Day by Day

The light from the window cut the room into rigid squares, stopping short of the far corner where their friend sank into the shadows. Empty green bottles littered the floor, tipped on their sides like casualties from a war already lost. Soft words had been tried, promises, too. Now the two friends sat in silent, facing the textured tapestry, and calling on something older and less merciful.

They beckoned the witch Circe.

Not for comfort, but fora final high-stake intervention.

She stared within the painting. Her golden mask concealed her unholy and predatory nature. She accepted the offer without asking what it was. With her eyes fixed on the shrunken skull, her fingers curled with certainty. Her words released a rhythmic pulse, measured, inevitable, and burning through the hollow eye sockets and flowing across the patterned bench toward the man lost in shadow.

As the magic reached him, the room tightened.

The friends felt it then, but it’s too late. Whether she was saving his soul or claiming it for her own purpose remained impossible to know. Her gaze never softened. The light never moved. And the spell, once begun, did not stop.