Weekly Writing – March 30 2024

He started the preparations three hours before sunset, but still barely finished before dark stretched through the forest. He hadn’t accounted for the shaking in his hands.
Hadn’t admitted, before the damp breeze laughing through the undergrowth and the last molten thread of the sun unravelling away through the trees, that there was a chance he would be afraid. No worker of any great rite was ever described as being afraid.
Not unless it was a cautionary tale. He had no intention of turning out to be one of those, but did anyone ever actually intend that?
He dabbed the last of the elk’s blood around the circle, as close to perfect as trembling hands and imperfect eyes could make it. He had butchered the creature himself, that was vital, and he had held his breath to shield his uneasy stomach from the reek of its viscera. No one would have written about that, either.
He would have to get used to raw and bloody things. Gods, what if he turned out to hate it? There would be no going back. This was his life he was laying down in the centre of the circle, flat on his back, swirling the last of that blood into the gaps of the runes he’d already drawn, charcoal and forget-me-not sketched across every inch of his naked flesh.
Every jut and bramble of the undergrowth poked into his naked back. The breeze blew goosebumps across his stomach and painted thighs. None of the great practitioners were ever described as feeling small, so much smaller, all at once, than what they were preparing to do. The sky was still as much evening rose as deepening blue, beautiful through gaps in the canopy, and he could still have escaped it all, maybe. Wiped off as much of the runework as he could and run naked through the forest for hearth and home.
And washed and dressed himself and stared out the window at the moon in shame. No, he had made up his mind. Maybe what made a great practitioner was doing the work alone and keeping their doubts to themselves, so no one would ever know they had shaken.
Maybe he could still be remembered that way. He closed his eyes on the hopeful crash of colour still overhead and waited to hear the wolves.