In the city there lived a couple, the Craft family. Meela Craft was an elven sorceress, and her husband, Lars Craft, a human who’d married her after her first husband, another sorcerer and a friend of Lars’, died in a magical experiment. Both were part of a group of magic users, a club for magic research, and they had high hopes for Meena’s daughter Jineiss, who they believed would inherit both her biological parent’s magic. They doted on her and encouraged her, hoping the day would come her talents would awaken, but the day didn’t come, and over time, Jineiss picked up increasing nervousness from them.
They had meetings and more meetings with their friends in their society, and though Jineiss never overheard what, it seems they had big plans that required a magical prodigy, and she just wasn’t doing, even though she showed the force of will she didn’t have the slightest spark. At some point, someone had a suggestion- maybe they could *make* a prodigy, ‘awaken her latent potential’ for it. Reluctantly, her parents agreed, and the group put together a silver blood concoction, made of fey, celestial, and who knows what else blood.
Her parents got her to hold out her arms and injected her, promising it’d be ok and soon she’d be magic like them. It didn’t work- instead, she got sick. Very sick. For months. Her parents got worried, had arguments with their fellow arcanists and each other, and tries to turn to the group for a cure.
One day, a bird flew in through the window. Jineiss was hallucinating pretty badly and mistook it for her old imaginary friend from when she was small, Pettlewess. She accidentally disturbed it and it pecked her, and some of the silver blood went down it’s beak, and it collapsed unmoving.
She ran downstairs calling for her parents that Pettlewess was sick and had died. At first they humored her, writing it off as another fever dream. Then they saw the little bird was alive. Then they noticed she had *ran* down! She was better!
They hugged her for joy, but even as Jineiss recovered fully and they apologized profusely, there couldn’t help but grow some distance between them. They told her that they had distanced themselves from the group and vice-versa, but felt great shame in agreeing to begin with. Jineiss, in turn, began showing an independent streak, sneaking out at night- stronger and faster than she was before- and practicing her new powers. She’s talked little about newfound magic with her parents, though they know they feel no right to press and she’s not included to share- and, unspoken but hanging, the wonder if they may pick up that the experiment was not quite so much a failure as they thought, if nothing like originally intended. It’s been a few years since the incident and she’s gained a full grasp of her powers.
Pettlewess, ironically, seems to have absorbed all the lessons that didn’t stick with Jineiss, as well as learned to change shape and be a protector for her. Using this knowledge, and some skill in engineering she managed to pick up among all the prior lessons, she's made work around town, assisting carpenters as an architect and trading knowledge with librarians and others, cementing her persona as a helpful person.
And since then, the city’s had visits and sightings of the Silver Witch.
