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.

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