"Are you accidental - Temporary?
Does the moon sink in your skin;
are the daffodils talking again?"
-S.A. Khanum | Rome Falls
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"Look, Rich! It's the love of your life!"
"Think she'd hex me if I slapped her ass?"
"Try it, Tozier, and I just mi...
"These hags, these great beauties, these mermaids who taunt, who feast, who slash, who steal, these succubae who cannot rest, my mothers, my sisters, my unborn friends, my keepers, my guardians." —Jenny Zhang | Hags
• • •
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• • •
"Maine," Luella Mae stated firmly, nodding her head soon after as if to reaffirm the previous word's validity. "That's where we're destined to be," she added before repeating once more. "Maine."
"Hmm," her Grandmother mused, staring thoughtfully at her long strands of silver hair in the mirror as she busied herself with absentmindedly weaving them into a three-strand braid. "Is that so?"
"I saw it in the cup," Luella Mae explained, already taking the initiative to lay out an old, weathered map of the aforementioned state on the small wooden table centered in their small doorless home. "At first I wasn't so sure — the leaves didn't form a symbol I'd ever seen before," she continued, recalling her Tasseography practice from just two days before. Truthfully, it hadn't been planned in the beginning. In fact, she had rolled out of bed that morning with merely a dry throat and a determination to quench it with a lukewarm glass of water. However, just as her hand outstretched to grab a clean plastic cup out of the sink, the cabinet door to her left creaked open ever-so-slightly and a tin of loose-leaf tea tumbled out onto the counter. Acknowledging the sign, Luella Mae had sighed, set her cup down, and reached for the teapot on the stove in its place. Looks like I'm having Oolong instead, she thought to herself groggily. Then, with methodical movements and practiced technique, she had proceeded to carry out the ritual of reading the leaves.
"I know you always say to never leave a message uninterpreted but... well, I thought maybe I was just looking at a bogus reading — y'know, like one of the spirits was only wanting to play. So I was just gonna write it off," she admitted, smoothing out the frayed edges of the map and weighing down the four corners with strategically placed raw cuts of quartz crystal. "But then I was passing by that map of North America you have stashed away in the kitchen and- and I almost kicked myself for not recognizing it sooner." She shook her head lightly at herself, long waist-length locks of mahogany-colored hair swishing against the loose fabric of her skirt. Her Grandmother had been cutting it since she was eight, but only ever enough to keep it healthy. 'The hair is a physical manifestation of the growth of the spirit', the old woman had once said in that wispy, omniscient tone her speech often partook. 'The longer one allows it to grow, the deeper the connection one feels to Mother Earth and her long grasses.' And though Luella Mae had given her a funny look at the time, she appreciated the sentiment now. 'It helps you concentrate', the young girl often had to remind herself when forced to spend upwards of half an hour attempting to brush out the small flecks of grass and flower stems said locks had obtained from her days spent traipsing through the wildflower fields behind their mobile home. 'And it focuses your connection to your extrasensory perception,' she'd continue before just as quickly scolding: 'So suck it up, Luella Mae!' Then she would bite her lip and attempt not to utter another sound.
