edgy-gnomes

[edgy-gnomes]

idk its just freewriting and i don't want to save this on a doc on a shared computer

Upstairs, the old woman is in the receiving room, playing her part artfully. She speaks with a croaking voice; her hands are twisted from years of piano and embroidery. Her long life spent watching curiously the people around her has given her the squinting, peering eyes that a witch should have (though all she sees these days is blurry light and shadows as things move). The network of gossipy, elderly women she has tea with on Tuesday mornings make her seem mysteriously in-the-know. Her part is receiving the clients.

I moved carefully in the storeroom, inspecting ingredients from the groaning shelves, from the bursting drawers, from every horizontal surface except my workbench. It’s a mess of vials and jars and bottles; drying herbs hanging from the ceiling; crates stacked and pushed along the walls. My lair and my kingdom.  My part is the magic.

I despise customer service, but in the storeroom, I can hear the conversation through the vents. I hear them describing staring at the dark ceiling for hours, tossing and turning, getting up to read, exercising until they’re exhausted and then staring into the dark even more, until the dawn cruelly beckons another tired day.

Its plagued them for months. They’ve tried normal remedies - chamomile, lavender, velarium root.  I breathed deeply through my nose, brewing the concoction in my mind before I have anything in my hands. My nose had it all, in the seemingly senseless and overwhelming room, I could pick up the scents of everything I would need.

Oil wrung from the roots of Silverine Coast seagrasses. The rough coast makes harvesting the grasses and their roots dangerous and difficult, incredible strength, skill and luck is the only way it happens. It smells like a beach filled with rotting fish and seaweed. To ensure patience and relieve stress.

The moulted exoskeleton of a Throne Wasp, a species who will feed themselves to their queen if they have nothing else to give her. The jar is sealed to contain the stench, their venom is a smell most people recognise instantly. To give the consumer advantage during flight or flight situations – or in low doses, to reduce the instinct.

Tea sets from pixies; colourfully decorated teacups, teapots and saucers, faintly smelling of the tisanes they brewed. Usually traded for once the set breaks or starts to wear out – which is often. To increase social functioning.

Dried alpine dandelions collected from the Thealo Monastery, high in the mountains, innately imbued with the magicks of the Monks who train their minds, bodies and spirits for enlightenment. They smell like dandelions, of course, and the cold mountain air. To energise.  

Mushrooms from the back of a Oguine, a species with quick and energetic younglings, and huge elderly so slow the forests around them grow into their fur until they are simply a part of it. The mushrooms, simple white cup mushrooms, have been innately magicked and smell of the forest after a rain, rotting leaves and fallen branches. To slow racing thoughts, an effect enhanced when mixed with Silverine sea grass oil.

Smoke from fire blossoms, stunning flowers that smoulder and disappear overnight, thickened into a gel. It remains ghostly feeling like nothing, weighing nothing, but it sticks to your fingers and moves like honey. It smells wonderfully of woodsmoke with a floral undertone. I once saw a sorcerer who soaked her hair in it, for the smell and for the visual effect of the wispy shadows.  To induce tamer emotions as the sun sets.

Roast the thorn wasp and the dandelions until fragrant and the mushrooms to a crisp. Beat and grind together the dry ingredients with a mortar and pestle, into a fine powder. On a flat surface, mix it with the sea grass oil and then the fire blossom gum – a liquid and then a gel. Cut into 12 sections, weighed to be each 10 grams. Rolled into balls between my palms, coated in cornflour to keep them separated, and scooped into a linen bag.  The concoction smells like sitting by a fire with the specific calm that comes after an impossible task is done and behind you. Like a deep forest, bitterly cold but full of wonderous life. Like an imminent danger you know you are equipped to handle when it comes. What a wonderful feeling to rest to.

I placed it on a special dish that will summon the bag into the receiving room, as the old woman asks for it. She loves her dramatic effects. The Innate Magic, thrown in with the clay, gleamed with soft unnatural light as the spell primed itself. The spell painted onto the dish, in golden Acquired Magic, shone brightly as it was activated, a designated spot on the coffee table upstairs would be glowing with the same writing. The bag disappeared. It could look like conjuring if you couldn’t see Innate Magicks, a deliberate choice. The Old woman does love her theatrics.

I hear the rest of the talking, instructions to melt one ball in boiled water and drink it as tea before they sleep. I hear the client leave. They’d need to be cursed to resist that magic, they’ll surely sleep tonight.

I hear the door knocking and a new client enters. I breath in deeply as the old woman distils their afflictions and intentions, a hundred scents mixing. The finished potion will smell like finding beauty in the terrible ocean, like the steadiness in your steps of a practised dance – and like magic. The seasickness elixir is ready in my mind like I’ve already made it.