Bronwyn gasped at the sight of her body lying on the cold floor, a few inches away from her feet.

Her mouth hung open and tears began to run down her cheeks.

"I shouldn't be messing with higher levels of magic!!." She lamented.

A transparent glass bottle, containing a blue powder-like substance was caught in her lost grip.

Bronwyn wandered off, out of the chambers of potions that were once the home to the oldest witch of her family.

"Go back, child!." The voice of a fair maiden echoed in her deaf ears causing her to tremble in fear.

She could feel the ice that had frozen her spine and glued her feet to the spot.

Bronwyn twisted her neck rigidly to get a glimpse of the voice that had broken what almost felt like a curse placed on her by a black witch from birth.

"Go back!." The words repeatedly echoed in her ears.

Bronwyn reached for the hatch door knob, trying her best to ignore the words of the woman.

"Go back!!." It sounded like a screeching tyre of an overspeeding vehicle.

Bronwyn stumbled backwards with her palms placed on each ear, her eyelids closed tightly as she kept stumbling backwards.

The voice finally came to an end, her eyes carefully peeled open as she took a pick of her surroundings.

"What?!." Bronwyn asked herself in confusion.

She was back at where her journey had begun, she was next to her unconscious body.

"Is this some kind of inter-dimensional plane?." Bronwyn questions herself.

"Go back, child!." The voice was gentle and sweet, almost sounding like Bronwyn's mother.

"I don't know how to!." Bronwyn began to sub uncontrollably.

A cold set of bony fingers laid on her shoulder. "The same way you came." The voice whispered into her right ear.

"I don't know how…" Bronwyn began to stutter as an idea began to form inside her hippocampus and amygdala as she recalled all she had done that brought her to this state and there it gave birth to a new idea.

———

Her eyes fluttered open, the bright flowing light blinded her eyes as well as illuminated her pale white skin.

"Bronwyn." She heard her name sing a bell in her head.

A hiss escaped her tightly pressed lips while tears danced their way down her slightly bruised cheeks.

"Ma…" Bronwyn cried out.

A pitiful expression laced her mother's face.

"She will be fine." The witch doctor said with his eyes staring at the distance, far past Bronwyn's mother whose body pressed against the door frame of her home.

"Mama!." Bronwyn wailed.

She sprang up at the speed of light, her palm laid like a flat surface on the wide bed she had been placed on. Her eyes wandered around in confusion.

Could it all have been a dream?

"I am alive." She whispered to herself as she went ahead to feel her body with joy spread on her face.

Bronwyn's line of sight ran up the body of the doctor till her eyes met his eyes, though her sight was blurry and her body waving, Bronwyn couldn't get over the fact she could hear the buzzing sound of the busy street underneath them.

"How is she, doctor?." Marlin, Bronwyn's inquired to know.

Marlin strolled down from the door to the bed.

"She looks fine to me." 

"I am fine mum!." Bronwyn blurred out.

The witch doctor and Marlin passed glances at themselves in confusion.

Mr James had been the Ravelino's for centuries before Bronwyn's parents were born.

"She looks fine to me." He squinted his eyes without moving.

Mr James walked to the side of the bed, he stood with his hands behind his back with an unreadable look on his face.

"You can hear me, can't you?." Mr James the witch doctor asked.

Mr James sighed. "She is fine."

The witch doctor walked out of Bronwyn's room and found his way out of their home while Marlins sat in total silence.

Her eyes didn't leave Bronwyn's body.

"You're so pale." A smile appeared on Marlin's face as she spoke her first words since the witch doctor left.

Bronwyn's pale cheeks were a visible example of a black paper with no printed lines.

"I am so sorry that I snuck into our family chambers of potions and messed with the potions I was labelled 'keep off'." She sobbed.

Bronwyn's kneel sank into the bed, her palms clapped together in front of her chest, she was visibly trembling which arose fair in Marlin.

"You are such a late bloomer!!." 

Bronwyn knew she was a late bloomer, she had always been called that by almost everyone who inhabited the witchy town who knew her older brother as an early bloomer unlike herself.

"My baby is going to be on the next bus to college!!." Marlin cheered in excitement.

Bronwyn's eyes widened in shock. "College?."

"Don't get me wrong!!, I have been dying to move out of witchy tone to college ever since I was a young witch after my brother hurried off to college at thirteen because he was an earlier bloomer but why now?." Bronwyn's thoughts wandered off into the jungle of fear, disbelief and confusion just at a single statement made by her mother.

"Yes!!." She shook her daughter. Marlin pulled Bronwyn closer and wrapped her arm around her shoulder while they relaxed on the bed frame.

"You can hear me! Which means you are an ancestor!!."

"What does that mean?." Bronwyn asked with her lips twisted to the side and her neck bent slightly in order to look her mother straight in the eyes.

"You were born deaf sweetie!, you must have encountered someone or something!!, maybe a Familiar or an ancestor!." Marlin looks down at her daughter expecting a positive reply.

"I saw a woman!, she sounded like you and asked me to go back the way I came! And…" 

"The way you came huh?." Marlin struck her chin.

Her face hung up in the air as though she had been reading an invisible text written by the ancient Gods.

"It must be…" Marlin paused.

She quickly unwrapped her hand off the shoulders of a late bloomer, she stood up to her feet as quickly as her limbs could move. 

In the blink of an eye, Marlin had walked out of the bedroom and moved to the study room.

"What's going on?." Bronwyn thought.

Marlin Ran her index finger down the dusty books on the shelf looking for the right feeling of the font she had been searching for.

Her once-closed eyes broke open, she pulled out a huge book from the shelf.

"Mum?." Bronwyn called out with a worried tone.

Her lips had turned into an upside-down smile with her eyes fixed on her mother's figure.

Marlin moved her quickly in the air, indicating Bronwyn to follow her.

Marlin walked deeper into the study, to the far ends where Bronwyn had never imagined existed, her lower lips had hit the floorboards in shock.

Her eyes flew around in awe at the amazement that had unfolded to her.

"If this was what it meant to be a late bloomer? I think I am glad to be one." She thought with a wide smile on her face that grew from ear to ear.

"Sit!." Marlin called Bronwyn back to reality.

Bronwyn sat on the dusty old seats while her mother stared at her in confusion.

"Why is she so lost? Is there a side effect to the sudden hearing abilities?." Marlin thought.

Marlin placed the wooden covered book with gold-plated texts on it as the title.

The dust and debris rose into the air choking Bronwyn into coughing.

"Which did you see?." Marlin asked in an unbothered tone despite the dust and debris in the air.

Bronwyn flipped the pages till the very last and yet she couldn't find the woman who had appeared to her.

"Maybe it was a dream." Bronwyn's shoulder fell and her emotions of excitement caved in.

Marlin squeezed her shoulder gently, and her daughter turned to get a glimpse of her mother's facial expression. The proud smile that had been put on display was really all Bronwyn needed to feel the same way as an early bloomer.

Bronwyn turned back to the book when her eyes found something they were too blind to see before.

It was a folded page. She carefully unfolded it and there, there was the ancestor that had brought her back to life or so she thinks.