It had been a week since Sevel's decree that she would take care of everything in regard to the Council Meeting, Amel's wardrobe and the Witch who would accompany her on the most important night in the Witches' Year. It was the occasion that all Witches look forward to, for it was the one night in sea of days in which all nine of the greater Witches could mingle, chat, and discuss the issues of the day. It was party unlike found in any world in all of creation, and one that any minor Witch, be they Expeditionary or Acolyte, would kill a god or better to attend.
But in recent years, Amel had come to see such an event as tiresome. For it was not all that difficult to communicate with her fellow Greater Witches across the expanses of the void, and even easier still to collaborate on the act of creation remotely, using magic far beyond mortal kin to summon from nothing a new world filled with strange new beings, planets, and other assorted oddities that had not existed before or would ever again. In this day and age, a term that meant little to beings as endless as she, there was no need to meet like this every year. Indeed, though it was called a Council Meeting, it was more often then not an excuse to get together, eat, drink, and gossip away the night. And while all of that was certainly fun, it was not an event that needed to occur every year, Amel often thought to herself.
Once a century, yes, that was fine. But once a year? That had quickly grown tiresome many years ago, especially after a certain incident decades involving far to many drinks from a world known for its grandiose alcohol and her creation of the now legendary being known only as the "Witch of Cats."
Yet every year, Amel had attended despite all of that, and for that reason alone the Witch of Creation now sat on her bed, twiddling her thumbs and kicking her feet back and forth, with twelve different dresses draped in front of her forming a tapestry of exquisite fabrics, lace, and more. It was a spread hand selected by Sevel and culled from just as many worlds as there now lay dresses before her. Each was beautiful in its own right, with some sparkling like the sun at noon, and others resembling the darkness of the void that seemingly devoured the very concept light itself like a hungry black hole. It was a spread worthy of her station, but one that made Amel more anxious then happy.
"Well my lady, which of these do you like best? Each is a fine choice, but I will leave it to you to decide which shall adorn your back this coming week."
Sevel stood in the corner of the bedroom, just beside the door that led to the rest of the manor, with her arms crossed and a look of expectant look on her face. It had taken her quite some time to find each of these dresses, and the quest had taken long enough that Amel had been left to cook for herself for the last week. Naturally, this had led to a situation where the Greatest Witch had subsisted on a diet of cake, pudding, and, oddly enough, corn for seven days. But it, in her mind, had been worth it. For nowhere in the cosmos had a greater spread of garments ever been assembled. Truly, it was a master work of her time as a maid, and as great a deed as any she had accomplished as the Witch of the Hunt.
"I like the black one, I guess." Amel sighed. "It reminds me of the one Tem wore last year, and everyone seemed to love it. So lets just go with that one and be done with this already."
"Are you all right?" Sevel asked. "You sound, down...my lady."
Amel breathed heavily and looked at the dress covered floor in dejection. Truly, she was not "all right."
"Ah, so that's it, is it? Are you truly that bored of these meetings that they push you to such sadness? That will simply not do! Even if you do not feel they are necessary, you should still attend. You are the creator of all things, and if you do not appear, what will the other Witches say? It will not reflect kindly on my lady's reputation. I know that for sure. And think of Lady Tem as well, she will be disappointed if you do not attend, as well."
"I know." Amel said in so many heavy words. "These things just aren't any fun for me anymore. We talk all night, drink for hours on end, and then gossip until we either get sick of each other, or Little Miss Entropy destroys the Council Hall and we have to recreate it from memory the next day. Its the same every stupid year!"
"A point well taken. But we can try and change that repition this year. You are the Witch of Creation, after all." Sevel giggled. "Perhaps if your dress cannot change your mood, she should bring along someone new? It is not often that a Witch appears at one of these functions without her paired Witch, am I correct in this assumption?"
Amel nodded, it was true as save for Recordoria, the Witch of History and Chronicler of Everything that Was, Is, or Ever Will Be, each of the remaining eight Greater Witches it paired in the action of creation with another Witch of a complementary domain. Amel herself was paired with Tem, the Witch of Time, as her providence over Creation came along with that of the concept of Space as well. For this reason alone, the two had appeared at the yearly meeting together, if only because neither of them could think of anyone else they could possibly have enough in common with or stand being tied at the hip with for an entire night.
