[Background Music: Cris Cab – Scandalous]
"Kissing in public! Is this the decent behavior witches brag about?" Mimosa attacked her indirectly, speaking loudly with her characteristic air of superiority so that Marie-Rose would overhear.
While Cathy and Matthieu paid no mind, Marie-Rose could only think with relief, 'Thankfully, they didn't notice where my hands were.' She was on the verge of bursting into ironic laughter. She wondered what they might think if they discovered that the man she kissed was not Alexandre, but rather Jayden—their hired contractor. Such knowledge would surely cause an uproar among them.
However, the opposing team launched into a direct attack, as if they were not mere public employees but rather casts of characters in a reality show comprised of two dramatically mismatched sides.
"So are you trying to keep Alexandre by your side as I taught you, Marie-Rose?" Barbara asked, feigning innocence. "Wouldn't want him seeing anyone else now, would we?"
'Let the trashing begin!' Marie-Rose thought, rolling her eyes skyward. Those jealous of true love would always try to tear a couple apart. She bit her tongue, fighting the urge to proclaim her love for Jayden. Her mind drifted back to the night she conceived - stranded in the farthest room of Cedric's apartment, muffling ecstatic cries.
Though phones were switched off, she still wondered if the others had caught on, prompting that sudden police inspection.
"No, we're just trying to keep the flame alive. Dating to add some spice," she declared, though her definition of a spicy love life was contrary to what Barbara portrayed.
She considered coming clean to her co-workers about the breakup with Alexandre. Sooner or later they would uncover the truth anyway. Still, she dreaded that Barbara might then redouble efforts to pair her with unsuitable matches. Marie-Rose envisioned a barrage of blind dates with boring men who shared none of Jayden's daring charisma.
She wondered - if those men were so worthy, why hadn't Barbara gotten into relationships with them herself? After all, Barbara was presently single. What had made her deem them good enough for other women, yet not take them on?
Did Barbara think playing matchmaker would somehow wash her karma clean? Marie-Rose suspected Barbara fancied herself doing good deeds by matching supposedly compatible pairs. Yet the reality was far less rosy, ending in lackluster couplings and splintered relationships.
Rather than mind her own affairs, Barbara seemed bent on meddling in others' business. And leaving misery in her wake - partnerships ruined by her blindness to true chemistry. Small wonder karma had rewarded Barbara with abandonment for preventing soulmates from uniting. Yet still she trotted Marie-Rose out before each new bachelor, presenting her as if a relationship simply required any warm male body.
'Act your age, witch!' Barbara thought. 'Too old for silly infatuations.'
Yet aloud, her words dripped sweet venom: "Trying to cope with Jean's new crush?" Unwittingly, she revealed her ties to the hacker behind that telling post. "Jean's no fit for you, dear. Just picture twenty years hence when you've expired, faded and worn. Besides, couple with a boy and soon enough it's adult diapers, not mischief. Varicose veins over pearly whites."
'Oh, the doctor's a dentist now?' Marie-Rose thought, amused by their flailing guesses at her mystery beau's identity.
She knew Jean, who was Alexandre's cousin, intimately from their shared classes.
She'd taken the intro module to teach high school, but pursued the advanced certificate with an eye to professorship - ready for the challenge of academia. The notion of lecturing on witchcraft held great appeal. Hence her enrollment alongside Jean.
Yet given Barbara's tireless matchmaking, best not step into her tangled web. Barbara headed an inquisition set on unraveling Marie's every secret. But her deductions proved as logical as her warped principles. A frustrated crone taking revenge for early failures by making others miserable.
"Some things simply aren't natural," Barbara pontificated.
"Yes, indeed," Marie-Rose replied. But inwardly, her thoughts turned crude - 'Like a dxck up your ass.' She imagined fitting punishments for Barbara's intrusions into private affairs. Marie-Rose was sick to death of her politicking and the defenders of her noxious ideas.
"You should be with a mature man. Too old now to waste time on these boys you'll need to raise..."
"Didn't you say a woman raises her man as she pleases?" Marie-Rose interrupted, feeling no remorse for her rudeness.
"That's not what I meant," Barbara backpedaled. "You said you're drawn to father figures because you lacked one growing up." Her words dripped with contempt.
Barbara's statement missed the mark. Marie-Rose had grown up apart from both her fathers. Though she did have them, her mother eventually remarried her long lost love. With no steady paternal figure, Marie-Rose had missed that sheltering presence even into maturity. By the time her new stepfather entered the picture, she was already a self-sufficient sixteen-year old. Too old for his protection, yet still drawn to wisdom.
