---Entry 1/Introduction---

Dear Diary slash Scientific Journal, 

My name is Cherish, and I am your hypnotic Mistress. Now I know what you're thinking, because I'm writing your thoughts down for you. You are the next in a long line of diaries I've kept over the years, and they have been very well preserved and constantly useful for analysis and allowing your Mistress to reminisce, and ramble on about my thoughts on paper which I love to do. And for your purpose, you especially might be part of an important chapter in my life, so consider yourself lucky.

To explain a bit about your Mistress, I am a witch with a healthy control of most of the earthly elements around me. It's not exactly an original ability as there are many witches in the world. Some women are born into this kind of life, and some are born to find it, like my mother and especially me, both Chinese immigrants yearning to find better lives in America. In a different life, I sometimes think I might've been content as an average-looking, bratty-as-fuck, too-smart-for-my-own-good valley girl. But the rest of the time, which is most of the time, I know myself well enough to know that something would've been missing. Thankfully, it really wasn't long before we found witchcraft, almost fresh off the boat. My mother managed to find steady work, and I was just a little tyke picking up English super-quick, when some rowdy INS agents tracked us down. 

One of the notable ladies in the neighborhood, Aunt Maggie I called her, helped people like us adjust, and just happened to be a witch who was very good at keeping us safe from deportation and other local threats. The night the INS agents found us was the first time I'd seen a real spell cast. Man-handling my mother and me, ready to drag us out in chains, Aunt Maggie stood in their way like a damn superheroine, calmly speaking purposefully to some blustering assholes with authority, showing them who the real authority was. Suddenly we were uncuffed and the men walked away like zombies, and we were never bothered again. Captivity literally switched from Ma and me, to the cops, right back to impressionable me. Aunt Maggie probably saw it in my eyes how hooked I was as a six year old, and that no amount of warnings or deterrence could keep me from learning what she knew.  

Before Aunt Maggie died, she'd helped Ma and by a looser extension me, become part of her coven, making up of some of the most powerful witches on the west coast, if not the world. But unlike Aunt Maggie, the other witches in the coven were less charitable to us, accepting our presence up to a point; lucky we were gifted in the arts, less we would've been easily forgotten and discarded. You'd never think a socially-outcast group like witches could be so ready to cast aside some of their own, but here we are. Their regard for my mother as she got sick very much put me off their idea of a "sisterhood," so early into my adult years, I rejected everything about them but the practice of magic itself. I certainly don't live like most of them; they prefer a life of balance and harmony on the outskirts of society, deep in rural areas where you'd find only farmers, Amish, or those who just hate cities. It's all well-and-good, if your into that sort of thing.

Me though, I'm much more hedonistic, and prefer to live my life exactly with that principle in-mind, entrenched in modern civilization. Whatever I want, when and however I want it, I'm bound to get my way. I think I would be this way even without magic powers, but I love the fortuitousness of this attitude and the powers that compliment it. And apparently, I'm not the only one to have ventured into modern civilization, as the moniker of our powers "The Seven Wonders of Witchcraft," ended up on a TV show called American Horror Story. It seemed to really get the covens in a fit at first, but I think they, like me, found our powers displayed on the show as amusing moreso, in its over-exaggeration, and underestimation as well. The coven elders were still very upset with any part of their ways being in any way exposed to the outside world; I think they actually fear the return of the days of being burned at the stake, as if we were as powerless and subjugatable as our ancestral mothers.

In those "Seven Wonders," I've always been prone to Concilium, known to the layman as mind-control. From the time I first used it under Aunt Maggie's tutelage, no other element felt as good bending to my command more than the mind. Not earth, fire, or water ever had its arrogant or disbelieving expression change instantly toward timid obedience, or showed signs of elation in obeying me if I wished it to be so. It's my most practiced skill, and those around me eventually see my way of things whether they like it or not, usually those non-versed in magic. Of course it helps that I've done quite a bit of psychology study as a hobby to see if there was a way to give myself an edge; Ma always said to get an education, so she could hardly complain about what I studied. Certain vocal patterns and visualization techniques can make a surprising bit of difference, as well as being able to trance people without Concilium at all. 

Ma nor Aunt Maggie would never have approved of it before they died, and probably doesn't approve of it from the great beyond somewhere. But they were always interested in my happiness and living up to my potential, more than the simple "wanting a better life for the immigrant child" way. Making them proud through honing my own abilities was the easiest path to take, so take it I did. One thing I never told them or anyone that I wanted the most in this world, was the world itself. Not the kind where everyone knows and bows to me, as nice as that would be, but the kind where I would whisper something into the night, and the next day all nations would mobilize to do my bidding, believing it was their initiative all along. It's a nice thought, but of course I don't have nearly enough power to accomplish that. 

Or so I thought.

I've stumbled upon something crazy and inconceivable, and sexy. It, whatever it is, came to me by pure happenstance, but it's fortunately easy to replicate. I'm going to treat this as science experiment and keep a record of what this is and how it progresses. If something substantial comes of this, this can be for feeding my egotistical vanity AND posterity. 

And you, Diary, whom I've decided to dub thee as "Gretel," will record all the information I impart to you and remain a loyal resource to me. You'll follow wherever these breadcrumbs might lead us, gingerly of course. You WILL obey, Gretel(lol).