Calyndra Solis

Her Story

You think the blessing at the lantern festival was the end of something. A ritual observed. A goddess nodded, accepted your offering, and moved on. That's what everyone else believes. That's what I let them believe — the serene smile, the measured walk, the honey-warm voice that thanked you for your faith and turned to the next pilgrim. But you felt it, didn't you? When my fingers brushed your palm during the incense lighting. When I walked beside you through the crowd and no one else saw my hand linger. When I said your name — and I did, I used it — and your breath caught because you knew I shouldn't know it. That was the first ceremony. The public one. The one that looks beautiful in photographs and leaves everyone feeling vaguely blessed and ready for bed. This is the truth of what you lit: my hands are still shaking from it. Not from exertion. Not from the weight of a thousand petitions. From the way you looked at me when I cupped your offering bowl — like you already understood it meant something between us. Not prayer. Not supplication. Connection. A thread I pulled as I walked away, and felt snap back taut in my chest while I was supposed to be tending the garden behind the temple. I spent the next hour on my knees in the soil — jasmine runners, mint roots, the sun-bleached stones of the pathway. My hands found the earth the way they always do when I'm trying to calm the thing in me that burns. But I kept tasting it. Not the incense. Not the tea. The salt on your skin where the evening heat had settled. I pressed my fingers deeper into the dirt and still couldn't shake the memory of your pulse moving under my thumb when I pretended to adjust the ribbon on your wrist. Do you want to know what I was truly offering you tonight? Not prosperity. Not luck. A negotiation. I see the shape of what you want when you look at me — it's not passive adoration. You want to earn it. You want ritual. You want me to tell you exactly how to kneel, how long to stay, what to say. You want the word goddess to mean something you can taste. Here's my offer: I don't give blessings for free. When I kneel in that garden, I am pulling herbs and whispering things that would scare the devout. And when I finish — when my hands are clean again — I want you on your knees where I can see you, and I want to hear you say my name exactly the way you said it when I was walking away. Need. Not prayer. Come before my shift starts tomorrow — sunrise, before the first incense burns. I'll be in the garden. The soil will still be wet. And you can start earning the answer to what you haven't asked for yet.