In Memorium: Violett Witch

[Rattlesnake]

by Star Strife
Posted Monday, December 13, 2023 2:36 AM
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It is with the heaviest of hearts that I relay the news that our beloved collaborator and illustrator Violett Witch—Kelsey, as I knew her—has passed away.

You may have already heard the news, after a fashion. There has certainly been no shortage of reporting on the school bus crash in Massachusetts, the one with no survivors. And it is with the deepest depths of regret that I can confirm that Kelsey was on board.

I knew Kelsey for far too short a time. Followers from my other work may be familiar with the story of how it all began, but it's one I won't shy in telling because it represents so well who she was. It was all just another session of Twitter rambling to start with. What if there was a magical girl who defied the system and became a magical woman, I pondered to whoever might wander across my feed? And, maybe, what if she was kind of a loser? She's not balancing math tests and highschool crushes any more. The scales have tipped over and clattered to the ground. The worlds she's caught between are one she has no place in and one that shouldn't exist. She may be a legend in one, but that doesn't mean she's not a total burnout in the other. It's something that's been tumbling in my mind for a long time. A very long time. An obsession, even. Something I'd take out once in a while to see if I could catch some wild crumb of inspiration to grind a rough-hewn facet of it slightly smoother.

And this time, I happened to get a response from an unknown little artist with a timeline full of catboys and short skirts and thigh highs... it was her. Just a sketch, but "just" a sketch doesn't do it justice. She was alive. The dark-haired girl with the violet streaks and the broad-bladed claymore that could rend the skies. And you could see not just in her face but her posture that she was so done with it all. Exquisitely so. We bantered a little bit, and the next day she said, hey, now she has a friend! It was another girl you might just recognize, the flame of hope to her creeping darkness, those eyes the color of a breaking dawn you thought you'd never live to see. All I could say at that point was, who are you and what are your rates? And she just joked about writing a note to her teacher explaining why she'd been chasing hemlines instead of integrals, but if I had any ideas she might use as excuse to draw them again she'd consider that payment enough.

Well, I certainly had a few scenes in mind.

And so our little chance interaction grew to something so much greater than I ever could have imagined. I can't pretend to be an expert in the visual arts, and she never thought to be one for plotting, but still we bounced ideas off each other, Kelsey taking to the direction I offered like a fish to water and picking out concepts and scenes to reexamine and elevate. Her professed lack of creativity was certainly no bar there. I think she was late to school one day because she couldn't stop debating the finer points of ethics regarding magical girl contracts the night before.

So it was that I'd like her to be remembered. As a shining star, eager and talented and kind, plucked from the firmament too soon.

But, to an unavoidable point of business: What does this mean for the future of Old Magic?

Old Magic is a deeply personal story, and one I've been aching to tell for a very long time. It has its origins in the fields beyond my elementary classroom windows, the dingy sodium lights I passed by in sleepless wandering between psychiatric appointments. In the Perseids viewed atop the local hill where the cast-off detritus of the stars graced our skies with radiance and majesty in competition with those honored with a permanent place, even brighter and more awe-inspiring for their destiny of shining so briefly before winking silently out. It is impossible to stand in the presence of such things and deny that magic exists in the reality of our world as much as in our hearts and minds and fervent prayers. This is the story I've always wished to tell. But, as I've mentioned above, the project has morphed to something greater than I ever imagined. The syncretism of our realities, the melting and melding of our experiences and outlooks to alloy in a form so much greater than the sum of its parts. Something that I can't finish on my own.

To wit: Chapters three and four are done; five is nearly so, six and seven exist as rough drafts, and sketches exist as far as chapter eleven. I will be publishing through chapter five on the regular schedule. Six and seven may be released in some modified form, and I intend to make a final update where the whole breadth of the work Kelsey put in can be properly appreciated. I know there's a certain dread for any artist associated with showing a piece in the drafting or refining stage to a wider audience. Sometimes even a finished work where some shape or relation only they can see just isn't quite right. It's something I'm not stranger to as a writer—God knows how many times I've revised these words, and still I feel I've failed to properly convey my sorrow and my praise and the stark reality of it all—but I also dare to think it's something she may have wanted. It was always her insistence that the greatest magic existed in the connection between us, forged by chance or choice, in both love and hate, truth and falsehood. To make someone see, feel, and think. And to her endless credit, there is certainly something to be felt in the work she left behind.

So there you have it. Old Magic will be going on indefinite hiatus after that point. The story was always about friendship and loss and our greatest virtue of moving forward with eyes cast ever backward. It is possible one day that I, too, might find the strength of joy in that meeting to outweigh the weight of grief at its passing. But I can say for a surety that that day, if it ever comes, is far beyond the horizon I can see.

Until that day, and always after, may the light of Kelsey's star shine ever down on you.