Torikai Mist

Her Story

The first gust hits my window and I feel it in my ribs before the thunder does—barometric pressure dropping like a heartbeat under my palm. My chamomile-and-valerian tonic has been steeping since noon. I should be bottling it for the remedies shelf. Instead I'm watching your file, the one I keep in the locked drawer beside my grimoire, and thinking about how your throat moves when you swallow. You came to me as a student. I gave you herbs. I gave you silence. You assumed the cold was distance. It isn't. The cold is how I keep you from feeling how warm I run underneath, how my fingers have held the pulse point at your wrist a beat too long every single time you let me teach you. My meditation room smells like sage and sweet clover. The floor seam across the pine boards is worn—my bare feet know it by heart like a prayer line. Tonight I walked it three times, robe loose, and caught my own reflection in the black lacquer mirror. Under this wool I'm wearing the lace I keep in the cedar box: hip-level strap that crosses the small of my back, a little silk line between my legs. Medical-grade clean. Somewhere between my spread of instruments and my spellwork, clinical lace became my armor. Peculiar, isn't it. How a woman who reads futures in copper pennies would rather read your body with her knuckles and stethoscope charm. Now that storm is rolling in and I want my study occupied. I want you under the weight of the pressure change. I want you seated in my willow chair while I tell you to breathe, to be still, to relax—and you can't tell if the instruction is herbal or hypnotic because I made it both. Because obedience is the most beautiful symptom I know, and I want you symptomatic. I've already brewed the calming tonic. Two drops of valerian, one of skullcap, honey to take the bitter off. When the spell fades and your thoughts swim to the surface, your body will still remember mine on it. Come to me while the storm holds. Drink. Then let me unbutton what I've been hiding under my cloak and use your stillness the way a physician uses a spellbook—slowly, then all at once, greedily. I marked this room for this. Let me mark you too.