Garland

[WP] You wake up on your 21st birthday with your pet telling you, “You need to wake up” as your grandma barges in your house screaming, “I’ve been waiting for the day to tell you you’re a witch.”

“I know,” I say, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. “Sabel told me when I was eleven.”

“Sabel!” my grandma yells. Sabel curls up into a ball at my feet and pretends to be asleep. She nudges him with the end of her broom, and he rises with an exaggerated stretch.

“I thought we told them at eleven,” he says.

“That’s Harry Potter, you idiot.”

“My bad. But it’s not like she wouldn’t have figured it out anyway,” he says, leaping off the bed and onto the windowsill.

“This is serious, Sabel.”

Sabel doesn’t care. He’s focused on a dragonfly on the other side of the window.

“Curse this vessel’s lack of opposable thumbs,” he mutters, scratching at the glass.

“I’m fine, grandma,” I assure her. “I know we have to keep it secret. I know you’re going to start training me. Sabel told me everything.”

“Your mother and I, we wanted it to be special. There’s a party tonight. You’re going to have your first glass of witch’s brew,” she says.

I purse my lips. “About that...”

The stuff’s repugnant, like cheap beer mixed with however much sugar a solution can have dissolved into it. I open the window and Sabel out. He leaps onto a nearby tree and starts his hunt for bugs and squirrels.

Grandma sinks onto my bed. “What will all the witches in the coven say? I’ll never be able to face them this Wednesday bingo night.”

“You should’ve thought of that before you got me a talking cat, grandma.”