"Big brother hasn't come back yet."
A young girl spoke sadly as she curled up in a ball.
From her long red hair reaching her waist and her childish face, it was obvious she was probably 13‑15 years old.
"Gothel!!" An older woman cried repeatedly, her tone laced with worry and frustration. she had dark tied hair while dressed in a navy blue maid attire, white wavy collar and a crest like pin at the center of her neck.
"What are you doing sitting here by your lonesome?"
Gothel raised her head slimly, "I'm waiting for big brother."
A calm yet mocking wind brushed past her features, "He hasn't come back after 4 years; I'm starting to miss him, Natasha."
Natasha stepped slowly and sat beside her, "The path to becoming a venerable isn't an easy one, my dear." She whispered lovingly.
Gothel remarked with a sharp, unyielding stare, "I'll probably die before he comes back, won't I?"
Natasha was taken aback; however, she lacked an answer to Gothel's question, so she stayed silent. That silence was an even louder answer than any lies she could create.
Gothel stood, dusted her red blouse, and scrambled inside the house. Natasha sighed and looked up at the sky with oppressed eyes and a large frown.
Gothel lived in a large mansion made of zinc, wood, aluminum, and iron. She sat beneath a small arrangement of two wooden planks holding a zinc‑plated roof sturdily above her head.
Once more she curled up in a ball, listening to the drums of rain slamming against the zinc's surface.
Natasha stood like a statue behind her, sheltering herself from the sky's tears with an umbrella. Because the sky was gray, she was barely visible between the constant splattering of water and the dim atmosphere.
"Natasha, why do you always follow me?" Gothel asked with an ugly scowl drawn on her face.
Natasha scoffed and answered, "Because it's my job."
Gothel turned furiously toward Natasha, "No, shut up! That's my brother's job! He promised he'd become a Venerable and we'd find our parents' killer together," she cursed. "My brother is a kind person; he doesn't lie. He'll come back, I know it!"
"But young Miss Goth..."
"Shut your mouth up!" Gothel shrieked.
"I free you from my parents' contract..." A faint red light pulsed within a black haze.
"Your binding is broken! Be set free and leave me alone!" Gothel ordered with a pained, unsteady voice, tears of sadness streaming down her eyes.
Immediately after her command, the only response was the sound of an umbrella colliding with the ground before being swept away by the wind.
Natasha, like a flash of light, vanished instantly without a trace. Not a word, gesture, or condolence; Natasha simply merged with the sweeping wind and vanished into the fresh air like a ghost.
Gothel froze, kneeling beneath the shelter, watching the umbrella get tossed around by the wind like a rag doll. Her face was expressionless, and her thoughts... like a dried river.
Finally, the rain stopped and everything calmly reverted to normal. Gothel curled herself into a ball within the shelter. A drop of water that escaped from the hole in the roof splashed onto her face, snapping her out of her trance.
Gothel stood, dusted her red blouse, tidied her blue top, and went inside the long mansion. The structure was shaped like a bungalow, but the inside was quite the maze. An advantage of being born into her family was being able to navigate that maze.
Stepping through the door, Gothel swung her arms and dragged her feet as though she were exhausted. Yet she didn't head to her bedroom; instead, she went for something more sinister. Now that Natasha was no longer around, Gothel could finally access a forbidden part of the house without being reprimanded or stopped: the family library for all things indulger.
Gothel pushed open the door at the near end, left corner of the mansion. As it swung open, the first thing that greeted her was a thick, whispering air. The door was too heavy for her to push all the way, so she slipped in like water through a leak.
Behind her, the door shut.
Barely illuminated by burning candles above, Gothel managed to get around at the cost of tripping a few times. In the end, she found a lantern and matches sitting in the middle of the room. Each step she took toward it was heightened by the room's vacancy.
Gothel picked up the lantern and lit it. The room wasn't much brighter, but at least she could see better than before. By the lantern's light, she saw many shelves spherically stacked upon each other.
