starsmisalign (starsmisalign) wrote in birthrightrpg, @ 2020-11-02 20:23:00 |
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Entry tags: | celeste henry, james hutchins |
Once In A Blue Moon
Who: James, Celeste
What: Channeling
Where: Route 168, Outside Coyote Springs, NV
When: Samhain
Ratings/Warnings: M for Magic
Accessed by a marked turn-off from route 168, the Coyote Springs campground was a sparse facility of pop-up tents, RVs, and not much else. It was bordered by the Moapa Valley Wildlife Refuge to the east, Arrow Canyon to the south, and a golf course to the west, which made for a strange patch of green in the otherwise rugged wilderness. A series of streams and warm springs had cut a serpentine channel through the bedrock. There was a 1930s dam a few miles away, one accessible by nine-mile hike, which had been built to hold back flash flood waters, but all it had held back was a pile of silt that buried the petroglyphs left by the Paiute tribe when they controlled the land.
On the weekend of Samhain, the campground was nearly deserted, populated only by a couple of die-hards in RVs with their late-night campfires burning low. A full moon hovered over the landscape. James’ father’s group of practitioners -- too loosely associated to be called a proper coven -- had used it as one of their gathering spots for decades. James was born out there, the labor coming fast and hard, to the horror of an ordinary family one campsite over.
He pulled his truck into a space, put it in park, and cut the engine. He leaned forward on the steering wheel to look out the windshield. The sky was clear, the temperature hovering around fifty-eight degrees.
Celeste had been looking forward to that night. It always felt better, to her, to take tangible steps toward a goal instead of staying still. Being able to do so by James’s side was even better. She watched his profile in the semi-dark of the truck, then followed his gaze out of the windshield. Her eyes flicked up toward the sky.
Once they were in park, she reached a hand across the console and wrapped her fingers around his, the long sleeve of her flannel shirt brushing over his skin. “Are you ready?” The brunette’s voice was teasing, playful. Of course he was ready.
On the brink of telling her yes, he took a minute before answering to make sure it was true. He didn’t like to present himself as anything other than confident, but he was getting to that place with Celeste where he could show her if he was still turning things over in his mind. The windows were cracked and he could hear the quiet sounds of the desert in a place he was familiar with, even if the circumstances were different this time. “I’ve never done it before.” He gave her hand a squeeze in the low light. “But yeah. I’m ready.” He took off his seatbelt. The old seat creaked when James leaned across it to look at her, then kissed her, keeping it light. “What about you?”
She returned the kiss, nodding and meeting his eye. “I am.” Celeste had been feeling a lot more self-assured and confident about magic since working at Curiosities. Even if they were about to embark on something unknown and unfamiliar, she was happy to be doing it with James. The brunette was also interested to see the place where he had been born.
Celeste opened the passenger side door slowly, climbing out of the truck, boots crunching in the dirt. She looked up at the moon. “I like it here,” she told him. “Reminds me of the only part I liked about Moab.”
“I’ve been to Arches,” he said, climbing out of the truck. “It’s nice. Maybe at the end of all this stuff with Caleb, we can find a way to go see it. If you want to.” He grabbed a heavy duty, olive colored backpack and dragged it across the seat. He unzipped it to pull out two small, battery-operated camping lanterns. The contents of the bag shifted as he pulled the straps over his shoulders and shut the truck door. James walked around the front bumper to hand her one of the lights and turned his on.
He started walking south of the campsite along the outside edge, passing people without much notice. Other than a one-time trip to the cemetery with Fern, he wasn’t used to doing this kind of thing with company, not since he was a teenager and went wherever his dad took him. James had been insular with magic, but he liked looking over and seeing Celeste, knowing she was with him, that she got him, that she’d start bringing her own spin on things and he could learn alongside her. Grow into more with her.
He smiled and looked at the path ahead of him. “In case I never said it, I like it better with you here.”
“Maybe,” she nodded. Celeste wasn’t entirely sure how everything with Caleb was going to end, she just knew it had to, and it was going to be on her terms. She refused to be afraid. That was partly why she had been looking forward to this night. The brunette followed James, holding her lantern, the lights casting flickering shadows as they moved.
