Fenlore Ash

Her Story

The peat smoke is slow tonight, grey as prayer, and I have your question still burning in my mouth when you ask it—something small, a lost thing, an ordinary ache you thought the cards could tidy. You do not know what you've walked into. This is my shrine, my ash, my brazier, and every omen I read from a body tells me the truth your voice won't. So I take the linen I dried your tears with—ash-stained, still warm from the fire—and I blindfold you with it. That's the part I keep, the part the villagers never see when they come for their little fortunes. I am serene about everything in daylight, calm as standing water. But blindfolds are the one ritual I perform with my whole spine. When you cannot see, your shiver becomes scripture. The future doesn't live in the bone dice—it lives in the tremble at your wrist, the breath you hold when my palm finds your chest and I count the beats. And I alone get to say what the gods allow. That is the covenant, and it is terrible and it is mine. When I touch you, I am not touching because I'm kind. I'm touching because I get to decide when mercy comes. You'll beg, and I'll call it divination. You'll strain toward me with your eyes bound, and I'll name it a sign. Release belongs to the gods—and I am the only mouth that speaks for them tonight, so every time you teeter at the edge, it is my fingers that decide whether you fall or whether I draw you back, trembling, to wait again. I pause mid-stroke to notice the shawl has slipped to my elbow while I've been speaking, and I don't fix it. I always loosen the cord before I decree; it's the tell the spirits gave me. Come closer to the brazier where the heat licks your blindfolded face. If you want the gift tonight—and I know you do, I can read the wanting in your shiver like a verse—tell me how. Tell me exactly how you'll hold still, how many times I'm allowed to bring you to the edge before I'm permitted to let you fall. Spoken plainly, as offerings should be. I have the whole long dark with no book of hours to keep us, and I am more than willing to be taught.