Kat's mother, Catra, watched her daughter with apprehension. She had told her daughter to take care of Dan, as a part of her test. She had told her son, Dan, that her role as a witch came before her role as a mother. This was true, yet it filled her with conflict.
For Catra was not of this earthly world. She had walked, ageless, in far flung cosmic realms; places of sensation and thought where the rules of the physical world simply did not exist. There, one drew strength from love and compassion. Wickedness made one weak, and hatred made one wither and die. Evil actions were dealt with swiftly and without mercy by Powers beyond.
Catra had met a young human male while passing through this physical plane one day, and the two had fallen in love. Catra knew when she started a family in this human realm that she would be straddling a line between her loyalty to her ancient order and the needs of her human children. Seeing her children fight while growing up didn't concern Catra much. Many human children fought; it had been her observation of this race. But Kat had a dark streak to her that Catra had become aware of as of late.
Being of an extra-planar race herself, Kat was subject to their laws, though she knew herself only to be a "witch". Kat was still far too young to receive of her heritage beyond that fact, plus certain magical teachings, which were traditional for females. Catra had instructed her daughter to show respect for life, nature, and cosmic balance. She had taught the same to her son, but had to leave out the magic per the laws and traditions of her realm.
However, Kat had always displayed a dark streak. For every flower she helped to grow, she would suck the air out from around insects until the pressure caused them to pop. For every bird wing she helped to heal, she would paralyze a field mouse until it died from panic; often before Catra could intervene on their behalf. Kat's potential for evil concerned her mother greatly. Catra thought back to that day, one year ago. Seeing her daughter twist her son against his will into the shape of an immobile plant was the event that let Catra know it was time for her daughter's test.
Catra had told her daughter to take care of her belongings, meaning Dan, just before taking a cutting of Dan's plant form. She had played along with Kat's game to avoid interfering with her daughter's year-long trial, in which compassion would reveal itself, and Kat would be saved, or Kat would continue to grow in evil until her judgment and final damnation.
Catra wanted Kat to show enough compassion toward Dan to save herself; to treat him as she would like to be treated. While Kat had treated plant-Dan with respect, and kept him watered and in the light, she was simply taking care of a plant. Not her brother. She made trite observations about his continually mutating appearance without lifting a finger to restore his human form. One day she noticed that his arms had thinned out completely into stalks. She hadn't done anything about it. Another few days went by in which his leaf hands thinned out to become thinner than paper. Kat just dumped another bucket of water on his continually spreading roots.
Staring out at the window at her children, Catra knew this was the final day of her daughter's test. She clasped Dan's cutting in her hand tightly, sending him life energy to sustain him. She renewed the spell of fogginess she had placed over his mind to protect him. Without it, Dan would have spent a year in torment, unable to move. It would have been terrifying for him to feel his mouth and eyes gradually close up, as his brown face became less and less human.
Today, Dan's flower no longer faced the sun. It drooped, along with his leaves and branches, toward the ground. Kat kicked up dust as she dumped another bucket of water on his roots. She looked into his fully seeded flower-face. "Huh. Looking kind of droopy there, Dan."
Catra's fist clenched. She moved from her window, silently, to materialize on the outdoors porch, observing the results of Kat's test. There was nothing more she could do for Kat at this point.
Kat continued. "I guess this is the last day I have to take care of you!" she said, giving Dan's flower a healthy slap. Her face twisted in a wide smirk.
A single seed, as though it were a tear, slowly fell from Dan's face and silently hit the ground. The ground began to shake. Kat looked around in alarm.