=::= Tally's PoV =::=
I'd been sort of mentally prepared to meet Beth's two older sisters. I'd heard about them often enough, I knew Amanda and Sadie were twins. I'd even seen pictures of them at one point. They were identical, except Amanda had blonde hair and Sadie's was brown.
So when I followed the others into the house I'd been ready to meet the two older girls. I wasn't ready to discover there were four strangers in there waiting for us rather than two.
The other thing that surprised me was that they were here already. Ms. Watson said the twins would be joining us for dinner, and I knew they were away at college or something. There was no second car in the driveway when we arrived, so I assumed they'd show up a little later on.
My girlfriend's mom didn't seem surprised at the two extra girls, but she didn't seem like she'd been expecting them either. And she still looked and sounded stressed as she addressed one of the twins, "Amanda will you take care of ordering dinner? You can use my card to pay for it."
"Sure mom," the blonde twin responded. "Is everything ok?"
Ms. Watson replied, "It's been a long day, I'm going to turn in early I think. I need some quiet time to myself. I'll trust you girls to keep things relatively peaceful and not destroy anything when you begin the lessons."
After that she headed up the stairs to her bedroom.
Jenny greeted the other girls with a casual "Hey" then she went up to her bedroom too, to put her backpack away.
That left me and Bethany down in the front hall with the other four girls.
Beth smiled, "So let's do some introductions ok? Tally, these are my sisters Amanda and Sadie. Amanda, Sadie, this is my girlfriend Tally."
The twins stepped forward to greet me. Amanda's blonde hair was darker than Beth's or Jenny's, and was in a wavy style that was trimmed just above her shoulders. Her eyes were hazel, and she was wearing an orange t-shirt and faded blue jeans.
Sadie's long hair was brown and hung straight down a few inches past her shoulders, and her eyes were brown too. She was wearing a pretty skirt and blouse ensemble. And Sadie was wearing some pretty make-up while Amanda just had lipstick on.
Apart from eyes and hair they were otherwise identical. They had a darker complexion than either Beth or Jenny, they actually looked more like Ms. Watson than either of the younger sisters. They were about the same height as their adoptive mother too, but both were shorter than Jenny. Their faces, body shape, height, even their voices sounded the same as they both greeted me politely.
Then Beth introduced me to the other two girls.
The taller one had long straight black hair and bright green eyes. She was wearing a pretty black dress, it was sort of casual-fancy. Like Sadie she was wearing some tasteful make-up and she looked really pretty. She wasn't quite as tall as Jen, but she was at least an inch taller than the twins and Ms. Watson. Beth introduced her as Ashley, and apparently she was Sadie's girlfriend.
The last girl was small like me and Beth. She was only about an inch taller than the two of us, but a few years older. Her long straight hair was reddish-blonde and her eyes were bright blue. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a cute pink top. Beth introduced her as Brittany, and she was Amanda's girlfriend.
Finally I found out all four of them were students at Ryerson in Toronto. Britt and Ashley were both twenty, while the twins' twentieth birthday was coming up in two months.
I was kind of relieved that none of them asked me a bunch of questions, they just said hi and smiled at me and stuff. Like they obviously knew I did the spell, but I almost got the feeling like it was no big deal to them. And maybe it wasn't, considering all four of them were witches and knew magic and all that.
By the time the introductions were over Jenny had come back downstairs. Me and Beth took our backpacks up and put them in our rooms then we headed back down as well. All seven of us got drinks then crowded into the living-room. I was just drinking water again, while Beth and Jenny had cola. And all four older girls were drinking alcohol. Amanda and Brittany had cherry vodka coolers, while Sadie and Ashley had white wine.
In the living-room the twins and their girlfriends all squeezed onto the sofa together, and Jenny took one of the wingback chairs. That just left a wingback chair and a recliner, but it meant me and Beth couldn't sit together.
Rather than taking one of the chairs my girlfriend sat on the floor and motioned me to sit with her. I smiled and joined her. It was better sitting with her on the floor than by myself on a chair.
"So what's up with mom?" Amanda asked. "She didn't look good and she's not joining us for dinner. She's not sick is she?"
