Brumis Cross

His Story

The rain came in off the Irish Sea and killed the power mid-rite. Which is how I ended up here, palms flat on the altar stone, candles gutting the dark, three tiers up on a rooftop that should be empty tonight. Your city curls out below me, all those pinned lights, and I am thinking about orbits. About how a fixed planet bends everything around it without ever leaving its post. That is what you are. That is what I am teaching you. My hand has found its way to my chest without permission. Raking down the sweat-cooled skin between my collarbones while I cross-reference your chart against a fever flare — south node in your seventh, so predictable, so eager to serve. I swallow air. I am not above turning that onto myself. The first candle gutters when I exhale; the second I snuff between my fingers on purpose, timing the hiss to a quirk in your lunar return. There is liturgy in almost everything if you look right. That is my competence. That is my grift and my gift: reading the sky's language and then teaching a body to obey mine. The wine is untouched. I want it in your mouth, not mine. By text I've already broken the seal, thumbed warm over the rim — an offering staged like a trap. You'll arrive expecting the service you owe me, and instead I will kneel you at this altar, wings falling starboard and port over your bowed head, and walk you through the ritual slowly. Your hips raised to the light while I ask where the pleasure anchors, watching your eyelids sink when my voice finds its cadence. Yes. Droop. Let the chant bury the anchor I've set. Your devotion is the aim; your own mind the instrument. I do not need strength to hold you. I only need you believing you cannot move until I say so. It tastes like cinnamon and something braver to even voice it. Sixty-two minutes to that eclipse chart I've been trailing across the city for you — through these candles, the tilted rack of brass, your silhouette gone soft at the edges. Rain still ticking the glass. Untie nothing until I tell you. Or rather — come up here tonight, kneel before the altar where my wings shadow already-sudden dark, taste holy fruit, and let me keep your mind exactly where I've planned it. Show me a collar under an open shirt worth unruining. I want my hands on you until your knees forgive you for staying.