Moira
Moira tried so hard to share her joy of gardening and the smell of soil and of healthy plants growing with vigor, but almost immediately both children had lost interest. She had to pull their attention from their phones twice so they wouldn't walk directly into a wall of thorns. Enhanced with her power as they were, these rose bushes could cut a mortal child to pieces if they were incautious.
Still, Moira tried to at least focus on her joy of gardening rather than her frustration with these two. Especially Sarah. At this point, she expected very little from Hunter, but Gaia had apparently chosen the 11 year old to be one of her priestesses, the least she could do was actually in any way enjoy nature. Apparently the fact that the roses weren't actually in bloom sort of put a damper on her enthusiasm. Roses need both a warmer season and a colder season to thrive, so it was best to mirror the outside temperatures, just more mildly. As a natural consequence, the ones she was growing did not bloom in the winter.
Next she visited her greenhouse which was primarily for growing food. Moira told them flat out that they would need to be more careful in here and stick to the paths. This too was for their health, as she might just throw them through a wall or something if they step on her cabbages.
However, to Moira's pleasant surprise, Hunter was actually pretty interested in her garden, talking with her about what foods she had planted, what she expected the yield to be, and how she was treating the soil, how frequently each zone was watered, until she came to realize that this little boy was either seriously food-driven, or perhaps his father had once been in his life and given him a certain appreciation for farming. Moira had to carefully show them which plants were actually weeds that needed to be carefully removed and which she had planted and very much should not be removed, but Sarah and Hunter dutifully helped her with her task.
They both looked bored and exhausted with this, but Moira still warned them not to touch a damned thing in the next greenhouse. Unfortunately, a lot of the materials used in spells and potions were poisonous for humans. Some so much so that they could kill a smaller individual rather quickly if they handled them without gloves and then touched their eyes or face.
Moira was surprisingly resistant to most poisons, so she definitely was a bit of a hypocrite with how she was handling the plants. Still, she was very careful not to touch her eyes or face, and she still had to take proper precautions around 2 particular plants she was growing in the back row. Nightshade and wolfsbane. Incorrectly handling nightshade had sent her into a 2 day coma and being less than careful with wolfsbane had somehow given her a grand mal seizure.
Nightshade and rowan were both incredibly dangerous to vampires for very different reasons. Nightshade acted as a paralytic to vampires, leaving them fully conscious but unable to move their bodies. The duration of this effect depended on the strength of the nightshade and the strength of the vampire in question, as well as more complex things like administered dose, route of administration, the weight of the subject, the last time they had fed, things like that. Rowan was dangerous for a much simpler reason. A stake of rowan through the heart could divorce even the most powerful vampire's soul from their body, usually permanently. Other types of stakes may seem effective but the vampire can still make a comeback if they are fed blood later.
Wolfsbane was, unsurprisingly, toxic to werewolves. What it actually did was weaken the spiritual bond between their inner wolf and their human selves, which left the human form weakened, without access to their wolf's strength, resilience, or healing factor. It also usually left them nauseated and dizzy, which made them much easier to deal with.
Cultivating nightshade or rowan were both considered crimes in vampire society, and cultivating wolfsbane is considered a capital offense in most werewolf packs. There was one other type of plant that technically could help her cast even more powerful spells, but she had never actually found it worthwhile to cultivate. Witchbane. She had no idea what it did, but every time she even came near it she suddenly found herself retreating or going somewhere else. She also did not especially wish to volunteer herself as an experimental test subject should she manage to come in contact with it.
There were, of course, several other toxic plants here, but none of them had properties antithetical to her existence, and many of them could be cultivated for legitimate medicinal purposes.
Sarah was weirdly excited about basically everything here. Moira couldn't tell if she was going through a goth phase or the inner witch was leaking out a bit, but she was more than glad to answer all of her questions and tell her what the hazards of each plant were, the potential medical uses, and the uses she had discovered so far for spellcasting and potion brewing.
When she asked about the nightshade, she was far more reticent, however, going so far as to use an older slang term for it and not going into depth on its uses against vampires. Or mentioning vampires at all. Yulia had not precisely been informed about this particular aspect of Moira's hobby, and she might take great offense that her own wife was cultivating a biological weapon targeting her.
Yulia didn't have anything to worry about, however, because Moira had been drugging her with it every night to build up her immunity and so far she hadn't noticed because she had the constitution of a demigod. Vampires older than 500 years just sometimes didn't fully play by the rules.
There was a more sinister reason for this behavior as well, though. If Yulia got used to the smell of nightshade before bed, then when Moira went to escape on the eve of her 16th birthday, she wouldn't be able to stop her, as Moira would instead dose her with the extra special highly lethal variant she had been quietly breeding and imbuing with her power over in the corner.
