An Ordinary Moon Ceremony

The front door sighed as it opened, and her garden spread out before her - goldenrod towering over the path in arching yellow banners, cone flowers clustering together in commiseration, calendula echoing the sun that had moved into its yearly rest. Elder gathered gratefully and quickly, placing each chosen flower and leafy stem gently into her basket. She moved in this way until, at last, she reached the top of a small hill. From one of several pockets, she pulled out an embroidered handkerchief to dab away the bit of sweat just beneath the silver-white hair that covered her head.

“Hello, my friend,” she said. “Rushing as usual, though I thank you for your example.”

The tree swayed serenely against the cool breeze. Its fruit was splendid this year - red and golden orbs so large as to be fantastical hung from its dark branches. Elder plucked three hairs from her head and placed them at the base of the wide trunk. The tree dropped three of its lovely pomegranates in return. 

Elder touched the old guardian with her palm, observing the bark’s ridges and folds as echoes of her own aging skin. She gave the tree one last pat and then trotted back down the hill. 

By the time she returned to the house, an impatient owl was sitting on the moss covered roof, his neck craning forward to inspect the contents of her basket. 

“Hello, Omen,” Elder said. “I was not expecting you. Then again, I suppose I never do.” 

“Do you have the necessities?” The screeching cry disturbed several swallows in a nearby tree. 

“You’re also early,” Elder replied. “Then again-” 

“An interruption, I would argue, is appropriate when the status quo risks disappointment. I come to warn you that something will disrupt your preparations, so you’d best be on your guard.” Omen hooted for emphasis. 

“Ah,” Elder said. The hand not holding the basket had found its way to her hip. “I wonder what it could be.” 

“It is worth taking seriously. It is not every day that you have important visitors!” Omen said, the feathers around his neck puffing out just a bit. 

“No, that’s true. Just every month.” Elder opened the door and stepped inside, leaving it open so that Omen could follow. He did, stooping his head to enter the warm light of the old home. Elder began pulling curtains back, allowing the golden afternoon light to claim space on the wooden floors and mismatched furniture. A fire crackled within the wide stone hearth, where Curiosity the cat lay with head perked up in attention at Omen’s entrance. 

“You still have your hanger-on, then?” Omen gestured to Curiosity with his wing, settling in beside the dining table. 

“I don’t suppose you’ve ever tried to banish a cat once you’ve been adopted by one, but you should know that it is not possible,” Elder said, laying out the garden contents on the large wooden table.

“I admit that she is not unpleasant to look at, but why does she stare in such a way?” the owl said, staring at the pale white cat in his own such way. 

Elder placed a saucer of port wine in front of the old owl and walked back into the kitchen to continue what she had started. Omen blinked a few times and then lowered his hooked beak into the dark, sweet liquid. His eyes melted into delighted crescents as the fortified wine - was that a note of clove? - lingered in his mouth. Curiosity eyed that delight with interest. 

Elder filled her porcelain teapot with the chosen plants and placed her kettle near the fireplace, throwing another log into its inferno. The roast and all its accompanying potatoes, turnips, carrots, and herbs were keeping warm beside the fire, nestled in an iron pot. The bread cooled on the kitchen counter, a soft towel draped over its pan. Carefully picked datura flowers sat in a vase on the dining table, anticipating the festive night ahead. 

“Everything should be ready just in time,” Elder said. 

“That’s… good…” Omen said as Curiosity flicked her tail back and forth while watching him and his port. Omen narrowed his eyes, staring a stare of all he had seen - the doom of death and dying, the mystery of the veil and beyond it, sights unimaginable to even the most inquisitive of minds - into the unabashed eyes of that confounded feline. 

“Oh look, a few of them are walking down the path now,” Elder said as she fluttered by the window toward the front door. 

“Hmm,” Omen’s low hoot rumbled against the walls. 

Still the cat watched, licking her lips, pupils widening like a predator certain of a catch. 

Omen shook his head and shoulders in a huff. 

That cat was just a creature, just a puny little nothing. He was the Omen, he did not have to suffer his offering being objectified this way. He did not have to - 

Curiosity lept. 

Omen flung his wings out and shrieked. 

The door opened to the faces of several expectant guests. 

“Oh!” Elder gasped. 

“May you wander purgatory for a thousand generations!” Omen howled at the wine-tongued cat as she darted into one of many favorite hiding places. 

The teapot had shattered against the floor.

Silence. 

Omen swiveled his head to face the doorway and his host. 

“Hoo…”

“For all your fretting about having one’s head on straight, how poetic that you should be the one to shatter a very organized schedule!” Elder said.  

“It is quite funny,” said the tall figure in the doorway with a coyote’s face instead of a man’s. 

“It is not ‘quite funny,’ that was my favorite and only teapot,” Elder said. 

“Is it a necessary thing, the tea?” another guest asked. 

“The last time we weren’t able to do our tea ceremony to completion,” Elder said, “Wandering Attention got lost in Anxious Assumption’s library for over a week, Dream Painter ran out of inspiration and we suffered the losing-teeth dream to exhaustion, and Daydreamer got stuck in apocalyptic loops. Oh, this won’t do at all.”

“I assume there is nothing to be done and all is lost?” Anxious Assumption said.

“What we need is a new teapot,” Matter-of-Fact declared. 

