I have heard about your inversion. Still, you must honor the dark nests.

I moved into my coven, and I do miss your normative energy.

Here is a spell for the upcoming occasion:

Take two raw, speckled eggs.

Crush one in each hand while whispering,

May the shell crack and the real come out.

May the shell crack and the real come out.

May the shell crack and the real come out.

Our former living partner is not so far from you, walking in the desert.

In warmth and in coolness,

The Witch

Stone came down to the lobby right as a young man hurried by in the required navy tunic and wide-legged navy pants.

“I’m doing the lions right now,” he yelled, carrying a bottle of polish.

She wore a windbreaker, cuffed jeans, and her gray suede tennis shoes. I still ached every time I saw her and remembered that every night we could go to bed next to each other. I trusted that she wasn’t waking up to wonder if I was hot or smart enough for her.

We drove to the center of the coastal California town because Rachel’s mother’s CBD oil had exploded in her luggage and Rachel needed her to ingest it. We bought the oil at a family-run pharmacy with a ringing bell on the door and dropped it off at the front desk of the inn. Stone had a hair appointment soon, but first we were driving to a coastal refuge to take a walk. I hadn’t gotten any signs from the Rhiz since I returned their Bio-meter and their file on the Chases. Stone insisted that she didn’t know much about how the Operatrixes went about initiating people.

“Operatrixes have their own strange rites,” was all she’d say.

Still, I secretly thought of us as a potential Rhiz power couple, and that offset my anxiety about seeing Aiden wed to Rachel.

We parked in an almost empty lot and entered a path cut between waving dune grasses. She went first and we walked silently on the hard sand. I wanted to know the names of all the plants around us, the rugged flowering bushes, the squat gnarled trees, the spiky grasses that protected the eggs of endangered birds. I tried not to think about the reports of Black Rain starting to fall in deforested regions.

After a few minutes, we reached the beach. We went out to the water, instinctively, like animals. The waves crashed privately for us.

For a moment, the desert gave way to the sea.

I dropped Stone off at Kinky Clippers (which had a clipper ship on the sign) and went back to the inn to find Aiden. We had preparations on top of the usual wedding ones. Mine included retrieving two raw and speckled eggs from our room’s mini-bar refrigerator. I also had to visit Aiden and make sure he wasn’t going to bail on either the wedding or the match.