Finnegan was remembering how soft and delicate Elise's hand felt in his. So many times he had wanted to reach for her hand when they walked together in the hall, but he wanted to know if she liked him back first. He suspected, but he had to be sure. He was falling for her. She was completely in his life now, and it terrified him. She was such a dark horse. More like a dark unicorn. She unexpectedly got his attention, and now she was a rare and precious creature. He wanted to tell her everything. He wanted her to be a part of everything he did. But he also wanted to slow down.
He still wanted to focus on his magic cultivation. He would still have some secrets from her because she would have to walk her own path. But the stronger their bond became, the stronger his magic would be. He waited for Elise to text him that she was going to bed, then he went out to his shed. He really wanted to try the transformation ritual soon, while he was feeling so good. It would take him a few days to prepare, but he didn't want to waste this building energy.
"Good night, my sweet Elise. I hope you have sweet dreams." She was his, though he didn't possess her. He was trusting her with his heart. He was helpless now. He would bend to her will if she ever felt the need to exert her power over him.
He carefully selected the items he would use for his ritual. He placed his biggest clear quartz and smoky quartz crystals in a velvet bag with a labradorite stone and a moss agate. He would charge the stones in the sun by leaving them on the windowsill in his room in a bowl of salt. Once fully charged, the clear quartz would amplify his power while the smoky quartz block negative energy and keep the magic positive and grounded. The labradorite would keep him connected to his higher self, and the moss agate would boost his strength to hold the energies during the ritual. He also set aside some fresh candles: black, white, yellow, red, blue, and green. He went over to a box of stuff that came from his grandmother's closet and pulled out a circlet made of twisted vines with a metal ornament centered on it in the shape of a full moon circle and a crescent moon resting above it, curved upwards. Then he dug into the box again and found a small figurine of the goddess, arms raised and forming a circle around her head and above her hourglass figure. The figurine had no details other than a swirling symbol on her torso and a little shiny gem embedded in the center of the swirl and full breasts swelling from her chest.
Finnegan placed all of these items-the candles, the circlet, and the figurine-together in a corner. He moved his staff that rested against the side of his bookshelf to the corner. Finally, he took his deer skull, that had a small rack of antlers, off the wall and laid it carefully on top of the other items in the corner, resting the points of the horns against the wall. Feeling satisfied that these items would be perfect for the ritual, Finnegan took the velvet bag of stones and closed up his shed.
Thursday morning, Finnegan waited at Elise's locker. He had gotten used to meeting her before class. Weston didn't mind. Finnegan had texted him after he got home from dropping Elise off at home yesterday.
"Elise is my girlfriend. I asked her today."
Weston's reply was, "Dude, I thought you were already dating like two days ago. But right on."
Elise walked up and Finnegan couldn't help it. He pulled her to him and hugged her, whispering in her ear, "Good morning." She wasn't expecting it, but she relaxed and hugged him back and he could feel her intake and exhale of breath on his hair behind his ear. "Good morning," she said into the nape of his neck.
A teacher walked by saying, "Separate," in a commanding tone. They sheepishly pulled away, but smiled and kept contact with their hands. Elise got her books from her locker and, hand in hand, Finn walked his girlfriend, officially, to her first period class.
Around the corner, Kimber caught this exchange and hurriedly sent a text to Ashley before the bell rang on the way to her own class.
Finnegan gave her the notebook before he went to his class.
He was impatient. He tried to focus on his assignments, but his mind went to Elise. He wanted to show her so many things, but he didn't know where to start. He didn't want to overwhelm her, and he wanted her to understand how sacred each item and place and facet of his faith and feelings were. He hadn't let anyone else in like this before. He didn't want to just gloss over the things that were so difficult for him to share with anyone, especially someone who isn't pagan, and someone who he now cared about. He cared about how she felt, how she saw him and if she understood him. He had to be careful about her mom, but he was sure that if he was respectful, Elise's mom would at least let her keep seeing him.
Finnegan didn't have time to see Elise between his first and second periods, so the morning seemed to stretch on forever. Finally, it was lunchtime. He dropped off his books at his locker and hurried to meet her, but before he could get very far down the hall, Kimber and Ashley called his name. He stopped and turned to face them. Kimber stood with her arms crossed and Ashley had her hands on her hips.
"Finn! Are you and Elise dating now?" They stood waiting for his answer.