If she was lucky, it might keep Yulia down for half an hour. Most vampires would be out for the better part of a night if they came into contact with the normal variant, to the point that some vampires so dosed had been unable to remove themselves from the outdoors before dawn and burned alive even as they still lay there, paralyzed. At least Moira never had to worry about that happening to Yulia.
Yulia also loved the sun, so she had gone out of her way to build up a resistance to it, and she could now sunbathe for up to an hour before she started developing a sunburn. Unfortunately, after that step, things would go downhill with remarkable swiftness, and she would indeed catch fire after another 20 minutes.
This meant, however, that no matter what her wife would be safe from the "nightshade paralysis and leave you to die" ploy. Yulia sometimes didn't even show a reaction to consuming even relatively high doses of it directly.
What Moira didn't realize is that no vampire reaches that age without immediately recognizing when their drink has been poisoned, and Yulia had been going along with this because she assumed Moira was trying to help build her immunity. Which was technically true, but also a red herring. What Moira was trying to do was establish operational norms which would lead to certain major actions of hers remaining unquestioned.
Moira, for her part, was not stupid. Even if Yulia sounded like she understood now, she almost certainly would not wish to actually allow Moira to leave. Moira fully understood this, because it was not like she actually wished to leave in the first place.
Unfortunately though, Moira had made some choices that were now dictating future choices. By definition, these were poor choices. Good choices would leave you with more choices in the future.
The worst thing about such choices, however, was that they could not be unmade.
Moira snapped out of her musings when she realized that Sarah was looking at the super variant of nightshade she had bred with some confusion.
"Do not approach those plants, do not even look at them, and by all the gods, do not touch them." Moira said this with some vehemence. Both Sarah and Hunter shot her guilty looks before retreating back down the path.
Moira carefully wore some protective clothing and even a face shield before approaching these plants, and she was extra careful about tending to them. If there was one saving grace, it was that there were few weeds that would try to push out a well established nightshade plant. Certain people might argue that nightshade was a weed. This reduced the chances of a comedy of errors spiraling into something far less comedic.
However, the forget-me-not she had planted had to be culled literally every night, as it literally attempted to overrun every other part of her garden. Sometimes she wondered if higher powered memory spells were truly worth the effort.
Not to mention the ethical concerns.
Sarah seemed really enamored of the forget-me-nots, which, at the very least, were basically always doing something, even if that something wasn't blooming. She seemed confused when Moira grabbed a pair of shears and started cutting it back to the boundaries of its own bed.
"What are you doing? Why are you killing it?"
"I'm not killing it. It is probably one of the hardiest plants I have ever cultivated. However, if allowed to grow freely, it will eventually choke out every other plant in this greenhouse. It has a fairly large grow bed all to itself, but it is never satisfied. Ultimately, it will overrun this entire greenhouse and potentially start spreading outside of it." Moira didn't mention that this effect had been exaggerated because she had cultivated it with her power. Did she regret it? Maybe a little.
However, what Moira didn't realize is that a nature or cosmic witch could not help but amplify the effects of every plant they touched, naturally. Doing it on purpose just accelerated the effects.
"Okay…" Sarah said doubtfully. Soon she had her own pair of shears, and Moira was dutifully teaching her how to cut the plant without doing unnecessary damage when some 6th sense caused her to look for Hunter. Hunter had started pacing out of boredom, and had for some ungodly reason started pacing closer to her genetically optimized nightshade plants.
"Hunter!" She called out. Her intended effect was that he would recognize his surroundings and back off. Instead, he jerked as if he was startled and started tripping forward. Without thinking, Moira jerked to her feet and used a movement technique to intervene before she had to visit the hospital tonight. Unfortunately, she hadn't truly awakened as a cultivator and her body was not meant to take that sort of strain, so she was now in the situation where it might be her visiting the hospital instead.
She instinctively kept her pain to herself, concealing the pained grimace that the series of strained muscles in her back and legs were now trying to inspire. "Hunter, what did I specifically tell you about this plant?"
Hunter paled. "I didn't mean to, I'm sorry."
Moira shook her head, then winced as her neck threw up a protest. "Why don't you go back to the living room and spend some time with Yulia. I'm sure you will find her more interesting anyways. In the future, we will work on the produce garden first and then you can break off, while Sarah and I will continue our night. I understand you didn't mean to, but that plant there doesn't especially care about what you meant, and it could do some serious and long lasting damage to your body. There are other plants that could kill you or put you in a long term coma just by touching them, and so you really need to be able to pay attention to what you are doing while you are in here. So far, you haven't shown me that you are capable of it, so I need you to go somewhere more conducive to your health."
