Truekind

A Mystical Tale of Our Kind

Womyn standing on Santa Monica State Beach photo by A.B. Godfreed

Dimelda stood over the now tepid Aga cooker, staring blindly at the kitchen wall — while the bottom-end of her ladle rose effortlessly in the thick potion. Neglected, it had no option but to rise and float in the concoction simmering on the stove.

There, in front of her urgent-matters cauldron, she brooded — so deep in thought that it paved furrows on her youthful forehead, while tufts of her wild, wiry and prematurely grey hair lay softly about her face.

Deep in contemplation, Dimelda was oblivious to Midnight coiling himself fondly around her right leg, making random creases in her long robe and basically tangling himself in swathes of wool-mix lined with some kind of silk-cotton hybrid.

Tonight, not even Midnight’s love could coax Dimelda out of her intense considerations.

…

The alarm on the kitchen counter started to beep. At the same instance, Midnight darted from under his mistress’s robes, in a bid to get to the coal-pots in the pantry — his safe spot.

The bleeping broke Dimelda’s reverie. She shivered, turned off the alarm, just as her doorbell chimed the well-known Oath to the Mystical Arts. The dratted sound came with the house. And the uselessness of it was not lost on Dimelda, every time the silly thing went off — well after she had already sensed the arrival of anyone who made it to her front door.

Purposefully, with grace, Dimelda walked across the warm clay-brick kitchen floor, her underskirts and robe flapping softly against her legs. Her bare feet pattered up three mahogany-wood steps that led into a large anteroom. It housed her potions library with its many remedies in Chwi, Sanscript, Gregorian, Norrish, Morabia and a dozen other languages, recorded onto paper, tape, film and even stone.

Without hesitation, Dimelda continued walking across the rustic rugs that framed the sparse but functional furniture in her most utilized room. As she neared the bureau, her eyes caught the neatly laid out rows of kasapa root and akoko wild-grass, which she had put out earlier whilst cataloguing their properties for transculturation.

…

The neat arrangement of roots and wild-grass, belied the chaotic associations they…