Beth shook her head, "I don't think so. She said she's had a stressful couple days at work?"
"Mom said something about the government giving her a hard time yesterday," Jenny added.
Sadie frowned, "That doesn't sound good."
"It's not that they're giving mom a hard time," Beth explained. "It's about something at QSAW? I think it was about them helping American trans or demi-humans who were fleeing to Canada to escape persecution."
"Ah," the brunette twin nodded. "That makes sense. When it was just Iris it probably wasn't a big deal, but after word got out how QSAW helped her it's probably turned into a regular thing."
"Let's not get into politics tonight ok?" Amanda asked.
Sadie agreed, "Right. We're here to give these kids their first magic lessons."
Beth protested, "Hey! Who are you calling a kid!"
"The three of you who aren't old enough to drive yet," the brunette responded with a smirk.
That got a rise out of Jenny, "I can drive! I drove us home from school today!"
"Oh my goddess that's enough!" Amanda said with a grin.
None of them seemed to be actually upset or anything, all four sisters were smiling. It felt like friendly teasing, like when me and Steve were kidding around with each other. Not like at home when Dylan or my parents did it, that just felt cruel and hurtful. Still, I was glad Amanda put a stop to it.
With everyone quiet, Amanda announced "We're going to do the first lesson before we order dinner, since it's still a bit early. And this is the most important lesson of all ok? The rules..."
Jenny groaned and rolled her eyes, while the four older girls all grinned.
"I know it sounds boring Jen," Sadie stated, "But from what I've heard you're the one who needs to hear this most of all."
The actual lesson wasn't that bad, most of it was pretty obvious. The coven had big rules about secrecy, about how we couldn't talk about the coven or magic or anything like that with outsiders. We couldn't do magic out in public, we couldn't show it off, all that stuff.
After telling us all the obvious stuff we couldn't do, they taught us some stuff that was actually kind of cool. Apparently the coven followed a real live Goddess, and She watched over us and protected us. And the invisible magic rune on my wrist wasn't just an initiation mark, it was also like a connection to the Goddess.
Then the real surprise was finding out we could all read and understand some strange magic runes and a couple new languages. Ashley giggled slightly as she said, "Our Goddess is originally from Wales, and Her sacred book is written in a mix of old Welsh and Latin? So we can all read and speak those two languages."
To prove her point she switched to talking a strange language as she said, "If you ever need to talk about coven business in public, you could use old Welsh like this. Odds are nobody around here outside the coven will know what you're talking about."
My eyes went wide as I realized I could understand everything she said.
"On the other hand it's really rude to do that in front of people," Amanda stated in English. "It makes it pretty obvious you're deliberately excluding them from the conversation. Better to just not discuss the coven or magic in public in the first place."
"Yeah I know," Ashley replied. She looked at Amanda's girlfriend and added, "Sorry Britt."
That led to another revelation. Brittany wasn't in the coven, she didn't have one of those marks on her wrist. But she knew all about the coven, and she knew magic. Apparently she'd been learning from Amanda, Sadie, and Ashley for almost two and a half years.
It was sort of a non-secret within the coven. Like people knew Amanda was teaching her girlfriend magic and stuff, but as long as Brittany didn't cause any trouble it was ok.
"How come she doesn't just join up?" I asked. "Wouldn't that be simpler?"
That led to some awkward glances, till Amanda replied "That sort of thing isn't up to us Tally. Samantha and Nicole are the leaders, and ultimately it's the Goddess who decides. And it's not the sort of thing we want to talk about."
"Sorry," I apologized.
After that we talked a bit more about the Goddess and the coven, before Amanda decided it was time to order dinner. That was a bit of an ordeal as everyone got some input on what to get. And Sadie went upstairs to check with Ms. Watson to see if she wanted dinner after all.
Eventually Amanda put the order in, then we all got more drinks as we waited.
Somehow we got talking about the magic tattoos, and that led to everyone showing off the enchanted protective tats on our ankles.
Sadie's was the prettiest, I thought. It was like a monarch butterfly, except instead of just black and orange the coloured bits were all pride rainbow colours.
