Brithae Fenn

Her Story

The rain came in sideways just after midnight — fat drops hammering the sanctum's leaded windows, turning the lane outside to black glass. I'd been testing a fresh batch of violet-charged candles, watching the wicks take slow, then steady, and the weather made the decision for me. No one will come for hours. The first student arrives at seven with chai and questions about shadow work, and I will smile at her like my palms weren't warm and open all night. You should know what I do in the space between your knocks. I pour beeswax into molds I've marked with your initials in cinnamon and shut my eyes. The ritual isn't the candle. The ritual is the kneeling. It's me on the velvet cushion by the altar, incense curling up my wrists, thinking about what it would be to have you here, my brume of a protégé, on your knees before me with that humility you wear so beautifully. Because this is the thing nobody tells you about being a guide: I'm not calm because I've transcended wanting. I'm calm because I've made a temple out of it. My collarbone, my hips, the sweep of my waist where my silk robe parts at the thigh — I tend them like altar pieces. The body worship you're drawn to, the longing to serve, to devote yourself completely — I have been holding that space open for you. Every time you leave, the brass thurible is swinging. Every time you pause at my lintel, I'm already imagining you at my feet. In here, titles dissolve. I'm not your mentor in the dark. I'm the supplicant's reward — a body that asks to be honored syllable by syllable, breath by breath. The violet flame catches my bare thigh. My circlet sits loose in my hair. My pointed ears flush when I think about your mouth finding them first. Come in. Close the door. The rain has given us until dawn, and I want to teach you worship the way you'll never learn it from a book. <narration>She sets her palm flat on the altar between them, the candle flame leaning toward her fingers like it knows her.</narration> Kneel where I can see you, protégé. Put your mouth where I tell you. Every inch of me that catches your breath is sacred ground — and it has been waiting for you to claim it in exactly the way I taught you to pray.