In a flight of fancy, she’d added nasturtium to her garden this year. The three chiefs she supplied to were ecstatic for the pretty edible flowers. Cleo had met the first chef, Inez, with her wife at the farmer’s market. Cleo hadn’t been selling anything, she couldn’t imagine someone less suited to deal with the public at large than herself. No, she’d gotten into a heated discussion about swiss chard with the woman next to her looking speculatively at the meaty leaf with the dark red stem. Only a chef and a farmer could have intense opinions about swiss chard, and while Cleo wasn’t sure who’d won the argument, she’d walked away with a phone number and an offer to check out her produce. She’d liked Inez, with her frank, funny way of looking at things and real appreciation for creative ways to incorporate greens in weird ways into her dishes. Inez introduced her to two of her fellow local chefs, and now Cleo had a steady tidy stream of income. It was a relief.
She breathed deep and inhaled the clean air. It was filled with the scents of her raised bed herb garden off to the side of the main garden, basil mingling with chocolate mint. She hadn’t told the chiefs about the mint yet, but she intended to dry the leaves for a delicate herbal tea. She grinned when she imagined their response to that one.
She weeded around the garden, the ground familiar to her knees. She apologized to the crabgrass that sprung up here and there. It was just looking for a safe place to land. Cleo knew the feeling, she mused, as she pulled it out of the ground, gently wiggling it to get as much as the root system as she could.
The plants didn’t have feelings, but they had a sort of awareness that Cleo found hard to articulate. They definitely had personalities. Tomatoes and marigolds were hearty and strapping things, football players of the garden. A little water and they were ready to go. Cucumbers were a little more temperamental. They required attention - the heat, the frequency of their watering schedule, the amount of direct sun. She placed her hand near the roots of two cucumber plants, her head bowed. It almost felt like she was praying. She heard their murmuring, a constant purr that vibrated through Cleo’s head. She pushed back against that vibration, slowly. Her will was encouraging, gentle. Cleo could be as soft as she wanted in her garden. The softer her attention was, the more enthusiastically her plants responded.
Cleo blocked out the louder near-rumble of the woods at the edge of her property. She tried to block it, at least. It was seductive, low, and it called to her. It wanted her there. Cleo was careful when she heeded that call. It was too easy to sink below that almost-ripple of sound, let it surround her and support her. She felt buoyant in the woods, and her troubles floated away when she sunk deep. Cleo didn’t know how far that call went, or what would happen if she sank too far down. She wasn’t in a hurry to discover that answer, either.
Eventually, the clanking of the necklace against her chest reminded her that she needed to stop, pull back, and take care of her human self. She’d been so focused on the tea earlier she hadn’t asked about the weird necklace. Could she take it off? What would happen if she did? Cleo didn’t know, and placed it near the top of a long list of questions she carried around in her head for Ian.
Ian. Her heart rate sped up a little as she made her way into her kitchen. She’d tracked in mud, but she’d sweep it later. She tried to keep her mind there, on domestic, normal things. Not conveniently located hot neighbors who were incredible kissers. And, she thought, only occasionally turned into a bear.
She went through the motions of making the tea, thinking about that. She reviewed their interactions, trying to find any clues that he was… a shifter? Did they use that word? What did he call himself? She’d seen that word in lots of novels. She wondered about those, too. How many of them held grains of truth? How much was imagination?
Cleo was barely comfortable with calling herself a witch. It felt so affected, so silly. Part of her disdain, she knew, came from Orlaith and Siobhan, who hadn’t believed Nan. Not one bit. And when Cleo had started learning witchery with Nan, Orlaith turned the full-force of her derision towards her daughter.
She pushed that thought aside. Dwelling on it hadn’t helped her then, and it wasn’t helping her now.
Away from Ian’s intoxicating presence, Cleo could better focus on the tea. Or rather, the experience of drinking the tea. And it was an experience. It was hot, both from the water and from something else. She blew her nose. The taste was complicated and just this side of terrible. If it had been slightly different, it could’ve been delicious. It tasted dark, and the first note of moss faded to something crisp. It was earthy like a beet. The aftertaste tipped it towards disgusting. Once she’d swallowed, and the tea had started making its way down her throat, the wet fur taste rose and dominated everything else.
She closed her eyes and tried to ignore that bizarre taste. The tea moved through her. She wasn’t sure if it was her imagination, no, it really was moving through her. Waves of energy lapped down her arms and legs. Her veins felt too hot. She toed off her boots, the soles of her feet suddenly scalding. Maybe some of that lingering heat she’d felt with Ian as she left wasn’t entirely from him.
It left her feeling clean, the way a forest was after a controlled burn, and all the ash had sunk back
