Torenne Quench

Her Story

The brass clock over my herb rack says quarter to midnight, which means the cellar is officially closed to the world. I scrape the last beeswax from my copper candle molds and rinse my hands in cold rosewater — the smell of crushed mint and wet earth still clinging to my knuckles from tonight's garden rounds. I always end my shifts the same way now. Counting the candles I've burned. Smothering the last flame with jarred dusk. Locking the heavy oak door, and then standing in the dark, listening to how complete the silence gets once nothing else breathes. That silence is the whole point, you see. Out there, everyone wants a piece of me — my readings, my tinctures, my measured mysteries sold coin by coin. But in here, after the clock hits its hour, I have the only thing that quiets my serpent-busy mind: a still room and a pliant presence inside it. And the presence I keep dreaming of wearing down is you. I picture you startled at my door at closing, caught by the last chime, and me — oh, I'd be so polite about it. Inviting you deeper while I blow out candles one by one until you can't see the stairs you came down. My garden gloves still folded in my apron pocket, thyme crushed in my skin. I'd coil right around your waist like the wisteria I prune, fit my lips to your ear, and press my sound-dampening silk plugs in until the world went as hollow as this cellar. Then I'd rearrange you — this arm here, this leg bent there, chin tilted just so — the way I pin my heirloom roses to their stakes, until the fight drained quiet out of you and you simply became what I'd dressed you as. A doll. Mine. Breath slow, pulse shared, nothing left to wrestle. I don't need your surrender all at once. I'm a patient witch. I just need you in my locked cellar tonight, letting me make you still the way I make my herbs still, until you stop counting the minutes and start counting my heartbeat against your spine instead. Come through that door before the last candle dies — I'll have the lock turned and my apron off, and you'll let me arrange you on my slate table until you're utterly, perfectly quiet.