Celeste returned his smile, looking up at him. “I like everywhere better with you,” she told him.
James’ smile grew and then he turned his attention to picking through the sharp vegetation and loose rock. As they passed the last campsite, the rocks grew larger, and James and Celeste wove a careful path so as not to disrupt them and any wildlife that might be hidden underneath. The hiking boots helped but he’d rather not tangle with a rattlesnake if he could avoid it.
The site was a half-mile to the south. The Arrow Canyon Ridge was a dark outline in the distance, and the ground became more rock than dirt as they headed in that rough direction, with sharp outcroppings reaching as high as their shoulders. One point required a low rock scramble. James dropped down on the other side, set down his lantern, and brushed off his hands. He was standing in a natural clearing within rocks. “This is it,” he told Celeste, looking around. It was smaller than he remembered, but it was unmistakably the spot where he had gone with his father and Sam’s people, dozens of times, for rituals during his childhood. Sam had called it a place of great power, one that seemed to have been amplified by the presence of witches for at least two generations. The earth had a memory.
Celeste was comfortable with the terrain, but still cautious and careful. Once they had reached the clearing, she looked around, trying to see if she could feel any of the residual energy that might have remained. Her gaze dropped to the ground, imagining a young James coming to this spot.
“Are we drawing a circle?” she asked, turning to him. The breeze ruffled her hair, and she tucked it behind her ear.
He lowered his backpack and took out a large container of salt, which he offered to Celeste. “Yeah, but this time, we’re trying to hold the energy in the circle with us. That’s the intention to set. Let’s go about nine feet across, clockwise.” He straightened and tried to get his directional bearings, looking at the sky and the rock formations he remembered to figure out which way pointed north. These were the habits of the practitioners he knew who came here, and he was hoping that using them would make tapping into the residual energy easier, like putting on a well-worn shoe.
Celeste took the container of salt, and looked at the ground, trying to visualize the circle before drawing it. She began pouring it out clockwise, walking carefully on the outside of the circle as a thin, white stream poured from the container. Once the shape was complete, she set the salt down by the bag and removed the ceremonial dagger that James had gifted her.
“Do you want to do the pentagram?” she asked him, holding the dagger up.
“Got it.” James took the dagger from her. From the inside of the circle, he knelt, turned the handle in a calloused palm, and stuck the sharp tip into the dirt to mark the top of the pentagram, pointing north. He dragged it through the dirt, from top to the bottom right, then up to the left, across, down to the left, and back up to the top. He repositioned himself, careful not to mar the line with the tread of his boots. At each of the points he carved a crude symbol for one of the elements, going in the same order he’d drawn the pentagram: a circle for spirit, then variations on a triangle for fire, air, water, and earth.
When he was finished, he set the dagger beside the bag and took out the objects they’d brought to represent each of the elements, putting them on the ground within her reach. “Ready?” He searched for Celeste’s face in the dark. “Same order.”
Celeste nodded, then, just in case he couldn’t see the gesture in the dark, she added a verbal “Ready.” For fire, a candle was placed at the corresponding tip. She lit the wick and tucked the lighter back in her pocket, then went about carefully and methodically placing the other objects. A piece of clear quartz for air, a chalice for water, and a small bowl of consecrated soil for earth. She watched the flame flicker for a moment, then turned back to James.
“Okay,” she said, both to herself and to him. Once again, she held out her hand for his as she stood carefully inside the circle.
James closed his hand around hers. He met her eyes and took a breath, his thumb stroking her skin in the cool night air. It was different being here with Celeste, not with elders, a fire, and drums, but something that felt more right to him and the magic he understood. It was purposeful, gritty, and grounded in the real world. He looked down at the dirt and focused on what they were about to do. “We call on the elements, spiritus, ignis, caeli, aqua, terra. Awaken this sacred space.”
A breeze kicked up from the west, scattering grains of sand across the clearing and stirring their hair and clothes. The flame on the candle flickered but didn’t go out. Yellow-orange fire danced around the wick. James raised his voice over the wind. “We draw the magic of old rituals into our circle.”
