"You're late Ais." Liesel said, arms crossed and foot tapping impatiently as she stood in the middle of the clearing below Aislinn, a small smirk on her rose bud lips. Aislinn heard a not so quiet cough again from the woods behind Liesel but chose to ignore it. Aislinn started to descend to the ground, she already had both her legs on one side of the broom and made quick work of sliding off and snatching it out of the air.
"I'm not late." Aislinn said with a small smile as she landed on the floor of the cleaning, straightening to look her second in the eye. She indeed was late to their gathering, but only a little bit.
"Yeah Liesel, she's right on time, practically early for her, hell I think this calls for a celebration, Gwyndolyn can even bake a cake!" Tanith said sarcastically with a wicked grin from where she leaned against a tree, her robin red hair swaying behind her in the breeze from Aislinn's swift arrival. She saw Neve and Nerissa snicker from where they sat together in the branches of the tree Tanith was leaning against. She just rolled her eyes and looked at Morrigan.
"Would you mind explaining why they haven't drawn the ritual markings yet?" the witch was watching her from where she stood, arms crossed and her right hip jutting out, with that small smile, the ice to Tanith's fire.
"We didn't wanna start without you Ais." Of all of them Morrigan was likely one of the darkest, not like their father, or father of sorts, but in the way winter was dark, cold and cunning and biting. It was one of the reasons that Morrigan almost never brought a new witch, the young girls were too often terrified of her, and honestly she couldn't blame the girls. If she was being really honest with herself, she knew Morrigan was the cause of more of the ghost stories the humans told than anyone else in the coven.
"Bullshit, you guys start without me almost every time." she retorted, an eyebrow raised.
"Yeah and the Mother bites our head off every time too." Lor drawled from the branch she was lying on, her long braid of ash blonde hair hanging like a rope.
"What Lor, not in the mood for a good ol' fight?" She teased and Lor looked up at her from where she had been twiddling with a bit of tree bark, her brown eyes nearly black in the darkness.
"I'm not in the mood to get my ass handed to me by the Mother just because you're late." The emphasis on you're was further driven home by the finger Lor jabbed at her.
"Too bad that would've been quite the show." Tanith muttered, Lor gave her a sharp look that said she really was not in the mood but Tanith just smirked at her before looking back to Aislinn. "Well oh great and wise leader, you ready to call mother dearest?" Tanith's mocking smile was almost lupine.
"Always sister dear."
The eyes were startling, Aislinn could admit that when seeing them for the first time one may be… unnerved. The animal changed but it was often some sort of wolf or cat, always white and grey coloring. Tonight it was a cat with cool white smooth fur and a slip of a tail. The eyes though, where a normal eye would have milky white the ones before them had the dark blue of the night sky, veins or deep grey and black crawling like clouds and tree branches. And the pupil. The pupil was the face of the moon, so when the cat appeared on the night of the new moon at the center of their ritual markings, the cat's eyes were voids of endless darkness. But she and her Hellions were used to it.
"Greetings-" Aislinn attempted to start but the Goddess interrupted her.
"Greetings, now…" The Goddess started off on her speech about not fighting with the angels, making sure the witches were kept in line etc. The Goddess's voice was present and surrounded them. It wasn't loud per say, but it was commanding, and it seemed to be three voices rolled into one: the voice of a young girl, the voice of a woman, and the voice of a crone. It was always a little odd, seeing the Goddess's voice come out of a cat. Aislinn listened as the meeting continued into the night.