Once upon a time, there was a witch and a hunter, and they were never meant to be friends.
Rowena was as beautiful as she was dangerous, wrapped in silk and crowned in indigo fire. She saw the tall, solemn hunter named Sam, always chasing his big brother around, and thought him useful, a clever man with steady hands she could bend to her will. And Sam, who had walked through too many shadows to count, kept his distance from her, he knew the danger of her flames.
But grief is its own kind of magic, and over time, it worked on them. Both had loved and lost so much that their hearts had the same hollow sound when tapped. Both knew the weight of promises that could not be kept. Lucifer had done so much damage to both of them.
Slowly, the witch and the hunter began to see the truth in each other. She taught him her spells, her careful way of shaping power, the way the air trembled when a word was spoken just right. And in teaching him, she gave him something she had never given anyone - her trust.
When the day came that fate knocked at her door, Rowena did not hide. She had always known the prophecy. But she made a choice. She went to Sam and placed her life in his hands. “That’s my boy,” she told him, for he would understand, and he would not fail her, even though it would break him.
And so it was that the witch died in the arms of the hunter, not as enemies, nor as strangers, but as two souls bound by something more ancient than blood. Her magic left her like a sigh, drifting into the world beyond, while his arms held her as though holding the last warm ember of a dying fire.
They say the hunter still speaks her words sometimes, casting her spells in the quiet of the night. And when he does, the air smells faintly of roses and smoke, and he hears her laughter and amusing accent behind him, just out of sight. For Rowena walks still, somewhere between worlds, watching.
Some goodbyes are only spells in disguise.