"You need a mature man, dear. Jean's too young. Wasn't it old men you liked? Alexandre has no maturity either." Barbara's words prodded, falling on Marie-Rose's deaf ears.
"Maturity's got nothing to do with age," she replied calmly. "Some men never grow up, and some boys show uncanny wisdom beyond their years." Like Lucas. Like Matthieu. Like Jayden. And even Alexandre, a fatherly comfort she had clung to in her journey to independence, though years her junior.
Yes, Barbara grasped that she favored mature men, but she wrongly assumed she was attracted to old men as if Marie-Rose was a gerontophile. Barbara failed to comprehend that chronology alone reveals nothing of one's growth.
"You need an upstanding husband," Barbara emphasized. "A proper man has money, a house, a car - assets for marriage."
Such was the prevailing ethos of their era, a cultural vaccine administered by the prevailing wisdom that insisted a man must be older than his female counterpart, slightly more comely than the devil himself; otherwise, he risked the damning label of a womanizer. Moreover, he was expected to furnish the woman with financial stability, a prerequisite for procreation and the establishment of a family.
Women, due to this entrenched perspective, became materialistic beings, driven by a desire for opulence and an existence where their every whim was effortlessly fulfilled. In this paradigm, men delayed the sacrament of marriage, navigating a protracted journey to financial prosperity.
The shockwaves reverberated through their collective consciousness when confronted with unions where couples, bound by a common purpose, toiled shoulder to shoulder, weaving the fabric of their destinies together. The notion of collaborative endeavors, where the yoke of life's burdens was shared, struck at the very heart of their conventional beliefs, leaving them bewildered in the face of such unconventional harmony.
Cezar quickly chimed agreement.
"Yes, consider having children of your own. Start a family," he urged, perhaps hoping to ensnare her in his scheme. His sights were set on a grand vision.
Yet his words rang hollow. They critiqued witches for not reproducing, but allowed no such family growth. The coven was tracked relentlessly - stress inducing miscarriages time and again. Then lies spun those losses into bloody occult rituals. It was control masked as concern - deny them families, then paint their barrenness as sign of some spiritual rot.
Two colleagues, perhaps by design rather than coincidence, found themselves entangled in a conversation with a male co-worker who casually remarked, "You know, when I was with an older woman, it was all just for a good laugh. No serious business." Their words, like twisted knives, stirred a perverse pleasure within them as they aimed to plunge it into Marie-Rose's back, making their pxssies throb.
A deluge of unrelated examples from their own lives followed, a plethora of anecdotes that bore no resemblance to Marie-Rose's experiences. Their efforts, fueled by an exacerbated hatred, sought to convince her through any means necessary that she was both too aged and too unappealing for her crush—crushes, in fact, given the multitude of potential suspects they speculated about.
Yet, their relentless efforts only solidified Marie-Rose's conviction in her understanding of what she sought in a man.
"Hey there, Ma'am," Andre chimed in, adopting a similar line of thought. With a tip of his hat, he feigned politeness. "We ought to show some respect to our elders. How 'bout a hand-kiss?" A mock display of courtesy ensued. "I reckon Alexandre ain't the right match for you. You're a bit too seasoned for his taste."
To this, she retorted with a sassy defiance, "You can pucker up and kiss my behind, sweetie!"
Hearing their dogged insistence finally made Marie-Rose snap. Her voice rose in sharp retort:
"If you're so set on pairing me off, then find a man as striking and bright as the one you made unavailable." From Jean, her alleged crush, her mind turned to Jayden - golden locks, piercing green eyes. "Anything less holds no allure. Blond and light-eyed with equal fire...those are the sole traits that stir desire in me."
Her defiant words cloaked double meaning, but she cared not. Their truth stood intact even shorn of secrecy and subtext. With this, she put an end to their endless, noxious prattling. They could prod and goad all they liked - she had drawn her line. Any suitor lacking Jayden's radiant vitality would be met only with stone silence from now on.
"Alexandre and I have parted ways anyways," she declared, hurling the words at them like stones. "So go on - find me a mature man matching my description if you're so keen on pairing. I dare you!" For she knew it's an impossible task.
In her mind, no one could replace Jayden's singular magnetism. But she flung down the gauntlet nonetheless, detailing the precise coordinates of her elusive "type." Honestly, openly, she laid bare her impossible desire. Now let these self-appointed matchmakers prove the breadth of their power if they fancied themselves so potent.
