The Tea Ceremony

" I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all that it is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do -- the actual act of writing -- turns out to be the best part. It's like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony..." - Ray Bradbury

It really was the ceremony she loved. Tea bags individually packeted in paper (not environmentally kind, but she made up for it in lots of other ways) gave off a promise that never failed. The smell of it went to places unreachable by other means. She loved that she could count on that! Just enough information. Tea is an herb. Really. Made from the picked tips of the Camellia Senesis plant a native of China. Picked fresh the tea is dried. Boil water to bring it back to life. Connection. Her grandmother told Larkin of her Chinese pirate ancestors. Story fed her. Every time she needed the tea ceremony she said to her self:

"I'm sitting down with Gran 

Gran brings Mom. 

Gran. Mom. Me. 

Tea Ceremony for three."

"Simple thing really. The magic of story and tea go together exactly like that." 

"Does that mean I can make up stories and tell other people what I see even when they don't see what I see?"

"Well of course you can. Make up stories because you do see them. What your ears ear, well in your case, what your right ear hears, will make for a story that is slightly wobbled. But. That is what great stories are."

"What do you mean, Gran? Wobbled."

Calypso let the question travel. It was a pivot wasn't it. She could see how many sprouts might come from her grand-daughter's question. From her stool in the kitchen Calypso spied the Tall Pine. She could see only the lower quarter of the barked trunk. 

"Come with me dearie. Put a pair of socks on, maybe two. It's turned cold." Larkin was always the last to wear socks when the weather turned. She loved the freedom of toes that could wiggle. 

Larkin recalled the memory as clearly as if it were happening now. The Wild Forest Black tea was steeping. The smell was every where. Still light outside the young woman pulled on a second pair of socks, dragged her boots off the low rack, stepped in, slipped into the hoodie of gray fleece lined with red wool. Outside the ground crunched with needles and alder leaves frozen with the moisture of late November.

One, two, three, four, five... A dozen steps from the cottage porch would be enough. The sun was still caught in the top of the watchful Pine. More than a hundred feet tall, the kink was barely visible.

"Most people would never know how something, sometime caused this Pine to wobble. For an instant? For a season? For whatever length of time that mattered to Pine, its story changed."

"And, Pine kept on didn't she!" Larkin was speaking aloud when the splinter of truck wheels crossed the gravel turn-around. Another tea ceremony, and company. Simple thing really. Pine smiled with the last of Sun's warming rays, exhaling the last of the day's oxygen.

Now for the in-breath.

Larkin

Strong black tea was her favorite drink. She carried an old-fashioned for a young woman of twenty-two, electric kettle. "Boiling water! Tea is a herb, a dried herb. To bring it back to life you must infuse it, dunk the tea bag up and down." A line from a movie had stuck with her. The kettle and a copy of that movie about old English people retiring to India was Aunt May's idea of medicine. Crazy tiny Aunt May was a Brit who never forgot the reason for the Spice Route to China. The medicine had worked. Larkin made her own 'biscuits', cookies, and replicated tea time wherever she traveled.

Time had moved oddly since that Halloween when Maydene's truck disappeared into the Horizontal. But children don't realize, yet, how time can move at different speeds. Even as young witches Larkin and her best friend Caitlin made such magic with the time they had. This story is about endings and beginnings. The kettle howled as Larkin reached for the door to the large stainless oven door. She couldn't do both, so she quickly pulled on the oven's rack with a padded mitt, slid the cookie trays onto the cooling racks. The smell of almond cookies filled her head.

Then, the kettle. 'Thought I'd forgotten you. Patience never been one of your kinds virtues.' Talking to the kettle wasn't something she was ashamed of, but, some people believed she should consider other company. Her phone vibrated in her apron pocket. It was Caitlin. The text: 'Save me some. Don't start tea without me. Bringing company.' Instead of a mug, Larkin reached for one of her mother's teapots. The orange one with a double handle. She'd splurge. Four tea bags. Two tea cozies had come with. She chose the quilted one made from scraps of purple.

Once upon a time being a witch would have been an exception to the rule. There were other things a girl could be trained for unless the lineage was thinning. 
Thinning? 
No baby girls darling. If there were no girls being born. If the lineage was thinning, the girls who were alive simply continued learning the ways. Most loved Witch...

The sound of the old truck's engine was inimitable. Even with one good ear, Larkin knew the sound of Olympia, the truck with a mind of her own.

Next.