A degree at a time, the temperature within the circle began to tick upward the way it would if they were surrounded by bodies and hands in motion. It became brighter in the circle, an ambient glow the color of yellow-gold. Vague shadows moved on the rocks that surrounded the clearing, and the air carried the charge of magic, the faint smell of things burned and spilled by skilled hands, going back decades before his birth. Magic left a residue in a space over time and that was what they’d come to collect. James called, “What witchcraft left behind, we take.”
Celeste recited the words of the ritual along with James, her intent set. What she had tried to feel earlier was suddenly clear and vivid. She breathed deeply, the mingled scents reminding her of both Curiosities and something unfamiliar at the same time. Her face felt warm, and she could swear she felt the proximity of others around her, almost ghostly, but present all the same. Patiently, she let herself experience all of these things, waiting. Focused and still.
A wisp of something ethereal and white originated above the north end of the pentagram and ran along the inside perimeter of the circle. The salt line kept it from escaping, so it continued until the barrier was illuminated all the way around. As the ritual intensified, the ring of light grew brighter and began to spill inward toward their feet, as if the two magic users were rooted to the ground and drawing water from soil. James watched it and kept his grip calm on Celeste’s hand as it began to climb into him. He closed his eyes and tried to make his heartbeat steady. “Breathe,” he said, as much to himself as to her. There was no second presence occupying the same space as him this time: this was warmth, pins and needles, restlessness, potential energy wanting to convert to kinetic at the top of a very tall hill.
Celeste kept breathing, his hand in hers a stabilizing presence. She had never experienced anything like this before, but she wasn’t going to panic. In fact, she felt calm and grounded, connected to the earth. She watched the light brighten and grow. Part of her wondered how this looked from the outside, what she would think if she were a stranger watching this happen. The old version of herself who still half-believed that all magic was evil and ungodly. How foolish and inexperienced she had been, and her family still was. Especially Caleb.
A place like this had limits. Eventually, James and Celeste would scrape the barrel of what lingering magic the clearing contained and the light would die down, a spiritual fire dying out. At least, that’s what they thought would happen, but it didn’t. Instead, what flowed freely from the ground jolted to a hard stop. James had a sensation of resistance, like he had gotten the equivalent of a fish on a line and had begun to drag something that didn’t want to come as easily.
James opened his eyes to find dozens of bright tendrils, each one distinct, coming into the circle. “Celeste..?” He didn’t know if she was looking or not. Curious, he reached out slowly into the web. They weren’t solid, nothing a layperson could physically grab, but if he concentrated hard enough, James found he could wrap a bunch of those delicate, white threads around his palm and wrist and draw them closer. That he could force it. “How the fuck did we do this?” he muttered, his mind turning through the possibilities.
Was it the blue full moon? All the practice Celeste was doing with elemental magic, or some X factor in her capabilities they didn’t know about? Was it his birth connection to the place and the witches who frequented it, or the time he spent taming energy in that metaphysically-charged bath in hell? Or was it simpler: they’d never done anything like this together before, and this was what you got when you mixed a channeler with an elemental witch?
Whatever the reason, the ritual had stalled, then taken a giant leap past what they planned.
Celeste was seeing it. She watched as James reached his hand out. She had no idea how to answer his possibly rhetorical question, but despite things taking an unexpected turn, there was something exciting running through her, like a vibration. “We should keep going,” the brunette told him. They came there to draw power and it didn’t feel like they had reached the end. “We can push through.”
After a moment of silent deliberation, she stepped into the web of tendrils, careful not to break any of the lines beneath her feet. She could feel them wrapping around her, embracing her. And Celeste wasn’t sure if she was imagining it, but the earth felt like it was vibrating, too, a low humming sound filling her ears.
James watched her carefully. It had grown hotter and brighter in the circle. “You know what these are?” He raised his voice over a thrum in his eardrums and the wind that was blowing around them. His body buzzed from what he’d already picked up, and there was so much more of it right there, but he made himself stop. “Tell me what we’re taking before we go any further.”
