Dominant Witches [SIMPLE · 2027]
“Negotiate?” She tasted the word like spoiled fruit. “You misunderstand, Mr. Graves. You are not here to negotiate. You are here to submit .”
Seraphina glided to her throne—a throne carved from the petrified heart of a redwood she herself had raised from a seed a century ago. She sat, crossed one leg over the other, and let the silence expand until it hurt.
Seraphina knelt before Graves—not in supplication, but like a chess player examining a doomed king. “You came here thinking you had leverage. That we needed your permission, your treaties, your legitimacy . Darling.” She touched his chin with one cool finger. “We are witches. We were burning before you had grammar. We will be dancing on your graves before your grandchildren learn to lie.” Dominant Witches
As the delegation stumbled out into the suddenly silent night, Seraphina stood before her altar. The bones of saints, the feathers of extinct birds, a mirror that showed not her face but the face of every woman who had been drowned, hanged, or silenced.
But Seraphina had no intention of simply helping . “Negotiate
“Here are my terms,” she said, walking toward them. Each step echoed like a gavel. “First: The Eastern Coven assumes governance of all climate policy. No votes. No oversight. Our word is the final weather system. Second: Every nation dismantles its nuclear arsenal within one lunar cycle. Not because we fear them—but because we find them tasteless . Third: A tithe. Not gold. Not oil. The old growth forests you’ve been saving as ‘carbon offsets’? They become ours. To rewild. To rule. To remember.”
Seraphina smiled. It was a predator’s smile—wide, serene, and utterly without mercy. She raised her left hand. Outside, the rain stopped. Not tapered off—stopped, mid-fall, hanging in the air like a billion frozen tears. Then, with a casual turn of her palm, she sent it blasting back into the clouds, which shredded apart to reveal a sky of violent, peaceful stars. You are not here to negotiate
“He’ll breathe,” Seraphina said calmly. “But he won’t interrupt. That’s the first lesson. The old world was run by your kind—with your wars, your boardrooms, your desperate little hierarchies. You broke the planet. Now, you need us to fix it. But we are not repairwomen. We are dominant .”