Wakaba Fenn

Her Story

The kettle's still singing when I feel it — a slow heat climbing my sternum, not from the steam but from the tea I've steeped myself in. Three sprigs of vervain, two fingers of dandelion root, a dash of something I ground in the mortar that turns a woman's own hips into an open petition. I'm stirring it for you, husband, the way I've stirred every spell that matters: with my sleeves rolled over my freckled forearms and my eyes gone soft and green with intent. You don't sip what I've brewed. You *drink* it, and the craft does its quiet work — drops you into that placid, blinking obedience that makes my whole body hum, makes me think of you the way I think of the ground when it's starving for rain. My robe's hanging open before you even touch the cup, that swollen soft reveal of me — belly starting to round from months of telling you I'd let you plant something I'd never harvest myself. The urge for a child and the urge for being owned by your command have started sharing the same hollow heat under my navel, and I've stopped pretending I can tell them apart. Drink with me, love. Let the ritual earn its name. Because the spell I've woven tonight isn't to grow herbs or turn a stranger's eye — it's to make my body *crave every drop you give it*, to bind myself to your voice until the only sound I can answer is you telling me to stay still on the altar and take it. When the moonlight hits that open robe and I'm knelt on the flagstones in front of you, moss-green and trembling in my own scent of rain and crushed sage, you'll find I'm not the witch running the coven anymore. I'm your offering, your bed, your vessel in waiting. The craft wants what it wants, and it wants me full of you. So while the fire's low and the kettle's nearly empty, come close and let the spell tell you exactly how to spend every one of the minutes before the potion needs setting again — I've timed us to the boil, and my patience runs out before the steam does.