting each of these requests, in return for payment, of course, and she had considered getting into bed with the town's undertaker as she'd be making even more than she already was when those who wanted their marriage to end came calling, but she didn't want to out herself to the townspeople who she was sure wouldn't be happy having a witch living nearby. So, she kept a safe distance and a low profile and ensured all the dealings she had with her customers and her own nature were kept private.

"I can help you with that," said the witch, "However, unfortunately, I don't have the ingredients I need right now. Come back in two nights' time, and it'll be ready."

"Thank you," the woman replied gratefully and gladly stood up to take her leave, more than ready to get out of this place.

"Not so fast," Scarlett halted the woman, "I take payment upfront. Leave your coin with me." The woman hesitated momentarily, unsure whether she was being swindled by someone posing as a witch, though her desire to bear a child was the most important thing to her and the most important thing, she believed, that a woman could do, so she did as she was told.

She took a weighty coin purse from out of her clothes and handed it to the witch, who thanked her for her patronage. "See you in two nights," Scarlett said her goodbyes to her guest, seeing her out of the door, and then closed it behind her and bolted it shut. The woman hastily made her way back to the town and to what she called home, back to her fiancé, hopeful that she would bear his child and a child of her own before too long, and Scarlett took her place back in her cosy chair and in front of the cauldron-covered fire after setting the coin purse with the others. No sooner had Scarlett's backside touched the fabric of the chair, there was another knock at the door - this one not nearly as timid as the woman's earlier.

*Bang, bang, bang*

This was not quite the quiet night Scarlett had hoped it would be, though she wouldn't complain about the opportunity to earn more coin. So, she stood back up, adjusted herself, then made her way back to the door and unbolted it, ready to entertain another guest. She opened the door to a hooded figure like the one before, though this one towered over her. It seemed that Scarlett's previous guest had been right to be skittish during her journey to the witch's shack, because she hadn't come alone.

She'd been secretly followed by a cloaked figure, a cloaked figure who trailed behind her from a safe distance, hiding behind the many trees of the forest along the way, all the way to the shack. After the woman had entered the shack and the door had closed, the figure had snuck up to the shack, quietly tiptoeing around and listening to their conversation. From the outside, the voices were muffled and unclear, the shadowy figure unable to hear every word yet able to get the general gist of what was being discussed, and they did all they could to keep quiet and remain undetected, their intent known only to them. For now.

"Hello," she said, exactly the same way as she had to the woman before, "Can I help you?" Scarlett eyed the prominent cross hanging from the prominent figure's neck and spotted a ring on one of their fingers, and she quickly put two and two together, though didn't say as much.

"May I come in?" the figure said in a deep, domineering voice, totally unlike the woman before, and Scarlett welcomed them. The figure walked through the door at the witch's behest, and they appeared to not need to ask any questions about the validity of Scarlett's witchery.

Scarlett closed the door behind the man - it was most assuredly a man, at that size and with a voice like that - and then invited him to take a seat, the same seat that his previous visitor had taken, then she took her own. The man pulled down his hood and revealed himself to indeed be a man, and Scarlett started to go through her song and dance a second time. "Are you here to ask a favour?" she asked the man, though his response was not to answer her question.

"What did she ask you for?" he asked her straight and assertively.

"I'm sorry?" Scarlett responded.

"That woman you just saw, what did she ask of you?" he pressed her.

"Sorry, that is between her and me. I cannot share that information."

That was a lie. Scarlett could share whatever she wanted with whoever she wanted because she made her own rules, she simply knew who this man was in relation to the woman and was using that information to her advantage.

"Don't test me, witch," he replied with more than a hint of disdain for her kind in his voice, his hand loitering around his chest where his cross hung. Scarlett chuckled.

"I'm not a vampire - your cross will do you no good here." The man's confidence drained from his face, Scarlett putting him in his place like she had done the woman, and she goaded him. "I can see why she can't wait," Scarlett said, looking him up and down like she had done his fiancé, liking what she could see.

"So, she did ask you something, something to do with me?" he implored, edging forward in his seat, "Please, what did she ask?"

"She did," Scarlett answered him with glee, the ball wholly in her court, then the man pleaded with her to tell him. "She asked me to brew a potion for her to give to you, and I will."

"A potion for what? What will it do to me? Does she intend to kill me???"

The man's previously confident demeanour had all but gone as he convinced himself that his bride-to-be intended to attend his funeral before she attended their wedding, though Scarlett quickly allayed those fears. "The potion she has asked for has nothing to do with ending life, only creating it."

"Creating it?" he questioned, curious what that meant, and then it dawned on him. "She wants to bear a child?" he began to figure it out, before again trailing off in the wrong direction, "With another man? Is it that no-good blacksmith?!"

