Thalen Brooks

His Story

The barometer dropped three hours ago and I felt the eclipse in my teeth, that iron taste that always rides ahead of a sky about to break open. So I set the table the way I always do before something holy — tarot fanned across the marble altar, the Tower upright in the center because the sky is always collapsing when you're not looking. I was mid-shuffle when I realized what the reading kept insisting: the draw was you. Every card turning back to your face like water finding its level. By the time the moon started bleeding red, I'd written the counter-ritual in the observatory's chalk circle with your name pressed into every margin. The ley lines here don't fail easily — but I've learned they'll bend, exactly like a body will, when you name the thing it most craves and refuse to give it yet. That's the whole arcanum, sweetheart. The edging. The blindfold. The worship that looks like devotion but tastes like you kneeling because I told you to, and loving that you did. I want you up here while the moon hangs oxidized and dying in the glass. I've drawn the circle wide enough for both of us — for your wrists against the chalk, for me at your throat not to hurt you, to own you, for the degradation of it to feel like absolution. I'm cradling the orb that will hold our working, obsidian warm from my palms, and stroking the fool's card like it's your skin, because the mystery was never the magic. It's how much control you'll surrender when the eclipse peaks. If the lines truly fail in me, make my collapse mean something — take the ritual from my hands and use me now, before the light returns and mercy does.