After going to my front door and putting on a pair of walking shoes, I picked up Dog and lead everyone out the door. Once outside, I decided to walk the opposite direction to the other bridge into town. They were both the same distance anyways, and Naomi had yet to see this one.

With the sun being out and having almost perfect weather, there were plenty of people playing in the lake. The young Water witches usually went there with their familiars on the weekends so they could all play with their magic together.

As we were walking along the water on the lakeside path, Naomi was watching a few people with their otter familiars “Do all Water witches have aquatic animals as their familiars?”

“For the most part. Water witches need to be around water, so it only makes sense to have something that can be on both water and land. The spirits even sometimes choose to be aquatic birds.”

She glanced over the crowd “Yeah you’re right! There’s actually a lot of birds down there!”

Looking out at the birds, I noticed none of them were aquatic birds “Oh so those ones are actually the Wind witches familiars.”

“Wind witches? They like the water too?” she asked with her eyes glued to the lake.

“I think most people here do. But Wind and Water have a special bond together, since Wind witches are able to make clouds that produce rain. Most of these people are families where a Wind mage and a Water mage married each other.”

Her eyes break away from the crowd and land on me “You guys are allowed to date people with a different type of magic here?” the surprise in her eyes let me know she was serious.

Every coven that I knew of didn’t care about intermingling between different magic types. Of course there were people that preferred to date someone of the same magic, though that was preference over anything else. But outright not allowing it? No coven was known to be that archaic. It got me even more curious as to where Naomi was from.

“Yes, there isn’t really any rules for dating here. As long as you’re not hurting anyone, you can date whoever… my uh parents even had different types of magic. I got my Fire magic from my dad, but my mom was actually a Blood witch.”

Naomi’s head cocked to the side. Her now narrowed eyes darted back-and-forth between me and Dog. It was like her and Dog had some secret they were keeping from me. It definitely made me suspicious “Why do you always look at Dog whenever I talk about my magic?”

Her eyebrows raise and her head flinches back “I-I don’t! He was just making a really cute face and I got distracted for a second! Sorry, that wont happen again haha. So what else is there to see around here? Do you have Plant witches here as well?”

It was so easy to tell that she was lying. Dog also had the look that he wanted to say something. But without being able to hear him speak, I had no idea what he was thinking. So I decided to drop it for the time being. Though my alarm was raised and I kept a close look at the two.

“Yeah, we do… lets go to the farming area. That’s where the most of them work.”

Naomi was walking slightly behind me as I lead her to our small green houses. On the way I would point out familiars to her and other things she might have found interesting. And every time she acted like it was her first time seeing them. Even normal things like the occasion cat familiar. It went on like that for the whole short walk until we arrived at the greenhouses.

Standing in front of them, they aren’t too impressive to the uninformed eye. There are a few large greenhouses for different plants, though none looked big enough to sustain even our small town. What made them unique was what the Plant witches were doing inside.

“Here is where all of our produce and magic ingredients are grown. Plant witches have the ability to manipulate plant growth, so all the crops here grow at a much quicker rate than anywhere else. You can actually watch the fruit grow to prime picking condition in only a few minutes!”

She put both her hands up to the widow and looked through them “Woah so cool.”

It was enjoyable to watch her get excited about things I found normal. But then she had to go and ask me something completely unexpected “You said you mom was a blood witch? Where does she work at?”

That question hit me like a brick. It was such a hard topic for me to talk about “Well, she uh… used to work in the hospital with all the other Blood witches. But she’s not around anymore.”

Her hands came up to cover her mouth and she let out a small gasp “I’m so sorry Evelyn. I didn’t know that.”

Through my pain, I was still able to paint on a fake smile “It’s okay, it happened a long time ago. How would you have even known? And besides, she died when I was five, so I don’t really have a memory of her… lets just forget about it and continue our tour, yeah?”

I had always been good at hiding my emotions. That I learned after my dad’s avoidance of me whenever I was upset. And not wanting to be a burden on anyone, I began pushing everything down to where I never showed my feelings. But somehow, Naomi was able to see right through my act. The smile that she gave me as she nodded was just as fake as the one I had. Like she knew exactly what I was feeling.

Her body language mimicked mine as I lead her to the towns main-street. And the whole way there, she would ask questions to try and distract me from the sadness I felt before “You guys really don’t have a lot of technology here, huh? Is that like a witch thing?”

Which I appreciated her doing “No it’s more of a safety thing. We don’t want word of our town to get out, so there’s a ward around the whole place that blocks out most technology. We still have stuff like TV’s and cellphones, they just aren’t able to get service or any internet. But we’ve all learned to live without that stuff anyways.”

She moves her head around as if she was scanning for what type of technology she could see “Hm neat. It seems like you’re all really cautious here.”

“Well we have to if we want to continue our peaceful lives. And being cautious helps to stop something like another Dream demon attack on our town.”

Her pace slowed down a bit “Oh uh you all had a demon attack?” her voice was soft and quiet.

I slow down my walk to match hers “Yeah a long time ago, way before I was born. But we all still learn about it in school. Just something about nightmares causing deaths and our ancestors getting rid of all the Dream familiars. There’s been no threat of another attack since, so most people around my age tend to not take it as seriously.”

We make it to the main-street and her quiet voice becomes harder to hear among the rowdiness of the area “H-how do you feel about Dream magic then?”

My eyes were up, thinking about what I should show her next, so my attention wasn’t fully on the conversation “Not sure. But I think it sucks that we outlawed Dream demon summons. Like we couldn’t even figure out a way to keep a few around? I mean the Psychic demons figured it out. Why can’t Dream demons just be summoned on a case-by-case basis like they do? To know that you have the ability to use magic, but you’re not allowed to summon the thing that makes you capable of it must feel like torture.”

She was now completely behind me as we entered the town-square. I could feel Dog looking up at me as if there was something he wanted to say, but in the moment I interpret it as him wanting to walk around himself. So I put him on the ground where he immediately turns around, sits, and looks back up at me.

When I brought my attention back to Naomi, her usual smile had disappeared and she was now blankly staring at the ground. And I was about to ask her what was wrong when I suddenly feel a gust of wind from a large bird flying just above me.