The Beginning of the End is Shuttered Vision

Its time, Clair thought to herself as she set up the ingredients for the spell she was about to cast.  She was stronger now.  She didn't need the herbs and symbols but her mother had taught her respect for the old ways.  She loved them and they kept her just enough human these days.  Just enough to remember the people she was looking for were flawed.  Her husband Sergei did the rest when it came to insuring her empathetic bond to humanity.  She smiled over to him softly as she added the rosemary to the shell with the white sage, rose petals and lavender.  It would keep those she bound safe until it was time for them to do what they needed to do.

Sergei lit the white candles around the shell and sat on the opposite side of Clair. The table between them was a wooden pub table.  Their seats pub stools. He had built his Clair a witch's den as soon as they found a forever home in Taos. The shed sat on consecrated ground blessed by her ancestors and his. The walls were built from a blessed oak tree and the adobe that packed those walls from deep in the heart of what was once Apache lands. They had blessed and warded the space themselves with only a little help from Clair's mother Janeene.

Building places like this required a lot of heart and care. The furniture was either stone or wood. The walls were bare but the large wooden chest in the corner held all Clair needed. Candles, herbs, ingredients and totems. Each piece was selected with the utmost care and attention to detail.  Clair had insisted.  He had done as she needed. That was the only way one should deal with a witch powerful enough to drop a city block with a thought. It helped that he was in fact hopelessly in love with her and she him.

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and opened them.  Their vision was shared and she could see as he did. They scanned the world then. Clair gasped and Sergei stopped. They jolted out of the vision.

"That was fast." Sergei said briskly.

Clair looked a little stunned as she stared down at the contents of the abalone shell between them. The shell was the size of a fist and fit easily into Clair's palm. It looked as if it hung in mid air on its wooden tripod stand. When she used it she stared at the flames when she burned her herbs to see what she needed to.

"Not a mistake." She whispered as she used a candle to set fire to the contents of the bowl. She let her aura pulse.  She felt the power that laid in her soul push the boundaries.  The words came to her spontaneously. "For nothing can be seen, made or foretold without art. The artists must be acute of vision, consorts of sound, and scribes of renown.  I call on 3 sets of creators with a view unconventional and will unbendable.

One of handled art with brush to canvas and visions of failed passions. One of traveled time in scenes, lulls, set and dark flashes. Those of sight with vision unbound to see the world that is now found."

Find Clair and Sergei's story in So a Psychic and a Rocket Scientist Walk into a Bar.

Then continue the tale with Fiona and Colan in Shuttered Vision coming June 30th 2017.

The Would Be Prophet - Guest Post on Greg Dragon Blog

The first of what I hope is a series of shorts to flesh out my Nikki character.

Please enjoy: The Would Be Prophet

Always w/Love,
Sue

When Sandra met Charlotte

Excerpt from Sandra's Social:

“I bet you think you’re too good for me too.” Charlotte had one of those sexpot voices that was hoarse to the point that sometimes parts of words would fade out to only slightly be heard.  When she got angry or excited it would even squeak out in some places.  And always depending on her mood, slightly tinged with a Southern accent.

Sandra side-glanced her. “I don’t even know who you are”.

“Well I know who you are.  You’re one of those women that look at me, and see a fat girl.  You see a woman who isn’t worth your space.”  She began to weep. “A woman whose boyfriend you can take. That worthless piece of donkey dung, how dare he?”

“I’m sorry you’re having a rough time, but I’m not a boyfriend stealer. I do something else entirely.”

“What do you mean?” she muttered out between sobs as she patted dry her running face.

“Can I buy you a shot?”  Sandra offered out of the blue.

While they had been having their shots, Sandra in an effort to console Charlotte, had made her privy to her theory on men and love, and what she meant to do about it.  At the tender age of sixteen Sandra had already scientifically dissected the nature of every boy in a one-mile radius.  At 18 she had graduated with the knowledge of the social preoccupations of men within the country she was in.  By 21 she had entire nations of men charted and hypothesized for good measure.  Then her adventures with Athol had settled it for her.  She had to use this knowledge somehow.  They couldn’t be allowed to get away with it.

“You see Charlotte it’s very simple.”  She downed a beer.  “Men are predisposed to be cheaters.  Men are trained at a very early age to follow their instincts. Their instincts tell them to be fruitful and multiply with as many women as it takes to propagate the species.  This started thousands of years ago before technology made it unnecessary to make enough humans that nature wouldn’t just wipe out the species.”  She glanced up at the bartender, “Two more shots of Patron mon ami.  The problem is that the mental instincts and training has been continually taught because women have been placed somewhere behind cattle since the beginning of time and only what, 70, 80 years ago we actually started minding it, and doing something about it.  We are combating thousands of years of preprogramming in a span of time that it takes a life to gestate into fulfillment.  All of us girls were being told we’re equal, and we deserve the best, and not to be treated beneath cattle.  On the other side of the fence the boys are being told, ‘Don’t mind her boy, she’ll eventually realize where she belongs.’  And the training is continued.”

Charlotte gave Sandra a startled look of understanding.  “They don’t have to be jerks they’re still being taught that we’re beneath them by their fathers and grandfathers.” She toasted with Sandra, and they downed their shots of tequila.  “I never looked at it like that before.”

“Very few of us do, that’s why we’re in this situation.  We’re uninformed.  It’s in all walks of our life.  The trick is that since they can’t legally keep us in our place they find other ways to do it.  Look at our icons and superstars.  Men like Danny Devito are stars while women like Roseanne Barr are constantly trashed for not looking up to snuff.  Our American Hollywood rewards female actresses for playing whores, adulteresses, and loose women.  Think about your last 3 years of female Oscar winners. Male doctors blow off our symptoms as being ‘silly’ and label us ‘hypochondriacs’.  And guys leave decent caring women like yourself for the sake of barely literate eye candy like that whatever he left you for. Yet when a woman satisfies herself, and her sexual needs and desires she’s labeled a whore, and unfit for motherhood and marriage. The only things we are good for by the by.” She paused looking at their empty shot glasses. “Bartender, another round.” “Well I’m not gonna take it anymore. I have decided on a course of action, and it’s called W.A.R.M.”

“Warm?” She held up her shot to meet Sandra’s clank, and simultaneously down.

“Women Assisting the Reclamation of Man.  If we leave it up to them it’s never gonna happen. We have to take this one into our own hands just like we did with our equality. Not every good-looking girl is as dumb as a post.  Most of us have good heads on our shoulders, and know how to use them. If things are going to level out then this training will have to be accomplished by women, and it has to be done in a brutal, harsh, life-altering way to insure that they don’t revert as soon as the lesson is done. My idea is to gather a group of us, and we systematically start retraining men.” She glanced up, “Bartender,” pointing to their empty shot glasses, “Yo!”

“A group; like AA or something?”

“Yeah something like that I suppose.”  Sandra frowned. “I didn’t intend for it to be that big.”

“Why not?”  Charlotte’s odd blue-green eyes started to glint as her mind raced with the tequila, and the possibilities.  “How is this supposed to happen if you keep it on a small scale?  First thing we should do is get a website.”

“Charlotte, I don’t know—”

“Then we can have meetings, and when we get a membership too high for local meetings there will be seminars.”

“Charlotte, I don’t think—”

“And there has to be a fan club. You know for women who support us, but don’t have the balls to get out there and do it.”

“No fan clubs—”

“Whose gonna train all of these women?” She stared at Sandra. “It’s your ideal, so it should be you.  How does a woman reclaim a man anyway?  In a brutal and harsh fashion that is?”