In the wake of Jayden's loss, all faces had turned unsightly - hideous masks, women included. The world itself seemed leeched of beauty and light without his radiant presence. They could scour the pits of the earth and not find his equal, she was certain.
"Well, you could try praying for a good man, like Mimosa does," Barbara suggested, attempting to soothe the turbulent waters.
Marie-Rose, however, responded with a sharp retort, her words slicing through the air like a sword blade. "I did pray, but not for that," she declared. Her prayer wasn't a steadfast plea for a good man; instead, she fervently prayed to encounter her soulmate.
Yet, her prayer lacked certainty, a subtle fear guiding her words. She simply asked to catch a glimpse of him, to know his identity. Fearful of an impossible situation, she wished to avoid a lifetime of suffering due to an unattainable connection. As a result, she saw him in her dream, a man that drew close resemblance with Jayden.
She preemptively seized the words they had poised to launch, having unraveled the intricacies of their thoughts and understood their psychology.
"It's not an experiment to see if it works. This isn't about growing accustomed to someone, anticipating love to blossom through the familiarity of routine and habit, a mere attachment to a spouse. It's not solely about having children to provide care in your golden years. It's about genuine, profound love," she asserted, unraveling her perspective on the matter.
If they assumed that, after encountering Jayden's sweet countenance that specific morning, she could easily be with any unattached man, they were sorely mistaken. Despite internal battles urging her to let go and remain open to new possibilities, she recognized the futility of such endeavors. Whenever she probed her own heart, she felt it contract in pain, a sensation akin to what she experienced when delving into the mysteries of the future—her unique ability, the reason the new coven had chosen her.
"Why question my choices now?" she challenged them. "Why didn't you permit me to have children when it was relevant? What prompts this discussion now?" Her defiance echoed, a testament to her unwavering stance.
"Children are meant to be made between the ages of 20 and 35," Mimosa asserted, regurgitating a tidbit she had gleaned from television. Marie-Rose felt her blood pressure surge. Having been a teenage mother, she had endured enough of the venomous decrees issued by the unattractive and elderly women, pontificating on national TV merely because they harbored disdain for others. They served as the megaphones for the so-called "normal" people who believed they held an unwavering understanding of life, demanding conformity.
They championed other rigid ideas, too, aligning with the belief that young men should exclusively pair with young women, fueled by their envy of mature women who found favor with younger counterparts.
The altercation came to an abrupt halt when Paul from urban planning strode into the cafeteria, addressing Mimosa without mincing words: "Mimosa, why are you always hovering around Cedric? Are you aware that he has a girlfriend?" he questioned pointedly.
"Maybe you prayed to get him?" Cathy interjected with a forthright inquiry.
Mimosa's words stumbled as she stammered, "He... he... likes me. That's what Barbara told me..."
Cathy issued a stern warning, her tone unwavering, "Back off, Mimosa. He's my boyfriend." The entire exchange had been orchestrated as a strategic move, a calculated retaliation against Marie-Rose's tormentors, teaching them a lesson on how to contend with their own brand of bullies.
A day later, here she was in the maternity ward, assisting with her first delivery in an unfamiliar body.
"Marie? What brings you here?" Jean's surprised gaze lifted from his phone. He seemed reluctant to engage in the medical practice, seeking distraction through his mobile device.
"Uhhmmm… I'll explain later!" she replied, keeping the details for a more opportune moment. Fortunately, Jean, who was well-versed in the room's layout, provided a supportive arm for her to lean on.
In the hushed atmosphere of the maternity ward, with only the woman's labor pains breaking the silence, Jean suddenly shook her sleeve, directing her attention to his phone's screen.
"They leaked a picture of you kissing in public! It's all over Mimosa's social media and has gained a lot of attention!" he exclaimed in shock, his voice the only one breaking the silence aside from the woman's screams of labor.
However, as the graphic details of the birth unfolded before her eyes, Marie-Rose felt her legs grow weak. Peculiarly, she couldn't pinpoint the source of her unease—having experienced childbirth herself, this wasn't her first encounter with the process. Yet, the memories of her own childbirth were shrouded in a fog of forgetfulness. She found herself grappling with an unexplainable discomfort, a sensation intensified by the realization that this awaited her in just half a year.
As her consciousness wavered, her legs giving way, Jean reacted swiftly to catch her in his arms. Assuming she had fainted due to the leaked picture, he held her securely.
"Don't mind it!" were her last words.