SWNOVELS Chapter 1 - Vortex
DIMA’S POV
Dima didn’t even have the strength to get drunk anymore. Seventeen years was a long time, and he was tired of being an alcoholic.
Not encountering his mate when he turned eighteen took a huge tool out of him and his bear. The poor beast was so depressed he didn’t even want to hunt anymore. He only laid in his cave and slept the time away.
He felt betrayed by the goddess.
Everyone around him was finding their mates left and right, and yet he was thirty-five and had no sight or scent of his mate.
Was he such a bad shifter that he didn’t deserve one?
This was their ritual every day. Dima would shift, and his beast would lay down and mop until their mother came and made him shift back to eat whatever she brought.
He started drinking a month after he turned eighteen. At first, it was moderate but after going to college he drank so much that he has woken up in the hospital once or twice with alcohol poisoning. And it takes a lot for a bear to get drunk, nonetheless to get alcohol poisoning. Despite that, he still finished college and got his degree in interior design.
Every day Dima goes to work at the constructing firm in town, works a few hours with the others, helping construct the new houses in the area, and then he spends another couple of hours at the office designing new houses’ structures and interior designing ideas for the people who wish their house to be fully furnished.
All in all, Dima goes to work at six a.m. and comes back at three p.m., including his lunch break, after that his bear routine starts.
Dima never stopped working in case he ever found his mate. He didn’t want to be caught off guard and not be able to care for her when she did finally show up if, she ever appeared at all. Every penny he earns, he saves it and that was how it was going to stay. Even if his mother tried to convince him otherwise, saying that he deserves to spoil himself from time to time, to Dima that concept was simply ridiculous. He was born to spoil and care for his mate, all the money he earned was to be used on her, not on himself! That was simply stupid, but his mother was a witch, she didn’t understand the male shifter’s urges so he had to excuse her stupid ideas from time to time.
“You are still laying there? Stubborn bear, if you don’t get your huge ass up and go out searching for her you will never find her!” His mother exclaimed, suddenly entering his cave. Dima’s bear turned his head around to face her and huffed, causing the witch to throw her arms up in exasperation.
“Let’s go, get up.” His mother ordered. Dima’s bear turned his back to face her and the witch’s whole denominator changed quickly at her son’s disrespectful act. Gone was the caring, worried mother and the cave’s temperature dropped very quickly, resembling Vania, his mother, current mode. She grabbed the bear by one of his ears and, with sudden inhuman strength, perks of being mated to a bear shifter, she twisted his ear and started dragging the whimpering beast behind her.
Vania dragged the bear all the way to her house, located a mile away from the cave, and once inside it, she proceeded to drag him towards her living room, only letting go of his ear when he stood in the center of the room.
As soon as his mother let go of his ear, Dima shifted, standing butt naked in the middle of her living room and his bear recoiled to the back of his mind, scared of their crazy mother.
“Mom! What the hell was that for?! You almost ripped my ear off!” Vania ignored her son and kept on running around the house gathering the things she would need for the spell she had in mind while Dima rubbed his ear.
Over the years, Vania had seen her son fade away before her own eyes but the moment her son’s bear had joined Dima in their mourning for their mate she knew the case was serious and so she started praying to the gods and goddesses. Her prayers grew more and more desperate every day until yesterday her prayers had been answered. The Moon Goddess, also known as Selena, Afrodite, Vênus, Cupid, Freya, the angel and goddess of love, and Moros, the god of fate all answered her prayer and came to her in a dream. They gave her a way to help her son but in exchange, she had to help every supernatural who asked for her help and was searching or waiting for their mate for more than six years. Vania accepted the deal, of course, and now she had to help her son. She was not going to put up with his sulking any longer.
Dima saw as his mother ran around the house, her arms full of things. She put a cauldron on the fire and started dropping things on it.
“Water from the heaven’s falls for a pure connection and to cleanse.” She murmured while pouring the water on the cauldron. “Roses to symbolize love...” And so on she whispered and dropped herbs, always mixing the cauldron’s contents with a huge wooden spoon.
“Mom, what are you doing?” Dima tried asking her but she simply focused on the cauldron and ignored her son.
“Óh dii divum, patres fati rerumque omnium cupidores mundi. Ostende viam et hac potione et carmine filium meum ad fatum suum sociumque sume. Oh dea Lunae, Deus Fatis Moro, angeli deaeque amoris, Tutum permitte filio iter, illumque cum socio relinque. (Óh gods of gods, fathers of fate, and connoisseurs of everything and the world. Show me the way, and with this potion, and spell take my son to his destiny and his partner. Oh Goddess of the Moon, God Moro of destiny, angels and goddesses of love, allow a safe passage for my son and leave him with his companion.)” Vania chanted and chanted until her voice got so loud that thunder boomed outside accompanying her chanting. Grey and white clouds temporarily filled the sky and, the colorful smoke of Vania’s cauldron filled the air above her cabin, escaping the log house through its chimney.
Vania spelled her wooden spoon and with a whisk of her wrist, the spoon started mixing the contents of the cauldron all on its own.
“Letakalv mywq hijon’s misery avvoji ut gavenve rum ruois esperaited amatrixeyum! (Take my son’s misery away and give him his awaited lover!)” With this, Vania punched her son in the gut, making him fall on his knees and, grabbed his hair, pulling until a few strands gave way. Then she spun and dropped the hairs in the cauldron, she completed her spin by ending back, facing her son.
She faked going to kick him in the balls and when he bent to protect them she murmured a spell and touched him in the shoulder, making him feel the same amount of pain as he would feel if she had kicked him in the family jewels. A tear dropped from his eyes, and Vania quickly caught it with the tip of the straight razor she had in her hands. She dropped the tear in the cauldron, and before her son recovered from her spell, she pulled one of his hands free from his junk and cut open his palm. Vania quickly pulled Dima close to the boiling pot and squeezed his palm, making the healing wound bleed into the potion.
“May his trip be blessed and safe,” Vania whispered and kissed Dima’s forehead.
Outside of the cabin the sky ripped open, Vania’s chanting could be heard again and thunder started reverberating in the skies once more.
The contents of Vania’s cauldron started flying out of it and, spinning in fast circles behind Dima, soon the liquid turned into a vortex and, this all happened in mere seconds. When Dima saw what was happening, he started panicking. He never thought he could upset his mother enough for her to get rid of him, but the portal behind him said otherwise. Dima started crying and trying to grab his mother when the portal sucked him in.
“MOTHER!” Dima screamed, scared and desperate. He didn’t want to leave this world in such a way. He wanted to find his mate and grow old with her, maybe even have some cubs. He didn’t want to die at thirty-five!
“Cherish your mate, Dima!” Vania yelled before her son disappeared along with the Vortex.
“I hope this works,” Vania whispered to herself and started cleaning around her living room the things that fell when the vortex closed and the blood that spilled on the floor from the cut she inflicted on Dima.
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Note: The language used during Vania’s spells is mostly made up, and the rest is in Latin.