Bayou Black Magic | Misty & Marcel
Thread history with lostkingofthequarter -- moving this over here! I’ll grab your response and draft it here when you post it! <3
Louisiana Bayou | Hot Summer Day
It wasn’t often that Marcel went down to the swamps. The rural areas of the backwater bayous were werewolf territory, even with the spots that were inhibited by more natural magic witches. With magic not allowed to be practiced in the Quarter, NOLA witches had moved into the Tremé and the outskirts, some even seeking the solitude of the swamps. While most of the magic users he knew had ties to the ancestral magic of New Orleans, there were others that drew their power in a different fashion, and it was just this kind that Marcel was looking to deal in.
He had a death problem, and needed some help to figure out a solution.
Quarter witch magic, while powerful, still had limitations. Marcel was seeking a case of resurgence, and there was one witch in all of New Orleans that had more talent in the art than the rest of them put together: Misty Day.
He’d never spoken to the woman directly, the vampire rarely ventured far outside of New Orleans. The surrounding areas outside the city proper were rooted in deep folk magic, and being a spirit of NOLA himself, Marcel was careful to respect that. The man was a little bit superstitious when it came down to it.
As Marcel walked down the rickety path, he spied a flash of blonde hair. ❝Is that the lovely Miss Day I have the pleasure of seeing? Or can you point me her way if not?❞
Misty didn’t like being alone. She loved the swamp – probably more than anything else, actually, seeing as she owed her life to the mud – and she loved her garden and she loved her rickety little cabin with all its leaks and creaks. But she hated being alone. And as much as she hated to admit it, Stevie’s tunes weren’t enough to keep her company.
She preferred being alone, though, to the only available alternative. She craved belonging, just being around other people who understood her. Witches and the like, who wouldn’t literally burn her at the stake when they found out what she was. She wished she could find other people like her, or at least people who wouldn’t hate her.
But even if there were other people out there like that, magic was forbidden within the city of New Orleans. No one would tell her enough to know exactly why, but a tip from some stuck-up elitist woman had saved her from whatever the consequences were. Leaving New Orleans would mean leaving the bayou, and well… she loved the swamp more than she hated being alone.
She could hear the song drifting from her boombox all the way out in her garden, and she hummed along with it until the next verse began. “Wait a minute, baby… Stay with me a while,” she sang along, slow and easy as she inspected the sprouting basil. “Said you’d give me light, but you never–”
A voice interrupted her, and she startled so violently that she nearly ripped the baby herb out of the soil. Her blonde curls flew as she spun around, her eyes landing on a stranger as he approached on the barely-beaten path to her little home.
“Mercy, you scared me half to death!” she breathed, trying to laugh it off on her exhale. “Wait– are you lookin’ for me?”