To Auntie's House We Go
an excerpt

“You silly, silly little moron!” That would be Aunt Maggie’s voice, Lain thought, but why is she screaming so loudly? It hurt her head to listen, but she couldn’t figure out which muscles moved her hands or her neck or any other part of her. She was forced to lie there and listen to the hysterics of her aunt instead, and wondered what on earth had worked the woman into such a frenzy.
“What on earth was wrong with you, doing something so dangerous? And now you won’t wake up, and nothing I’ve tried has worked, and you’re just lying there, just, just-” Aunt Maggie’s voice broke into a chorus of sobs, and there was a tug in Lain’s chest as she listened to her aunt weep. She wanted to sit up or open her eyes or call to her aunt, to let her know that she was okay, but nothing would do as she told it to. She felt something slump on the bed, and managed to push one eyelid open far enough to see that she was in the guest bedroom on the first floor, the same one she had woken up in when she had first arrived. Next to the bed was Aunt Maggie in a chair, collapsed onto the bed and crying so hard that it worried Lain. She concentrated on her throat and nothing else, and after a few minutes managed to croak out a few words.
“D… don’t …cry…” She loosened her throat, exhausted from the effort. Aunt Maggie looked up and brought her hands to her face, cool little pads soothing the flushed heat Lain felt in her cheeks.
“You woke up! You woke up!” Aunt Maggie wrapped Lain’s limp torso in an embrace and continued crying on her shoulder. “Oh, thank goodness you woke up. Oh, oh, I didn’t know what I’d do, I didn’t know what I’d do if you hadn’t woken up. Don’t ever do anything that stupid and reckless again, do you hear me? Lain, Lain, do you hear me? Lain!”
There was panic in her voice now, and she shook the girl frantically. Lain groaned and cracked her eye open again to reassure her aunt that she was still in the land of the living. Aunt Maggie stopped shaking her and calmed down. She slipped her cool palm into her niece’s and squeezed it hard, tears still running down her face like racing raindrops on a windowpane.
“If you die, you know, I’m going to come find you in the afterlife and kill you!” Aunt Maggie told her, affectionately stroking Lain’s face. “And if you live, I’ll probably still kill you for being so foolish. I ought to chop you up into little bits and mash you into Pomegranate’s feed for putting me through that. What on earth were you thinking, trying to get rid of your magic? There’s nothing wrong with your magic! That spell book you used was a load of crock and I should have gotten rid of it years ago. There are almost no successful accounts of a witch getting rid of her magic, you blessed little idiot!” She started to sob again and Lain squeezed her hand, the only comforting thing she had the strength to do.
They sat there in silence for several long moments, both too drained to say anything. Lain released a deep sigh as her aunt stroked her hair, and a few tears slipped down her own cheeks and into her ears, where they rested like tiny irritating pearls. She wanted to see Skii, to feel him rub his snout against her palm and nibble her fingertips like he always did to cheer her up. She concentrated hard and looked at Aunt Maggie.
“Skii… still… my famili-” The question was left dangling in the air, and Lain fell back against the pillow. Aunt Maggie looked at her for a few moments, clearly puzzled, before she realized what the girl had been trying to say.
“Oh, yes, honey. Skii is still your familiar. You’ve still got all your magic, or at least the space for it. It won’t be back for probably a week if you’re lucky and you heal quickly, but it’ll still be back. Although you’re going to owe Skii a huge apology. Imagine how he feels, after you made it clear that being normal and going back to a family that rejected you was more important than the bond you two had made. It may take longer for him to come back than it does your magic.”
“Can… I… see him?” Lain felt a small ember of triumph for having completed her sentence, even if she did feel the price for it moments later.
“I don’t know, honey. He’s surely not too happy with you right now. He probably feels about as rejected as you did when you read that letter. All week since you’ve been out all he’s done is sulk around in the library. He wouldn’t even eat the banana I laid out for him. But I don’t know, try calling to him and see if it works.”
In the back of her mind, Lain saw the thin thread that stretched between her and Skii. There were cracks running all along it, but it wasn’t broken yet. She sent a little flicker of thought running down it, trying to pour all of her loneliness and regret onto it. It was so fragile that she wasn’t sure it’d be able to transfer all of her need, but her flicker was weak anyway and she couldn’t be sure that it had made it to her bat.
A few moments later, there was a quiet squeak from out in the hall and Skii came flying in from the hallway. He landed on the coverlet and glared at her, digging his claws into her knee threw the quilt. Lain groaned, but didn’t pull away. She had deserved that.
“Sorry…” she told him, and stared into his eyes as forlornly as she could manage. Still he sat there on her thigh, not budging in his stubborn anger. Lain closed her eyes and focused on the thread. She could feel enough magic pooled in her chest to send one message down it, and tried to make it a worthwhile one. She sent images of them resting together and reading in the library, of Skii getting tangled in a vine out in the greenhouse and being freed by Lain, of the little bits of grape and apple she stuck out to him on her fingertips for him to munch on. She sent him all the love she could find for him, a feat that nearly exhausted her back into sleep again, and even sent the tears she didn’t have the energy to cry at the thought of losing her beloved bat. When she was done she looked at Skii, who had climbed up her leg to sit on her chest. He still glared at her, but flapped a wing to tell her that she would be forgiven eventually. Lain managed a small smile at this and closed her eyes again. She fell asleep with Skii curled up next to her ear, his hot breath forming dew on her neck as he kept watch over her.