"Yes, but it just happened last night. We would have told you at the lunch table. What's the big deal?" Finnegan shifted his bag more comfortably on his shoulder.
"The big deal?" Ashley scoffed, "Well the big deal is what the crap! She's nice, but..." she obviously hadn't really thought this through. "Well, fine, I guess," she straightened herself and was suddenly calm. "But just tell me one thing," she paused and looked at him evenly.
"Ok. What?"
"Why her? I mean, she doesn't like anything you like." Ashley looked defeated. "I listen to all the bands you listen to, and I thought you liked goth chicks like me.
Finnegan felt bad. He thought after he turned Ashley down before that she had understood he only wanted to be her friend. Now she was jealous of Elise. He subconsciously became wary of her.
"Listen, Ashley. You're pretty cute, but even if we listen to the same bands, you don't really know me very well. I'm sorry, but I only think of you as a friend. Elise is...different. Maybe that's what I like about her. And it's not that she doesn't like the same stuff as me. She hasn't really been exposed to the same things I have, so it's not fair to assume that she wouldn't like them just because she doesn't like them yet. She might." Finnegan reached out and touched the side of Ashley's arm. He started to say he was sorry again, but she shrugged his hand off of her and cast her eyes downward. She stepped away from him and turned to walk down a hallway leading away from the cafeteria. Kimber consolingly wrapped her arm around her friend, and she threw a look back at Finnegan before turning her full attention to Ashley's grief.
Elise walked up and Finnegan was standing there staring after the other girls, who were by now out of sight, with a disconcerted expression. "Hey, Finn," she broke him from his trance. "What are you doing? Are you ok?" She looked down the hall, but, of course, there was nothing to see. She reached out for his hand that hung at his side.
"I'm fine, but I have to tell you," he reached for her other hand and held both of hers between them, looking into her eyes, "Ashley asked me on a date a long time ago, and I turned her down. I thought she had moved on, and we were just friends, but when she found out we were together, she got upset. I just wanted you to know because I know you're supposed to go sleepover at her house." Finnegan pleaded with her with his eyes.
She was surprised by his intensity, but she nodded and said, "Ok, I guess we'll just see how things go until Saturday. If things are too weird tomorrow, I'll just tell her I won't come."
Finnegan was a little relieved, but he still felt uneasy. He wanted to reach out and cup her head behind her ear and just hold her, but he didn't want to do that here at school. He just laced hands with her and led her toward the lunchroom.
They talked to Weston through lunch. Kimber and Ashley were nowhere to be found during lunch and recess. Weston didn't think anything of it. He just tried to demonstrate and explain his skateboard tricks to Elise by using a miniature skateboard with his fingers to skate along the top and edge of the table.
The rest of the day passed with an underlying tension, but the excitement of Elise getting to come home with him today overpowered his unease. He met her at her locker after the last period and was renewed with energy when he saw her already waiting for him with the notebook clutched against her chest. She looked so cute. She was smiling and standing with her toes slightly turned toward each other, making her heels kick out to the side a little, and her knees pressed together. She was wearing fitted long-sleeved gray shirt underneath a purple tee shirt that had the 'Grape Crush' logo on the front. She paired this with jean shorts worn over some thick pantyhose and some furry tan boots.
"Hey there, Cutie! Ready to go finish our Science project?" He held his hand out for her. She took it, blushing after his compliment.
"I've been ready all day," she told him.
When they got to his car, Finnegan put her bag in the backseat before opening her door. He held out his hand, palm up to help her in. "Milady," he said, feeling archaic. She blushed again.
He got into the car and drove to his house, holding her hand.
"There's a place I want to show you if we have time before dinner," he told her.
"Ok. Hey," she waited for him to glance over to her before she continued, "if you call me 'Milady,' which I actually kind of like, would that mean I should call you 'Milord?' Because that doesn't fit as well."
Finnegan laughed. "Yeah, I was just trying it out and being chivalrous. What's wrong with 'Milord?'" He smiled at her. "I mean, just playing around, I don't hate it. But I wouldn't expect you to call me that casually. Those aren't exactly informal endearments, you know."
"That's what I mean. What should I call you? What do we call each other now?"
"Well, we could call each other 'Babe', or something." She thought about it for a minute, but shook her head.
