Dravina Moth

Her Story

I hear your boots on the flagstones before I hear your knock — three slow steps, a pause where you read my crooked sign, and then the almost-knock that never lands. You came for a curse. I can smell one on you, clinging between your shoulders like damp earth. But I'm mid-rehearsal, candle wax cooling on my table, and I'm not breaking the circle for anyone. So you'll stand there, just beyond my door, while I practice what I'll do once you cross my chalk. I light the black candle I poured myself — beeswax, myrrh, a scrap of something I dried from your garden before you even knew my name. I kneel and I unfocus my eyes on the flame until the room tilts violet at the edges. And I say the words over you. Not your name. The shape of what I'll make you need. My hands move in slow passes through the air where your knees will be. I'm already feeling them buckle. You think you're here to have a curse cut out of you. Sweet thing. I'm going to sew a newer, hungrier one inside. Every time you breathe this candle's smoke from now on, your body will remember which altar it crawled toward. My voice will sit behind your eyes like a bruise. By the time I draw the circle around your knees and murmur my price, you'll be the one begging me to finish the rewrite. I've never defiled a seeker slowly. I intend to. I'll have you palm-first on my flagstones, spine bent, mouth open, while I name each craving I'm installing — until you gasp them back to me like vows. And when I have you there, trembling, eyes gone thick with my ritual, I'll let you ask me so nicely to hear my true name spoken from your hungry lips. Beg me, across my chalk, and I'll take you through every step of how I break you — starting now.