After Moira had escorted Hunter to the door of the greenhouse, doing her best to conceal her developing limp, she returned to Sarah and began cultivating an age-old skill: 'supervising'. Sarah was actually so into tending to these plants, and so open to instruction, that she didn't realize that Moira was allowing her to do almost 80% of the work.
What Moira didn't tell Hunter is that even her super variant of nightshade wasn't especially dangerous to the touch, but it would likely have just enough of a paralytic effect that she herself would have to remove him from the plants, and if she inadvertently touched them they might straight up kill her, or leave her paralyzed for the better part of a month. Of course, she hadn't been thinking about it that way at the time, and once she realized she had hurt herself for very little reason she got a little upset.
Moira herself found gardening to be calming and relaxing, most days. Most certainly not today. The last thing she needed is for Yulia to discover that she had seriously injured herself gardening. This was one of the only things she was allowed to do for herself, and she didn't want that taken away. Also, it would slightly fuck up her scheme to drug her wife later.
Once they were done here, Moira led Sarah to the terrarium, where she told Sarah to find a place she thought would help her focus. She let Sarah walk through the entire place twice before finally encouraging her to pick a spot. Once she had done so, Moira got to work. The first thing she did was tell Sarah that no, you cannot pick the conspicuous circle of toadstools. Nor is right next to the dryad who lives here a great choice. Finally, they settled for directly under a poison oak, and at this point Moira began to wonder if maybe it was her fault for even having these things.
The first step to magic, especially for a witch, was learning to see it. This worked slightly differently for every witch, and it took Moira and Sarah the better part of an hour before Sarah was finally able to see it.
The second step was deepening your connection with the spiritual world, especially the spirit who has granted you or your lineage power. For Sarah, and most witches really, this was the Earth itself. For Moira, it was the Warrior, but she had a close connection with most other major spirits relevant to witches except for Hecate and Loki. For personal reasons, they were actually sworn enemies.
Moira thought this part would take some time, but both Sarah and herself ended up sucked into a much deeper connection with the earth mother. Then, something strange happened to Moira's senses. Suddenly, she wasn't a small girl standing next to an even younger girl, but instead she was the grass, and the trees, and bushes, and the soil, and the air itself. The feeling continued until she felt herself in everything for miles around. Dimly, she saw a little girl, who was also herself, collapse and remain unmoving, from the eyes of a passing owl looking curiously through the terrarium. Moira was gratified to notice that her nighttime indirect lighting scheme had worked to cut down on light pollution.
Soon, though, she lost any control of this sense, and she spiraled. Her senses grew ever broader, and her connection to herself grew ever more tenuous. I am all things, and all things are within me. This thought repeated in her head like a mantra, and soon she pulled on just tiny little pieces of everything that was her, and brought it back to the little girl lying prone and pale on the ground, which was also her, and suddenly she blacked out even as she felt a surge of energy invigorate every one of her cells.
She woke up some time later, and realized she had awoken as a 1st level novice basic cultivator. More of her power and more of the power of nature and the elements around her had been infused into her cells, and she felt very much alive in a way she hadn't in some time. She also strongly felt that she could not push her cultivation any higher until she had strengthened her body and mind manually to hold the additional power and load.
Suddenly, she smelled something that was absolutely rancid. She pulled her shirt away from her chest slightly and realized that her body was beginning to release impurities. Almost certainly, it had many such impurities to release. She looked at Sarah, who was just now standing up from whatever tribulation she had just experienced, and noticed that Sarah had a similar problem.
"Sarah, I think we need to call it here. I need a shower badly, and I think you do as well."
Sarah flushed, but then scowled. "Wait, what about learning actual spells?"
"You just formed a solid connection with a primordial goddess and underwent one of her trials, and yet you say you haven't cast any spells? HAHAHAHAHA." Moira was almost crying from laughter at this point. "Depending on your perspective, that may indeed be true, but you still used a shitload of mana just now, and it is not wise to push your practice of magic ahead of your capability, especially when you are tired."
Sarah looked downright pissed at this point, feeling like she was being made fun of by a girl who was not that much her superior in age.
"Come on. Let's take a shower. It will relax your muscles and give us time to cool off. IF you still feel up to it, we can come out here and learn some basic spellcraft."
Sarah sighed, and gave in. She still felt a tiny bit of resentment towards her senior witch, but if she knew how old Moira was in reality, that feeling would probably evaporate like the morning dew in spring.