“We could simply use Omen, if all we needed was hot air,” coyote-faced Trickster replied. 

“How dare!” Omen squawked. 

“A teapot…” said the squat old man with thick white whiskers beneath his nose. “There was a time, once, you may remember… A cup of tea in your warm hands, the aromatics wafting up into your nose…”

Instantly, the smell of honeysuckle came into Elder’s awareness. She had been Youth, way back then, with unruly curls, inexplicably sticky hands, and a Mother who would wipe her plump, poreless cheeks with tongue-moistened fingertips. It had been a summer day, like many summer days, spent in dry dirt and merciful oak tree shade. The evening had come too soon, and there was her mother, stirring milk into a rose and linden tea, holding it to her nose, humming softly. 

“...a smell that became part of you, not just that once, but for always,” Elder heard the old man saying as she came back into the room. 

Elder looked around at the circle of folk and found misty eyes in more than half. She cleared her throat. “Nose, I appreciate the experience, but that does not a teapot make,” she said. 

The spirit of Nostalgic Smells shrugged his shoulders and settled into a comfortable chair with a small pipe. When he lit it, it smelled like clean linen and milk. “Well that’s what I’ve got,” he said. 

“I’ve an idea!” an imp-like child said, seated next to a dreamy-eyed adolescent with bright red hair and a few red bumps on her chin. 

“Yes?” Elder said. 

“What?” the child replied. 

“Well, that’s Wandering Attention for you,” Nostalgic said. 

“Imagine a world in which teapots sprout from the ground like pumpkins,” the red adolescent began unprompted. “In fact, yes, a whole field of pumpkin teapots, sprouting from porcelain vines, shiny and orange and exactly the right temperature.” 

“While that does sound-”

“And we would ride into that field in a pumpkin-shaped carriage, pluck our teapot from its vine, and then we’d make cinnamon tea with fresh cream and the finest honey from a pumpkin-shaped hive of beautifully proper bees.”

“Ahem. Yes, that sounds quite lovely, Daydreamer, but practically speaking-”

“Could pumpkins also be made into shoes, if they were small enough?” Wandering interrupted. 

Trickster snorted into his handful of roast that he had helped himself to during the commotion. 

Elder stood mute. The Moon’s balance, the Moon’s creativity, its nurturing… the Sun was all power and vitality, but one needed rest… An appreciation for the ordinary, the soft, the quiet. To have the moon enter her blood, taste as she tasted, see what she saw… She was tired of sun-blasted heroics anymore. Of righteous opinions and rushing around. She needed…

The sound of pattering footsteps claimed the attention of the room. From the long hallway toward the bedroom, out waddled a nosy raccoon with a very good nose, holding a gift box. 

“Clutter Recalled,” Elder said, “What have you found?”

The Clutter raccoon hesitated a moment before setting the box on the floor, removing the lid, and revealing the quaint and carefully painted floral decoration of a never-used teapot. 

“That’s…” Elder turned toward a middle-aged woman with her bag in her lap and her lips pursed in martyrdom. “It was a gift from you,” Elder said. 

“So it was,” the woman answered. 

“I’d forgotten all about it. Why didn’t you say anything?”

“You didn’t ask,” Needs Anticipated replied. 

—

As most of the guests returned indoors after the moon’s gentle ceremony, Elder finally settled into her favorite chair beside the hearth fire with Curiosity nestled in her lap. Nostalgic Smells was flipping through old books in the small library, holding them to his nostrils. Daydreamer gazed out of the largest window at the hazy stars. Clutter had found his way to the garden shed and was perfectly at peace rifling through seeds and trowels. Beneath the full moon, the wilder spirits danced and frolicked. Needs Anticipated washed dishes. 

“I do apologize,” Omen said as he emerged from the shadows without warning. Elder jumped, Curiosity hissed. Omen bowed his head. “I apologize once more.” 

Elder patted Curiosity’s head until she calmed. “It’s all right. I suppose you can’t help it. It comes in handy at other times, I’m sure.” 

“Oh, well, certainly it does. There was one time, I startled a king so badly that the death I was bringing an omen about showed up right behind me.”

“Then I thank you for not bringing that acquaintance this evening,” Elder said. 

“He couldn’t make it. He’s awfully busy.”

“Indeed.” 

Omen shifted from one taloned foot to another.

“And so… I am forgiven?”

“You are forgiven,” Elder said. “Teapots break. I apologize for my fussing.”

“The fussing was entirely understandable! It was a lovely teapot.”

“It was. Perhaps it can be a good omen, in the end. At the very least, it explains the wounded looks from Needs these last few months.” 

“She really does pride herself on her intrusiveness.” 

“Well deserved, I’d say; she is often right.”

Omen hooted a low agreement and settled in beside the old woman and her cat. 

Elder placed a hand on her chest, feeling the steady thump of her moon-touched heart. 

“Such beauty in such an ordinary thing,” she said. 

“Life, you mean?”

“Living, yes.” 

“I wonder about that, sometimes,” Omen said. “What it is like to suffer the frustration of expectations being incorrect. I usually know what to expect in advance.”

“And you worry about it anyway.”

A wounded hoot. A contagious laugh. 

“We are as we are,” Elder said. “It is nice to be here.”

“The pomegranates were quite good this time,” Omen agreed. 

Curiosity purred.