Mara did not speak for a long time.
She poured tea into two small cups, the liquid dark and steaming, smelling faintly of pine and smoke. Ana sat across from her in silence, her hands in her lap, trying not to stare at the moving shadows on the walls — shadows that didn't always match the objects casting them.
"Magic," Mara said at last, "is not spells or potions. Not truly. It is knowing. And knowing comes from silence."
Ana opened her mouth to ask a question, but Mara raised a finger.
"Silence."
So they sat — minutes, maybe hours — as the fire cracked, the wind howled outside, and the candles burned low. Mara closed her eyes, breathing in rhythm with something Ana couldn't hear. But slowly, very slowly, Ana began to feel it too: a pulse beneath the floorboards. A hum in the walls. A quiet thrum inside her bones.
When she finally looked up, Mara's eyes were already on her.
"You heard it," the witch said. "Good."
"What was it?" Ana whispered.
"The forest," Mara replied. "It remembers everything."
That night, Mara did not teach Ana spells. She handed her a blade made of bone and led her into the woods.
"You want to be a witch?" Mara said. "Then you must listen to the things that do not speak. And survive the ones that do."
And with that, she vanished into the trees — leaving Ana alone under the weight of the Black Forest's breath.