"The last Witch who tried that was Recordoria a few thousand years ago, she was completely sick of sitting alone by herself for the entire night and dragged along one of her Expeditionary Witch friend to sit beside her and make conversation while wrote down everything that happened. I'm not sure what title that Witch held, but her glasses were nearly as think as Recordoria's...so I imagine it involved reading, writing, or some other related subject."
Amel perked up, laughed lightly, and then turned her gaze from the myriad dresses at her feet and made eye contact with Sevel. "Really, I don't think any of the other Witches cared in the least either. As long as the drink flows freely and there is plenty to talk about, nothing else seems to matter to any of them, or me for that matter. Once I get a just a bit of the stuff in me, I'll never shut up. You should know that better then anyone, Sevel."
Sevel laughed inwardly, and stifled an expression that recalled the many, many stupid things her mistress had done while under the influence of a certain drink made by humans and brought to the manor by a traveling Expeditionary Witch. "I do, my lady." Sevel barely muttered while still holding tight to her dignity as a maid and servant. "Do you remember that Cat Witch? The one you created a few years back at the council meeting while yelling "WHY CAN'T A CAT BE A WITCH???? SHUT UP, TEM! I CAN MAKE A CAT A WITCH IF I WANT TO!"
Sevel spoke in mimicry of the Witch of Creation in a loud and boisterous tone that saw her normally regal expression twist into that of a woman at her lowest point. And as she finished mocking one of Amel's sillier moments, the knot she had formed to stifle her own laughter finally broke, and from her mouth issued forth laughter so loud and so powerful that it could likely be heard in many of the world's that hung in the sea of Creation that floated all around the manor.
Sevel laughed hard and long. Barely able to speak, she held her stomach with one hand and guffawed so hard that she couldn't even so much as open her eyes, for they were clouded by more tears than a collective funeral procession. Truly, she had not been this amused in ages. "And then you did! You made a cat, made it a Witch, and then instantly promoted it to being an Expeditionary Witch. You even gave it a title! "Witch of Cats" And it wasn't even a magical cat or possessing intelligence, it was just a cat, who happened to be incredibly cat-like! How did you even think of that? It's amazing, frankly! My lady, you truly are a master of your craft to create such a thing."
As Sevel laughed, her lady's face grew redder by the moment with embarrassment, and a fire lit in her belly that blazed like the center of a red sun. "Sevel..." she said
"Yes, my lady?" the maid asked.
"Stop that, right now. Or you may soon find yourself with a none to pleasant title attached to your head for all times" the Creator Witch stated plainly, half in jest and half in blazing anger that could light all the cosmos afire.
"Yes, I'm very sorry. It was improper of me to bring up that particular event. I shall refrain from doing so in the future." The maid witch laughed one last time, then stood up straight, straightened her uniform, and clasped her hands together in front of her in the traditional idle stance of her profession.
"Good to hear we're on the same page. But yes, back to where we were before. I do not think anyone would care if I left Tem to her own devices just this once. But even with that out of the way, the question remains; who am I good enough friends with to even invite to something like this? If I just leave a letter in some Acolyte Witch's mailbox, they'll think they've been chosen by fate itself for a greater purpose or something. And trust me, that is the last thing I want to deal with at the moment."
Witches in general are a lot obsessed with pageantry and theatrics. Such can be seen both in their obsession with titles, the tendency to dress in fine gowns whenever possible, even in the middle of a casual day, and general dramatic view of Creation in general. But for any witch, as Sevel well knew, there was no more dramatic an event than to find oneself in contact, for whatever reason, with a Greater Witch. Such meetings were the stuff of legend and often meant that one's life would soon take a dramatic turn for the better. Thus they are written of Recordoria's book of history and legend as a tale of a "Descend" a moment in which the creator meets creation and a great tale is born as a result, one that immortalizes all those involved for all time. Thus inviting any Acolyte Witch, or even Expeditionary Witch Amel did not know all that well, was clearly out of the question.
So Sevel thought just who her lady could invite. But she did not think for long, as the list she had compiled in her head was a short one indeed.
"That puts aside ninety-nine percent of Witch-Kind my lady and leaves us with myself, Lady Tem, that Cat, and perhaps what her name...the Detective Witch. She always seemed kind enough, and she certainly has many a story to tell of the many cases she solved, and villains she's brought to justice.
