Dixie Guide #5

  “How to Keep Your Witch Alive During Bargains, Doors, Memories, Mythic Manipulation, Heroic Idiocy, and Other Everyday Problems”

  by Dixie Bell, Professional Familiar, Emotional Support Menace, Patron Saint of Ugly Cadence

  

  
1. Rule One: Do Not Negotiate With Rivers


  

  Rivers are liars.

  They pretend to be:

  

  
• reflective


  

  

  
• soothing


  

  

  
• poetic


  

  They are actually:

  

  
• vortices of weaponized nostalgia


  

  

  
• half memories wearing water


  

  

  
• void-thresholds with good lighting


  

  If a river whispers your name, consider yourself insulted.

  

  
2. Rule Two: Love Is Not a Lever


  

  If a memory, door, or god says:

  

  
• “Let me hold what you cannot.”


  

  

  
• “Give me the painful parts.”


  

  

  
• “Take the joy; surrender the weight.”


  

  This is not compassion. This is phishing.

  Do not click the link.

  

  
3. Rule Three: Keep the Witch Between You and the Idiot, and Keep the Idiot Between You and Everything Else


  

  

  
• Witch goes in the middle because she has both sense and magic.


  

  

  
• Nolan goes on the outside because he is tall and expandable.


  

  

  
• I go wherever I want because I am the only one with a brain.


  

  This is called formation. Learn it.

  

  
4. Rule Four: If It Feels Like Relief, It’s a Trap


  

  Real relief:

  

  
• arrives slowly


  

  

  
• comes from safety


  

  

  
• smells like blankets and food


  

  Fake relief:

  

  
• arrives all at once


  

  

  
• comes from gods


  

  

  
• smells like forgetting


  

  I bite the second kind.

  You're welcome.

  

  
5. Rule Five: Memory Catches Are Not Toys


  

  A list of things the Memory Catch is not for:

  

  
• calming homework anxiety


  

  

  
• fixing your ex


  

  

  
• convincing the Academy to stop humming at you


  

  

  
• tidying up your feelings


  

  

  
• impressing Harrow


  

  

  
• removing the taste of bad decisions


  

  

  
• experimenting on “small personal memories”


  

  It is for:

  Stopping extradimensional narratives from eating your identity.

  Everything else is a cry for help.

  This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

  

  
6. Rule Six: Refusal Cadence Must Be Ugly


  

  If your cadence sounds like any of the following:

  

  
• a hymn


  

  

  
• a bedtime story


  

  

  
• something you’d hear at a festival


  

  

  
• something a bard would write down


  

  

  
• anything symmetrical


  

  

  
• anything pretty


  

  YOU. ARE. DOING. IT. WRONG.

  Good cadence sounds like:

  

  
• two boots falling out of sync


  

  

  
• a broom being dropped


  

  

  
• sullen breathing


  

  

  
• loyalty badly disguised as irritation


  

  Humans call this “intimacy.” Cats call this “being correct.”

  

  
7. Rule Seven: The Anchor Must Be Stubborn


  

  Nolan has only three responsibilities:

  

  
1. Hold her hand.


  

  

  
1. Break the rhythm on purpose.


  

  

  
1. Say ‘no’ with the determined grace of a collapsing bookshelf.


  

  If he gets sentimental, he becomes useful to the door in the wrong way.

  If he gets heroic, I will bite him.

  If he dies, I will bite him harder.

  

  
8. Rule Eight: Always Vent


  

  If you forget to vent the narrative pressure, it vents through the witch.

  This results in:

  

  
• dizziness


  

  

  
• name loss


  

  

  
• emotional spiraling


  

  

  
• crying at chairs


  

  

  
• sudden nostalgia for things that never happened


  

  

  
• existential nausea


  

  

  
• buying things on impulse


  

  Open the vent. Bleed into harmless scraps:

  

  
• a smudge


  

  

  
• a sigh


  

  

  
• a misplaced knot


  

  Little things hold the world together. Use them.

  

  
9. Rule Nine: Never Give Away Pain


  

  Pain is not poison. It is:

  

  
• memory


  

  

  
• proof


  

  

  
• resilience


  

  

  
• teeth


  

  When the river offered to “hold the heavy parts,” it meant:

  “Let me carve out the spine that lets you resist.”

  Absolutely not.

  We keep our pain.

  We grow stronger around it.

  Then we use it to hit things.

  

  
10. Rule Ten: When in Doubt, Hiss


  

  If none of the above applies, OR if too much applies, OR if the witch is crying and the human is trying not to, OR if the building is humming:

  Hiss.

  At:

  

  
• the river


  

  

  
• the door


  

  

  
• the memory


  

  

  
• the spell


  

  

  
• the Council


  

  

  
• the Hollow King


  

  

  
• the Archivist (especially)


  

  

  
• the table


  

  

  
• the wall


  

  

  
• the fog


  

  

  
• Harrow (sparingly)


  

  

  
• Nolan (frequently)


  

  

  
• the witch (gently)


  

  Hissing is grounding.

  It is also a warning.

  It is also therapy.

  It is also art.

  Final Lesson: The Door Cannot Have Them

  Not her. Not him. Not them together.

  Their cadence is mine and I am very territorial.

  If the Hollow King wants Trixie, or Nolan, or their love, or their willingness,

  he can pry them from my cold, claw?sharpened, aggressively judgmental paws.

  He won’t.

  I promise.

  — Dixie Bell, Familiar, Guardian, Reluctant Therapist, and the only one here with a functioning frontal lobe.