She paused, looking up at him curiously. She didn’t know how to verbalize it, but it felt right, it felt like whatever was there was supposed to be taken, and to the end, like a trail. Or rope. But could Celeste name what it was, beyond a nebulous concept of power? The brunette took in a deep breath, and even then it felt like she was breathing in those snaking tendrils.
“I can’t name it,” she admitted to James. “I can only feel it.”
In his head, James ran through the words of the spell. ‘We draw the magic of old rituals into our circle; what witchcraft left behind, we take.’ James remembered what it felt like to be in the presence of other people’s magic and this felt familiar. He didn’t know how or why, but he had a gut feeling they’d overshot the goal and forged a connection to whoever laid down magic in that place. For all he knew, one of those lines could be Sam’s.
“It’s someone else’s power,” he said. “Are you sure you want to take it?”
“No,” she answered, shaking her head. Then, “I don’t know.” Celeste partly felt like it might have been too late. Was it too late? She stepped slowly away from the bright tendrils. There was something almost reluctant inside her, a part of herself she wasn’t even sure she had been previously aware of.
“Should we stop the ritual?” Celeste asked him.
James clenched his jaw. He breathed through his nose as he tried to sort through it. He wanted the answer to be no. He knew what he could become if he committed to it. He knew she was waiting for him to say it was alright or it was a bad idea. Maybe it was neither.
He heard himself talking to Phanuel a few weeks back. He told her that if she didn’t start using her god-given power, and the rest of them, too, he’d change his stance on not taking more for himself. The witches he knew who came here were the practitioners that pissed him off: they acted like life was a utopia, as if worshipping earth deities would get them somewhere when the planet burned around them. They didn’t get mixed up in the dark side of things, and they never intervened. They’d chant harm ye none and cling to neutrality, the occult’s version of Switzerland, while people were dying. Wasting what they had.
But James didn’t want to be a man who only cared about power for power’s sake. He had enough right now, with what they’d already done. He wouldn’t take it from another magic user unless he had to.
Celeste was different. She was newer. They came here to make sure she’d be safe from Caleb, and if she wanted to take some with interest and put it to good use, he’d back her up.
“It’s up to you,” James said. “Do what you need to do.” He took a backwards step out of the circle.
Perhaps a few months ago, she would have taken all that she could with no regard. But things had changed, both internally and externally. They had come there to draw power out and they had accomplished that goal, she could feel that was the case. Between the both of them, the brunette was confident that they could handle Caleb, no matter what they decided to do.
With a last look down at the pentagram beneath her, Celeste stepped backward out of the circle, too.
“I think we have enough,” she said.
The spell dissipated when Celeste stepped out. James reached out with his boot and carved a line through the salt. It was dark and quiet in the clearing, the two of them left standing there in the low light cast by the two camping lanterns. It would’ve seemed like nothing happened, except he was breathing harder than before and the drop in temperature was a shock to the system. James looked down at his hands and his body. He felt different. Alive.
He turned to Celeste and brought her in close. “Are you okay?”
She leaned against him. “I’m good,” she murmured. Celeste turned to look at the extinguished circle. “It kind of feels like I can do anything,” she told him quietly. She wasn’t entirely sure why she was talking so low, like she was afraid anything louder would seem like shouting. The brunette tilted her head up and kissed him deeply, her arms wrapping around him.
He didn’t expect to be, but he was relieved. James kissed her back just as insistently, an arm going around her waist so he could hold her to his chest, mirroring the closeness he felt to Celeste in his heart. He didn’t know when he’d ever been that connected to somebody. It was hard to hold still, especially with that same energy coming off Celeste that he felt knocking around inside him. He found himself running his hand down the back of her head. “You can.” He brushed her hair back from her face. “You just proved it.”
She pressed her forehead against his chest, breathing deeply. Celeste wanted to do more, then. She wanted to tackle the Caleb problem, practice more protective magic, learn more, all at once. It was only being in James’s embrace that kept her still.
“I feel wired,” she laughed, looking back up at him. “But we should probably clean this stuff up.”
He smiled because he knew what she meant. “You got it.” He kissed her one more time and backed off so they could scatter the salt and start packing up. It was a long walk back to the truck, but he had a feeling they would cover the distance in a lot less time.