On pure instinct, she walked toward the left side where a shelf careened safely toward the ground. Gothel brushed through the rows with her palm until her fingers rested on a certain book.
She pulled it out, intrigued.
It was a small notebook with a green cover. The title, "First Laws of Bonding and Equivalence," was boldly written on its front.
Since Gothel could read well enough, she was fairly intrigued, though she had never gone to school; Natasha had done her best to give her a solid education.
"Will this bring big brother back?" she wondered. The book's appearance was almost seductive. Gothel threw the book onto a wide desk, grabbed her father's seat, and opened it.
What she saw on the first page was: "The human heart, the human soul, the human life and how it grows. All lies within an even scale tipped on both sides; to what degree? That is truly a question. Using the many concepts of the supernatural and other sub‑normal factors, I write this theory on my research for prolonged life whilst ensuring maximum protection."
Gothel was captivated by the book's promising words. "This means even if big brother takes a hundred years to become a Venerable, I'll still be alive!" she exclaimed, radiating ecstatic joy.
Three hours passed, and Gothel was reading the book as though she were studying for a test. She wrote down important words on separate notes, sometimes ripping strands of her hair from anger and ranting at no one.
"The constant possibility of equality = the conditions of protection are highly likely if both parties are of equal wavelength; thus the higher party is forced into a life contract via the laws of balance. Once the law is forcefully enacted, all properties, loss, and advantages are shared equally." She muttered repeatedly, gripping her head tightly as she buried her face in the page.
"I understand it now," she paused.
Gothel closed the book and returned to the shelf, searching for a book she had seen earlier.
At the edge of the left shelf she spotted a yellow book titled in bold letters, "On the road to ascension; unsurpassable wavelength."
Gothel threw the book on the ground and studied it thoroughly. Then her lips parted at the sight of some unsettling words:
"Ritual." Her breath hitched.
"Summon." Her voice shook.
"Deity?" Her throat went dry.
"Ascend?" Her eyes rolled back.
"I don't get it this time," she spoke softly.
Five days passed; Gothel went through less than half the books in the library. She hadn't left during that time, nor had she changed her clothes.
Her body thinned from lack of food, her lips shriveled from lack of water, and her eyes were bagged from lack of sleep.
She absorbed all the knowledge like a sponge, with one thought playing in her mind: "I won't let brother leave me as well. He left to become a Venerable so he could have power and avenge our parents' killers. I can't let him be alone; I have to be useful as well… so when I see him again we can smile at each other and say, 'We'll go against them as a family—just me and him.'" Tears ran down her eyes.
Overall, Gothel spent a good year of her life in the mansion. After a week of nearly dying from starvation, she started leaving the library to eat and bathe. At first she didn't know how to cook; after weeks of cuts and wounds from cooking, she became a self‑thought chef. Within the year, Gothel never left the mansion.
"I've finished all the books?" she said with an astonished face. By that time she had not only read but fully understood and digested all 5,600 books on supernatural theories, dark magic research, and specific possibilities.
Gothel stretched a bit before continuing, "It's time to put my knowledge to the test." She spoke with an eerie grin.
First, she grabbed a large drum of petrol from the family inventory, sprinkled it as far into the house as it could reach, stepped outside, and gave the house a parting bow.
With that concluded, she lit the lantern and kissed the heated glass, after which she spat out the dust and cleaned her lips. Gothel then dropped the lantern and watched it shatter with a loud razz.
The petrol ignited with the strong spark, and the entire mansion was engulfed by vicious flames. The wood burned and the zinc heated past its melting point, forcing the house to rapidly crumble while crackling loudly.
Gothel watched with a fascinated smile; after a few minutes she pulled a book from her bag and flipped through the pages. "I'll have to start looking for my ingredients," she conversed enthusiastically with the burning house.
"I can't let that year go to waste, can I?" She shut the book and left without sparing her family home a second glance.
That was the last time Gothel was ever described as sane.