"I had forgotten about Christia!" Amel said happily. "She really is a good little Witch, and smart as a whip to boot, but I'm afraid as interesting as she is, I really do not want to spend the night listening to tales of bloody corpses and grand robberies for hours on end. It gives me the chills just thinking about the grisly level of detail she goes into when she gets excited!"
Sevel rolled her eyes, her lady truly had always been the indecisive sort, and likely always would be.
"Very well then, that leaves me and Lady Tem then. You said earlier that the latter was out of the question, which leaves only myself. And while I would love to accompany my lady to the meeting, I'm entirely sure, as a mere maid, I am not worthy of such an honor. Thus I would suggest you either go alone or recant this discussion entirely. Am I correct in this assumption?"
Amel did not answer, but rather once more began looking at the dresses gathered at her feet. As she stared at them, lingering just a moment as if drinking in the intricate stitching and embroidery that had gone into the creation of each. The look on her face was a happy one, and her general aura was gentle to the point of being giddy. Whatever bounced about in the mind of the Witch of Creation, it was certainly positive.
Eventually, her gaze settled on a gown made not of fabric, but rather of the scales of a reptilian beast that shone like rainbows under direct light. In many ways, it resembled the patchwork armor that Sevel had worn when the two of them had first met, and that face alone gave Amel an idea. She then looked up, gazed intently at her maid, her eyes sparkling like stars in the night sky, and then grinned so that all of her blindly white teeth were fully visible. It was a look full of ominous portent, and one that made Sevel uneasy, as if all the eyes of all the peoples of an entire world were suddenly thrust upon her.
"Er, Amel....I'm not sure I approve of the way you are looking at me at the moment." Sevel shuddered.
"No no, it's ok. You just gave me an idea. Just come over here, and put this on."
"Do I have to?" Sevel shrugged with both shoulders.
"Yes, you do. This is one of my rare "You must do this under the auspice of the Witch of Creation" commands. So get over here before I get up and drag you over here myself."
"If my lady is this roused to action, this must be important. I will put up with this foolishness for the time being. But if this results in my being made a fool, I will not stand for it a second later. Even if she is my lady, I have my dignity as a maid and Witch that I must hold onto no matter what!" Sevel thought to herself as she nodded sullenly. "I will be right there," she added out loud.
As she took the short walk to where Amel sat on her bed, Amel leaned forward and picked up the scaled dress. She then held it aloft for a moment, just in front of Sevel as she approached. "Yes, I think this will work," she said quietly.
***
Sevel looked at herself in the full-length mirror beside Amel's bed and shrugged. The scaly dress Amel had picked out for her was pretty, even she knew that, as she had picked it out herself, but looked ridiculous when worn upon her twig-like frame. Custom made for the Witch of Creation, the gown in question was fit for one of a tall and regal stature, and whereas it might have been glorious beyond all description if worn by the Witch of Creation, it instead hung upon Sevel's frame like a coat upon an old rack. It was a ridiculous sight and brought to the maid's mind memories of the long days she had spent with Amel following her move into the manor in which she had tried on over a thousand outfits before her lady finally settled on the black and white outfit that was now her daily wear.
"I mean no offense to you nor your sense of fashion, my lady. But this garb looks simply awful on me no matter which way one might look at it."
From behind, Amel formed a square with four of her fingers and carefully analyzed her head, and only, the servant's profile in the oversized gown from the side. True to Sevel's complaining, it did, in fact, look quite silly and reached the floor where its excess fabric pooled at her feet like an ever-dripping font of unusually reflective ooze.
"And here I thought that style was perfect for you," Amel sighed. "But I guess this just isn't going to work as it."
"As is?" Sevel asked turning her head from the mirror to look with some trepidation at her mistress. "What could you possibly mean?"
Sevel's teeth chattered and their heart rumbled like a ship on a stormy sea of emotion, as it was often when Amel had an idea not related to the act of creation that things often became...chaotic, for lack of a better term. She was of Cat Witches, planes of eternal fire, and inventor of the very concept of sitting, for every good idea Amel had when hard at work, she seemed to have three bad ones waiting in the wings for situations such as these.
"I'm going to alter it to fit you. Simple as that." Amel said as she pointed at the dress with her index finger.
And so Sevel breathed a sigh of relief, how bad could a small bit of alteration be? A bit of sewing here, a little cutting there. It would be just fine, she thought to herself.
