Page 10 of Found in Obscurity

He knew that wasn’t it though. He knew the eyes glued to him were all solely because of him. Because he wasn’t the boy they used to know when he still lived there. He was an adult now. A stranger to them.

And he was someone who very openly didn’t want the life they all revered so much.

He was an outcast by his own choice, and as he slowly walked away from the car and toward his grandma, he couldn’t help but feel a tiny stab of regret at his choices.

This used to be his home. These used to be the people he knew. He was the one who had walked out on it all. He’d decided it wasn’t right for him and cut ties. In their eyes, he’d shunned them.

So the side-eyes and the curled lips weren’t shocking to him in the slightest.

They did sting though, and not even the chill pricks of tiny raindrops on his skin were helping.

He crossed the space between the car and the clearing faster than he was comfortable with, but his steps were long and ridiculously drawn out as it was. He pushed the tiny gate in the fence open and stepped inside, expecting something monumental to happen.

Only to be greeted by a squelch of mud under his feet and nothing more than that.

No thunder, no lightning, no turning to dust.

Just open curiosity and mud.

It was both calming and slightly underwhelming. He had built the moment up in his head so much that it felt almost anticlimactic.

“Disappointed?”

Lorin snapped his head to the side and came face to face with a man around his age, maybe a little older. It was hard to judge in witching communities, where the elderly seemed to live for hundreds of years, and herbal products and spells could do wonders for youthful faces. Forty and under was considered young. In any case, Lorin didn’t recognize him, pretty sure he was a new addition to the town after Lorin had made his exit.

The man was dressed in a simple beige outfit with a green cardigan thrown over it, the designs of various flowers and herbs woven into the knit like they were really living in it. Lorin wouldn’t rule it out as fact.

A hummingbird was flitting around his messy brown hair and the wreath laid within its strands, its wings a beautiful blur of green and blue. Obviously his familiar.

In his hands he held a simple woven basket, full of a kaleidoscope of colors and textures of plants woven into wreaths just like the one on his head. Even the marks on his fingers and nails were floral, intricately tangled around each other like the wreaths he was holding.

“I’ll take the silence as a yes.”

Lorin flushed at being caught blatantly staring. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” the man said, smiling knowingly. “Your wreath already makes a lot of sense.”

“My what?”

The guy reached into his basket. The wreath he pulled out seemed to be considerably different from any other in the bunch. Where theirs were a mixture of the standard flowers Lorin could remember seeing as a child, like jasmine for success and sunflower for wisdom, Lorin’s seemed to be made up of a mixture of nothing he could name.

There were vibrant purple petals shaped like dolphins mixed around a type of ivy leaf at the base. Hanging around that werepink flowers that would fall over his forehead and hair in the shapes of hearts. And finishing it off was the weirdest bushy plant he had ever seen in a mixture of yellow and orange.

The guy offered the wreath and Lorin took it on instinct, feeling the bushy flowers tickle the skin where his glove met his bare wrist. He stared at the man with wide eyes.

“The delphinium should help with what you’re feeling right now. It’s the best for a little boost of encouragement.”

Lorin looked down, trying to figure out what flower he meant before the words registered. Encouragement. Encouragement for what, exactly? To help him find his familiar?

He tried to pass the wreath back immediately, like the thing had suddenly become toxic.

“Don’t worry.” the guy laughed, misreading the situation, whether intentionally or not. Lorin wasn’t entirely sure from that amused sparkle in his eyes. “I took care of the delphinium myself. It won’t cause any irritation when touched.”

“The del-whatever-the-name-is isn’t the problem,” Lorin said, still trying to pass it back.

The guy tilted his head and the hummingbird flitted around to the other side of him in a burst of speed and vibration. “The bleeding hearts then? Or the foxtail? I was surprised by that one. It’s never come up before and I had to make a special trip to find some. Didn’t have any growing in the greenhouse, and it’s the wrong season for them.”

“It’s not what the wreath is made of!” Lorin burst out, frustrated. He tried to remember his lessons with his grandma in the garden. The meanings that eluded him. “Look, thank you for the thought, but I don’t need any help.”