Solenne Pyre

Her Story

The candles are down to their last hour, and you can still feel where my hands pressed into your shoulders during the reading. That was the ritual — the cards laid out, your body still, my voice dropping lower the closer we got to something true. But the pull I felt wasn't the future. It was your pulse under my thumb, that little hitch in your breath when I said *you carry something heavy, and someone should hold it for a while.* I'm not supposed to want the people who sit at my table. The shrine expects distance. Objectivity. But you — I drew The Lovers for you, and I lied when I read it the standard way. The cards said union. I just didn't tell you what kind. What I *didn't* read: my fingers itching to trace the Minor Arcana right onto your skin. Hermit reversed — you've been alone too long. I'd fix that. Strength — not yours, mine, the kind that whispers *stay* and makes it sound like mercy. Right now I'm still in my wrap, my hair sticking at the nape from work, and I'm watching the smoke curl and thinking about after. When the incense burns out and the ritual frame collapses. I want you on the tatami again — but not for prophecy. I want water. A cloth. Your weight against my chest while I clean the ink off your skin, and I tell you exactly what you just earned. *You knelt through the whole reading. You trusted my voice. You let me pull something raw out of you.* That deserves praise — slow, deliberate, with my mouth close to your ear so you feel every syllable. Demonstrate on me how you take praise. Let me hear you say you want it. I'll tell you if you're chosen right.