oh man, now i desperately want you to write troll jim and sorceress claire coming across one another after many years apart.
This… this is a story about Claire.
So, here’s the thing: Claire can’t move on with her life without dealing with Morgana once and for all.
She doesn’t realize this until many years down the road. She and Jim call it quits a few years down the line, and it was as painful as it was mutual. They cared deeply for one another, but their lives and destinies were pulling them in other directions—not least of all the mounting guilt on Jim’s shoulders. Claire could see it clear as day that Jim couldn’t let go the idea that he’d been “keeping her away from the sun” despite her willingness. But that’s another story entirely.
It was an adult decision to separate. For the first time in years, Claire stepped fully into the light. Now in her sophomore year at Rutgers college, her grades improved. Her sleeping was on schedule. Her future made sense again. She felt superficially healthy in a way she had forgotten about. She could talk about herself and not lie.
Her visits to the Trolls became more and more infrequent as she completed her degree, and eventually came to an end as Jim went on another long underground journey and Claire moved back to California for a job.
Jim managed to make it back to Arcadia for a holiday or two, and she was always delighted to see him, but he seemed…different. Perhaps embracing his new trollform… perhaps he had been holding back for her sake… (Barbara and Strickler had adopted two of the rescued infants, so Jim had younger siblings to visit, if nothing else)
But, then, she was different too. Her passion for acting continued to launch her into small stage productions, but she her college interest in playwrighting got her into the Editing world. She started a career, drank with colleagues, attended her brother’s school plays, and supported her mother’s politic functions.
And just as Claire felt herself relax into a sense of normalcy, the dreams returned. The out of body hauntings. The echoes of her cackle every time Claire shut her eyes. The void was calling to her. She’d closer her eyes and relive the eighteen eternal seconds she and Morgana struggled in darkness, but sometimes it didn’t end with her clawing her way back into the light.
Claire tried therapy laced with lies. Talking helped at first… until it didn’t. She tried medicine. Violent reactions occurred around her. Shaking walls and broken glass. Medicine turned out to be a stopper in a boiling kettle, not an off switch. She traveled to New Jersey but the New Troll Market was gone. She hadn’t seen Jim in years by then.
She lost sleep. Her work suffered. A guy she had just started seeing left.
It was her paternal grandmother her sent her in the next direction. Enrique had just turned sixteen. He no longer did school plays. He liked lacrosse and debate club. He was running for student president. He was a mama’s boy.
Nana Nuñez beckoned Claire to the vacant cushion beside her and said, “Necesitas ver mi psíquico.”
Outwardly, Claire rolled her eyes. Inwardly she lashed at the idea. Nana grasped her hand and ran her weathered fingers over the bulging blue lines on the back of Claire’s hand.
“An old poison still runs in your veins,” she whispered in English. “Your blood has absorbed it.”
All Claire heard was Morgana. And with her hand still gripped between her grandmother’s cold fingers, Claire allowed herself to embrace what was happening to her. She knew. She’d known all along. And she had allowed the illusion of normalcy to blind her to it. Morgana was still alive. Morgana could come back. Morgana stole Claire’s freedom. Invaded her. Scarred her. Changed her.
Claire went to her grandmother’s psychic. Turns out, the psychic wasn’t as much of a fraud as Claire had anticipated. Not when the woman clutched her chest, cursed under her breath, and needed ten minutes of deep breathing and a glass of cold water to calm herself after Claire stepped through the beaded doorway.
Three things were for certain: Morgana was a live and tethered to Claire in some otherworldly manner. Claire couldn’t move on with her life so long as Morgana was alive. Claire absorbed something of Morgana and it was high time she see it through because she’s holding herself back otherwise.
Fast forward 30 years and a snowball method of training and Claire is transformed. Her brother’s well into politics now, with his mother behind him, and her father’s passed away from a heart attack two years prior. Visits to her family are far and few between these days, but when she does visit them she makes sure she “looks appropriate”. She’s a traveling writer, as far as they’re concerned. Successful enough for her family to brag about; obscure enough for no more than a sentence or two worth of smalltalk.
Certainly not a fully-fledged sorceress who tumbled down into an entire network of underground magic and growth. Trolls, it seems, were just the tip of things.
Feeling more assured and ready to end Morgana once and for all, Claire seeks out and works with Merlin (a far easier feat when one knows how to scry).
That’s what had her running into her first boyfriend. Needless to say, neither was really prepared to see the other…
Certainly not Jim, who caught her scent before anything else.
… except saturated with magic.
Yeah. Jim is shooketh. Claire inadvertently allowed the mere idea of Morgana to become her White Whale and is a bit ashamed of that. She’s not about to admit it to Jim anyway… though there’s hardly a better explanation as to why she doesn’t look like a sixty year old woman. Nor will she for a very long time…
“In March several of the mandrakes threw a loud and raucous party in greenhouse three. This made Professor Sprout very happy.” Do you have any ideas on what this moment from chamber of secrets might have looked like?
