A Time, Long Ago

A Time, Long Ago

In the cold of the night, I remember…

Cold fingers of frost etch their way across the windows scratching at ghosts of memories gone by as I sit by the fire. Birch wood crackles.

"I'll have a Merlot." Her voice now but a ghostly visage of the woman I met.

Our first date disappears into dreamtime. Years cascade by. Young innocent, not knowing the incantations of the Cailleach as she bewitched me with her eyes. I learned only recently how Celtic Wiccans seduce their soon to be partners into relationships.

Ones that can never be let go. I sipped the wine becoming the fly trapped within her web.

To dream, a chance to live those heady days once again. In those forgotten realms where life is magic and magic?

Was… unknown. A thing to view on screens, actors dancing to dragons attacking. Swords bloodied in the carnage. Heroes to the rescue.

Her voice once again pulls me back to me, to us. Naïve, innocent. There were no heroes here. Only the victims bound by enchantments.

As Leprechauns played strip poker and unicorns drank whiskey straight. Yeah, who knew?

Not me, not her as we talked over Merlot and dinner. Red glasses sparkled casting spells with each sip.

We blushed, talked endlessly, her hand warm in mine. Synergies transforming, me, us. I fell under, into a web that unknowingly existed, hers by carving. Myself, the prey.

And in the claiming, after all of these decades, before I found out. I suspected nothing, until she told me as she lay dying. The spider drinks all before it, even after death.

Uncaring, even now. We had decades together. Her hands are cold, gone to the earth to reclaim her.

As all spirits, Cailleach spirits go to dwell in recluse in Gaia, blending their physical shells into the all-encompassing earth. Bastards. Further strengthening their hold on our world.

Outside, earlier I cried tears that crystalize on frigid earth in the dead of winter, waiting for the release of springs calling. Her toll, my debt.

Incantations I can't, dare not break.

Even after her passing this realm. Love or spell bound trickery? I questioned her abilities and began to research the how, the why. She speaks of loving me, I as well of her. Only was this my true voice or one tainted by her binding. Unknown, it was so long ago.

Again cold fingers etch on glass, threatening to enter my den. Inside what was once our house, only now I sit before the flames. Silence reigns supreme inside our abode.

She begs for me to join her in remorse. I cry, I cannot, not yet, my dear. I still have a glass of red to savour in memories of that first date. Each sip takes me back there to her eyes, touch of her soft lips. Skin on skin like velvet caressing the memories of us naked in orgasmic splendor.

All I have to live now is without you, without my heart. My soul that lives sundered with her still in the cold earth as hers is without mine.

I stoke the fires, heating and healing what isn't there.

One day, my love, one day. If you remain mine, as you did with me.

For I made sure that without myself she cannot go to whatever lands the Celtic Wiccans go to. A double edged sword, like a spell can be enacted by both. Now the true test of love begins.

I smile and raise the glass of Merlot, to her pictures on the mantle and dance in the memories of that first date as my fingers rent electricity on chilled glass in my hand and outside hers on panes to a time, long ago.