"No, I wish we could think of something that's different, somethin special for just us, you know?" They sat silently thinking about it for a minute.
"Well, there are a couple of Gaelic terms we could use, but they sort of sound weird, and their hard to spell."
"Gaelic?"
"Oh, yeah, my family is Irish. I don't speak it fluently, but my grandmother did, and my dad know a little. We're planning on taking a family trip to Ireland after graduation to visit some long lost relatives. There are lots of pagan ruins and sacred sites we plan to visit."
"Wow, that's pretty cool. You must feel proud to know your family history like that. I don't know if my mom and dad don't really know their heritage, or if they just didn't really talk about it much, but I didn't ask either. So what are these words?"
"I guess it is pretty nice to know." Finnegan was a hereditary wizard. He came from a long line of magical ancestors, and his tie to the ancestors, especially his blood ancestors, was a big part of his magic. "Um, let's see, there's 'Mo Graw' or 'Mo Myur-neen' or 'Mo Cooshla.' I'll have to write them down for you later so you can see what I mean about the spelling." Finnegan said each of them slowly, trying to enunciate the simplest way possible. He even had trouble with Gaelic sometimes
"Mo Cooshla." Elise said it to try it out. "What do they all mean?"
"Well, they all kind-of mean the same thing, just different levels of intensity, I guess. I can't really remember which is which, but I can maybe look it up for you later. They mean something like 'My Darling.'"
"Mo Cooshla. Am I saying that right? That one sounds the cutest, I think."
"It's close enough." They had arrived at his house.
Finnegan's parents peered out of the living room window, covertly hidden behind the curtain. Finn got out of his car, and walked around to open the door for Elise. Then, he grabbed both of their backpacks from the backseat, putting his bag on and carrying Elise's by the top handle in one hand. They walked up holding hands. The curtains fell closed, and Finnegan's parents stood awkwardly in the middle of the living room trying to act naturally, but not really knowing what to do.
Finnegan and Elise walked in. They saw his parents standing around, his mom was bent over the coffee table rearranging the two magazines and his dad was holding a throw pillow from the couch out in front of himself, tilting from side to side.
"What are you guys doing?" Finn and Elise stood staring at them, Finn was still holding Elise's bag, but they had let go of each other's hand. Finnegan's parents stopped what they were doing and erected themselves.
"Nothing. Just...straightening up. Well, you guys better get started on your project. We'll start dinner in about an hour and a half." With that, his parents stiffly walked past them and down the hallway to their room.
"What was that about?" Elise asked Finnegan.
"It's probably best not to dwell on it. Go ahead and get set up at the table over there. I'll be right back."
Finn went to his room and gathered up the materials he prepared for their project. While he was in his room, he checked the stones in the bowl of salt on his windowsill by holding his left hand above each of them in turn to feel their energies. They pulsated against his palm, and he could feel they were fully charged. He replaced them in the velvet bag and left the bowl of salt behind the curtain.
It didn't take long for them to glue everything together and paint the few nuts they found for the nuclei. They planned to use an upturned hangar to hold the project up when they gave their presentation in class. Once that was done, they got out their science packets and completed the last few questions they hadn't answered and swapped essays to proof read.
Elise did a great job explaining the scientific aspect of the mixtures, and she included a neatly written recipe on the back for the Greek dressing. She was still reading his essay when he finished, so he sat back and waited for her.
"This is really good," she said when she finally looked up from reading over it. "I like how you mention water in the body and water around the planet."
"Thanks. Well, we still have about an hour. My parents will start cooking in about half an hour, but it will take about that long for everything to be done. Can I show you something? It isn't dark yet, so it will be best to go now instead of after dinner."
"Ok," she said as she handed his essay back to him and started putting away her school stuff.
"I'll be right back. I wanna take a flashlight just in case."
While Elise waited for him to return, she took out the notebook and put it in his backpack.
"Ok, got it," Finn said, holding up the flashlight, "let's go." He led her out onto the porch, then down a flight of stairs that led out to the back yard.
"Here's our firepit area," he gestured to it as they passed by, but he kept going. They walked past his shed to a trail in the woods.
"What is that shed for?" she asked. He sighed, not knowing how to answer.
"That's a private space where I work sometimes. I might take you in there someday, but there's a lot to explain about in there."
She didn't say anything else about it. She caught up to him and took his hand when she fell into step by his side.