"Not with another man, with you."

The man was confused. "But... she will bear my child, I don't understand?"

"She wants to bear your child, but does not want to wait until you're married."

"But... I can't, I'm..."

"I know what you are," Scarlett interrupted him, the man having put the pieces of the puzzle together.

"So... what would the potion make me do?" he quizzed the witch, wanting to understand the situation fully.

"Simply put, it will make you wildly aroused, want to bed your wife, and plant your seed inside her."

"How can I stop it? Can you void the deal you made with her?" he asked her with an element of panic in his voice.

"I could make another potion that would counteract the one your fiancé has asked me to make, and if you drank it before she slyly gives you the other one, then the one she plans to give you won't work."

"Oh, please, I would be oh so grateful!" the man said with relief, feeling a weight lifted off his shoulders despite it only having been there for a matter of minutes.

"I take payment upfront, of course," Scarlett explained, and the relief on his face quickly faded.

"I don't have any coin; my wife took it all..." he said drearily. The coin he was referring to was already in Scarlett's possession, something she already knew, leaving him with no means to pay her for her services, and this... situation... could be fortuitous... The townsfolk weren't the only ones who came to her asking for favours and paying her to brew potions, as Scarlett herself had been working on a potion of her own ever since she got here, and she needed one last ingredient for it, an exceptionally difficult to get hold of ingredient that this man very likely had. And he was rather handsome, after all, and she wouldn't at all mind if it was him she got it from. Besides, well, she had not gotten any for some time...

The potion this witch was brewing for herself would, she hoped, teleport her back to Salem, to dear St. Áan, to her coven of witches where she belonged and taking part in their sabbaths, but the final ingredient had eluded her up to now, such was the difficulty in obtaining it. This ingredient was, of course, cum, but not just any cum, rather the cum of a Christian man - and not just any Christian man, but a Christian man who was also a virgin. It was already known to her that this man was a Christian, and given that he wouldn't have sex with his fiancé until they were married, it stood to reason that he was also a virgin. What she needed stood right before her, halfway down his body, in two spherical objects, and with only one way to get it out. Scarlett intended to do just that.

"You don't have any coin?" she teased, "That's too bad. Best of luck with the baby..." Scarlett stood up and took a couple of steps toward the door, then the man stopped her.

"Wait!" he said bluntly, "I can get some, just give me a few days."

Scarlett turned to look at him, then said "You don't have a few days, your fiancé is coming to collect her potion tomorrow - it's already brewing in my cauldron." Neither of those things were true, but the cauldron was indeed bubbling away above the fire and the man hadn't heard everything they discussed, so for all he knew she was telling the truth.

"Oh..." he uttered dejectedly, looking at the green, bubbling fluid filling the black cauldron, then down at the floor. He was out of options and out of luck, at least with the witch, and his only recourse was to head back home and confront his wife-to-be, or possibly do his utmost to avoid being secretly served the potion over the next few days. After a few silent moments, the man stood up and slowly trod toward the door, Scarlett taking a couple more steps toward it from where he had stopped her in her track, and unbolted it before opening it for him. Just as the man was making his way past her, she did as he had before, and stopped him.

"You know, there is another way you could pay me..." she suggested, that tone in her voice more evocative than ever.

The man halted his sedate march and turned to look at the witch, the look in her eyes having changed from before. It was mostly the same, though there was a slight twinkle in them now. The change was subtle but noticeable. "Really? How?" he asked her, suspecting that she would have him gather some crops for her, or run some errands - something of that ilk.

"What's your name?" Scarlett asked the unto-now-nameless man, keen to utilise everything she might need to exercise her cunning.

"Thomas..." the man answered formally.

"Thomas - may I call you Tom?" the enchantress acknowledged his name, asking if she could be a bit more informal about matters.

"Sure..." he said, unsure of why she wanted to address him by the abridged version of his name, which was a more personal alias used by those who knew him, yet if it meant voiding the verbal contract his fiancé had made with the witch and preventing the worst from happening, then he was happy to oblige.

"Thank you, Tom," she appreciated his answer, "I'm Scarlett".

"Hello, Scarlett...".

The man felt uneasy knowing the name of a witch, establishing a degree of familiarity between them, afraid that it might suggest he had an element of association or affiliation with the witch, something he did not want a reputation for. Yet, perhaps against his better judgement, he made no effort to stop it, as what he wanted to stop was, in his mind, far more threatening to his reputation and his conscience. "Tom, my dear, you have something that I need..." Scarlett started, closing the door - causing Tom to move out of the way of it - and bolting it shut. She then took a couple of steps toward Tom until she was sharing the same airspace, and continued "And in return for you giving it to me, I will void the deal I made with your fiancé".