Amel's devious smile however, which had just returned from the place it was stored in the darkest reaches of her mind, clearly stated, in capital and a font visible from several worlds hanging in Creation that things would not be so simple.
With a flick of her wrist and eyes firmly closed, Amel called upon the power that defined her as Witch of Creation and directed all of her seemingly endless creativity towards Sevel. Normally reserved for fashioning worlds from cosmic dust, and people from the "salt of the earth, such power could easily rewrite reality for any being lower on the scale of Creation than a Greater Witch and imbue their person with fortune or ruin in equal chance. Such energy welled in Amel's bedroom in the small space where Sevel stood and overwhelmed her to the point that the Witch of Service trembled and quickly fell to the ground rear first as the oppressive weight of her lady's full power bore down upon her for a second time.
"My lady!" she yelled from the ground. "This is dangerous! Do you not remember what happened the last time you used your power directly on me?!"
Amel did not listen, however. As her ears were full of the sounds of creation, the cries of newborn worlds, the sound of the spheres, and other ambient energy no lesser being would even notice should they sit and meditate for a thousand thousand lifetimes or more.
"MY LADY!?" Sevel yelled again.
But her plea fell on deaf ears, Amel was too far gone in her work to be stopped now. For better or worse, she must grin and bear whatever terrible fate awaited her at the end of the storm that was Amel's creative process. So she bit down hard upon her own lips and awaited her ultimate end. She quivered, shook, and shivered, for she could feel that the end was near, embodied in her lady's handiwork, and all for the sake of a bit of work that could have easily been handled with a pair of scissors, a sewing machine, and a little elbow grease.
But no, this was Amel we were talking about. And she had taken to the problem like one may try to fit a square peg into a round hole. Yes, with enough force, it would eventually fit, but the destruction wreaked by the act in the first place was far from worth the satisfaction one could glean from doing such a pointless thing in the first place.
Despite all of this, and all of the pressure of the moment, no terrible fate had befell Sevel. Though a storm of energy roiled around her like an exploding star, she herself was fine. She sat up and looked at her hands, feet, and then her back for good measure. Her whole body was, much to her surprise, in one piece. Her hair had been singed just a bit by the sheer energy of the situation, but aside from that, she was completely fine, It was a miracle!
But upon the second inspection, as she finally stood after such a harrowing moment, was the fact that while she was no worse for wear, her dress was an altogether different matter. No longer trailing upon the ground, it instead hugged her five-foot six-inch figure like a glove and looked like something a sane person may wear, rather than a misguided and miss-sized gift from a relative you only met on holidays and other special occasions. In fact, she thought to herself with a stunned look, it actually looked quite good when observed in the reflection of Amel's mirror.
"Is this what all that was about?" Sevel asked as she ran her hands down her sides, analyzing the contours of her frame against those of the dress. "All that show and flash just to re-size this dress for me? I must admit I'm flattered, but you gave me a scare so bad that I thought it might end my life for a minute there. I was even having flashbacks to the day you gave my current title for Creation's sake!" she scolded the elder witch, who only smiled and nodded to each and every one of her maid's words.
"I admit I might have gone a little overboard there. But the dress came out quite nicely, didn't it?"
Sevel nodded, it was even more beautiful than it had been a few moments before. Its scales seemed to be glossier, and its construction more perfect and completely free of the sort of seams, cuts, and stitches that might show on a garment crafted by mortal hands. It was a bit of clothing that could be called nearly perfect if one believed in the idea of perfection in the first place at least.
"It did, but do not take this as the go-ahead to do something like this ever again. Who knows what could happen if you'd messed up somewhere along the way? You might have blown up my head or something like that for all either of us know!" Sevel scolded.
"Yes, yes, I get it! I messed up and I won't do it again. But for now, since we have a dress to fit you, you know what that means, right?"
Sevel nodded in the negative.
"Well, for one, it means that you're ready to come with me to the council meeting!" Amel smiled.
"That was what all of this was about?" Sevel said furrowing her brow as she did.
Amel only smiled.
"Fine. You win this once Amel. I will go with you. If only to prevent another disaster like this from ever happening again."
"Great," Amel cheered. "Now let's just go find you a pair of shoes and we'll really be ready to go."
"Can you promise me that you won't try and make those shoes yourself?"
Amel was silent on the matter, and that worried her maid more than anything.
***