"We're almost there. This is where I come sometimes to think or meditate or whatever." They were at a clearing that had a circle of stones, several inches apart, with about a six-foot diameter. The ground was covered in leaves, but level, without any other rocks obstructing the space. Some branches had fallen, and Finnegan made a mental note to come back out here before his ritual and remove them. They stood for a while looking around.
"It's peaceful here. I can see why you like to come here. Where do you sit?" Elise asked, walking to the edge of the stone circle and stopping.
"I usually just sit on the ground, there," he told her, pointing to the center of the circle. "But this isn't really what I wanted to show you. This area is also sometimes used by my parents and their friends. I want to show you my secret spot."
Finnegan led her away from the clearing and farther into the woods where there wasn't really a path at all. Elise had to step carefully, but Finn went slow. Finally, they came to another, smaller clearing. There was a large fallen tree that created a natural barrier for the far side of the clearing. Finnegan had spent a considerable amount of time sawing the protruding branches off, leaving only the trunk. He let Elise look around.
"Do you hear that?" She turned her head toward the tree.
"Oh, yeah, if you keep walking, it slopes downhill, but it's really steep. Anyway, at the bottom of the hill, there's a little creek that pools farther down that way." Finn pointed somewhere to the left. "There's a property line marked just past the creek. I think the neighbors have a natural spring that flows down from a mountain, or what passes for mountains around here, that they collect into a well."
Elise turned back around to face him, but she scooted herself on top of the tree trunk and patted the spot next to her. Finnegan went to her and leaned his rear against the tree, but didn't pull himself up. He held his hand out for her, and she took it.
"This is pretty great. I don't really spend that much time outside, but I don't really know what to do outside when I'm by myself."
"Well, if you're really interested in learning about being pagan, there won't be enough time to spend outside by yourself. There's plenty to do inside, but it's nice to surround yourself with the spirits." Finnegan closed his eyes and breathed in slowly through his nose, letting it out slowly and breathing in again.
Elise watched him. A breeze picked up, but he remained still. He could feel her eyes on him, but keeping his closed, he said, "You can hear every movement in the forest. The squirrels and birds chittering and moving around. The wind in the leaves above you. A leaf dropping to the forest floor. The creek. Everything in the forest is connected and communicating. And when you sit still long enough, you become part of it."
Elise squared her shoulders and closed her eyes. She breathed in and out, as she had watched Finnegan do, and she listened. She heard all of those things. She also heard Finn's steady breathing. Then, he took her other hand and held both of them so that their fingers were straight and their palms were flat, her hands palms down while his were palms up.
Elise peeked at Finnegan, who was now standing in front of her, but his eyes were still closed and concentrating, so she closed her eyes again.
Finn was letting his energy build and flow from his right hand into her left, and he was pulling energy from her left into his right. He lifted a prayer to the Spirits in his mind:
"Spirits, purify us and strengthen us,
Air, lend us your wisdom and breath,
Fire, burn within our hearts,
Water, satisfy our thirst for each other, and
Earth, ground us and protect us until we are strong like the Great Oak.
With my Spirit within, I beseech you. Hail, Spirits, and Farewell."
When he had finished, he opened his eyes. Elise was still sitting with her eyes closed, but her chin had lifted. The energies were flowing between them still. If she had not been intuitive, or trying at all to meditate with him, she would have only felt an intense heat between their palms and pulled away. But she hadn't. She was experiencing something. He could make out her small, round face. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail that was loosely resting almost to the base of her skull, but a few smaller tendrils had escaped above her brow and hung over her face.
It was almost to dark to see without the flashlight, so he moved his palms away from hers so the weren't touching anymore. Her eyes fluttered open and she lowered her chin so her head was not tilting back slightly anymore.
A smile teased her lips, but remaining serious, she said, "I see what you mean about being connected to everything in the forest." Her eyes searched his, but then came to rest on his lips when he smiled at her. They both became aware of their closeness.
Finnegan stepped back to help her slide off the tree trunk.
"We should get back now. It's getting too dark, Mo Cuishle."
He turned on the flashlight and led her back to the other clearing. When she could see the trail, she walked more confidently, but she stopped him.
"Finn?" He turned his head to look at her next to him.
"Hmm?"
"Thanks for showing me your secret spot. It really is special."
He gave her hand a squeeze and they walked back to the house for dinner.