Tea

“I had a feeling you’d be coming sometime after tea.” The woman with black eyes standing in the doorway looked from Lord Death to me, winking.

“I was hoping to have a little chat with you—if you have the time.”

“My lord, I am dead,” she declared with a flourish of her hands, ushering us into her home. “I have nothing but time!”

Lord Death ducked down as he stepped inside the dark house after the young woman.

I remained out in the alleyway for a moment, staring into the darkness after them. If I thought the alleyway had been dark and creepy, it paled in comparison to the darkness of the house of the Empath. Death vanished from my sight and for a moment I felt safer out in the openness of the alley than I would in the darkness of the home.

Something moving before me caught my eye, making me look up again, wondering what this world would throw at me now.

It was just Lord Death, leaning against the door frame, his arms crossed in front of his chest. He looked like a shadow hiding in the darkness as he stared down the steps to where I continued to just stand.

“Rebecca?”

I must have jumped at the sound of his voice because I watched his face change from slightly annoyed at my inability to follow him to slightly humored…

There was still something in me that warned me to stay away--surely a living thing constantly being so close to death could not be healthy. There was something about him--something powerful and perhaps even dangerous--that made me nervous. But I had to trust him—at least for now.

Picking up my skirts that I was quickly coming to despise with each step I took, I let Lord Death take my hand and lead me away from the outside world and into the stuffy darkness that was the Empath's home.

I felt like I had just stepped foot inside a haunted house with lamps covered in old scarves, their tassels swaying back and forth as we wandered across the old, lop sided creaky floor. Tables filled the main room we stood in, covered with tea sets, the tea cups on their saucers rattling softly. I tried to ignore the layers upon layers of spider and cob webs billowing in the breeze over my head.

“This is the tea house,” the woman with hair as black as night explained lazily. She was dressed head to toe in white—a simple cotton dress, a scarf around her head, and a billowing shawl hanging from her arms—it was a stark contrast to her dark hair and even darker eyes. “If you’d like,” she turned her head just enough to look back at me with a smile on her face, “I can read your tea leaves after this.”

The idea of fortune telling and reading tea leaves, numerology, and tarot cards was almost laughable to me. Why did the dead need to know their future? What was there left to see? But I realized that humans always long for more—we need more, want to know more, want to see more… it makes us feel as though we have a bit more power over our lives. Of course, we never have and we most likely never will have any power or control... but it's still nice to pretend every so often, I guess.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

 

I'm still super behind on NaNoWriMo... I just passed 15,000 words when by now I'm usually around the halfway mark. But today was a pretty decent writing day for this year so here is a snippet.

 

Enter our new character--Kira--the tea witch and Empath that brings Becks and Death a bit of unwanted news. She's named after my favorite student here in Russia and I absolutely adore her.

 

I'm hoping to get a big day of writing in tomorrow! Only 11 more days here in Russia and there is still a lot of writing to do, packing to do, and (of course) work.

 

a.r.w.

Feathers

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

 

There are several things in life that still make me think of Jed (my little brother). Acorns are the first thing. And then red balloons. And also feathers.

 

I've always known that there are very special people in this world who might be more in tune with things around them--both seen and unseen. I am lucky enough to have several people such as this in my life--each of them have sought me and my family out to tell us of their experiences they have had with Jed since he journeyed from Here to There. One of them in particular gave our family a message from Jed that seemed a bit out of the ordinary. Aside from him calming our fears about his final moments Here, he also told us to look for him in feathers.

 

I honestly had no idea what that was supposed to mean. Acorns? Yes! Balloons? Sure! But feathers? I just couldn't connect the dots... but sometimes things don't need to make sense to have them touch our hearts.

 

Shortly after that initial message of "Look for me in feathers," my dad and I spotted a feather float down over Tonawanda High School's graduating class of 2015 where we were presenting a scholarship in Jed's honor. My cousin found a feather on the conveyer belt where she worked at Fed Ex. I found a feather at Prince Charming's Carousel in the Magic Kingdom just after the fireworks on my honeymoon. And my first day in my new apartment here in Siberia, there was a little feather in my kitchen, just sitting on my windowsill, welcoming me to my new home.

 

You can believe what you want, but the feathers do not lie... and each time I see one whether it's exactly where it belongs--out in the open beneath a bird's nest--or surprisingly not where it belongs--like on a conveyer belt in Fed Ex--I think of my brother fondly and I know that he is nearby, letting me know that he is okay and he wants me to be happy.

 

I choose to believe that Jed is a strong spirit, constantly reaching out from There, inspiring me, watching out for me, and making sure to never let me forget that even though I can't physically see him right now, he is still right here, waiting to see me smile when my eyes fall on a feather.

 

 

a.r.w.