Amanda's was nice too, she had a pretty purple flower. As she was showing it off Sadie teased, "It's a violet. That's the sapphic flower, it represents lesbian love."
The blonde twin's face went bright red and she protested, "I didn't know that when I picked it! I just thought it was pretty, ok?"
I couldn't understand why that made her embarrassed, she had a girlfriend so she was obviously gay. I figured it was another one of those secret jokes or that kind of thing, that I'd seen going on between Jenny and Beth earlier.
Brittany had a flower tattoo as well, hers was a rose with pink and blue petals. It was pretty too, and she said there was a special meaning to it but it was kind of personal. Considering the colours were almost from the trans pride flag it was kind of obvious what it meant, but she didn't want to talk about it so I didn't ask.
Jenny showed off her orange kitty tattoo, and I'd already seen Beth's green gecko.
I showed everyone my black paw-print, and Ashley smiled "Cool Tally! That's kind of like Zoe's, she has a purple cat paw tattoo."
Ashley's was actually the most boring of the group, she just had the letters ACN on her ankle in black ink. They were in runes so at least they looked a little more interesting than English letters.
"What's that mean?" I asked.
The tall brunette blushed, "It's just my initials, to be honest."
Sadie grinned and added, "Ash wanted runic initials because that's what Cindy had. Cindy had a runic CAT tattoo, and Ashley was like one of Cindy's biggest fans."
My eyes widened and I asked, "Did you all meet Cindy too?"
"We knew her," Sadie replied with a smile. "She did the protection tattoos for all six of us, and our mom too. And she actually asked Ashley for help when she started her Change The World thing!"
I found myself staring at all four of them as I said "Wow!"
By that point Ashley was blushing even brighter, she mumbled "It wasn't that big a deal. She just wanted to know where trans teens hung out online? I didn't do anything special, just told her where to look on social media."
I still thought the whole thing was really cool, like my girlfriend got to meet the legendary sorceress a couple times but her older sisters and Ashley got to work with her. And Ashley basically helped change the world, which I thought was amazing.
All four of them downplayed it though, and Amanda reminded me about the whole secrecy thing. I still hadn't figured out if Cindy was part of their coven. They talked about her like she wasn't in it, but I figured she must have been if they all knew her.
When the food arrived we got plates and cutlery and stuff from the kitchen, and everything was set up on the coffee table so we could all just eat right there in the living-room. There was a huge assortment too. We all grabbed a bit of everything, except Brittany who I found out was a vegetarian. So she stuck to the veggie spring rolls, veggie fried rice, and there was a stir-fried tofu dish that actually looked kind of interesting, and a veggie chow mein too.
Then as we all ate, the older girls showed off a bit. There were orbs of pure light floating around the living-room, all of them used glamours to change their appearance and stuff. They even showed us some teleportation magic, sending each other's drinks across the room and stuff.
It was super exciting but also a little scary, like me and Beth and Jenny didn't know any magic at all yet and the four college students knew all kinds of stuff. If they wanted to be mean, they could probably do all sorts of nasty things to us and we'd have no way of stopping them.
Fortunately they all seemed really nice, and I felt myself relaxing as we all talked and enjoyed our dinner together.
There was some more friendly teasing between the four sisters, and a few times I noticed more of those odd looks between Beth and the others. Mostly Sadie, the two of them kept giving each other funny looks now and then as we all talked and stuff.
Eventually Amanda spoke up, "Ok it feels like the focus has mostly shifted away from food and into fun, so I think that means it's about time we got started teaching you girls some magic. So..."
"Actually sis," Sadie interrupted. "Do you mind if I take Beth away for a few minutes? I need to speak with her in private."
I glanced at my girlfriend, but she didn't look surprised. She put her plate aside and got to her feet as she told Amanda, "You can get started teaching Jen and Tally. I'll catch up after. Or I'll bug Sadie for a private lesson, if she makes me miss too much tonight."
Sadie stood up as well, the brunette smiled at me and said "Don't worry Tally, I'll bring your girlfriend back in a little while."
That made me blush, and I mumbled "Good luck," to Bethany. I wasn't sure why, I just felt like she was getting called out of class for some reason so it couldn't be good.
Poor Cindy D: