We Remember || ONC2022

I walk to the water, feel the gentle waves soaking through my pants. I peer into the ocean's mirrored surface and see myself. On my head rests a crown made of shells, pearls cling to my wet hair, and my waist is draped in kelp. Over my shoulder, my black horse leans down to nuzzle me, his breath hot against my cheek. I open my mouth and say—

My alarm woke me at five o'clock. It was market day and I was to meet Pim at six to set up our booth. But, Goddess, what had I been about to say in my dream? I felt bereft at having woken just a moment too soon. Whatever I was going to say, it felt important, but perhaps that was the way of dreaming. You always felt that you'd woken up just as the dream was about to get good.

Last night, I'd set a ring of shells around my bed. The circle climbed up and trailed across my headboard. I'd used slipper shells to encourage dreaming and uncover mysteries and moon snail shells to open my mind. Before I laid each shell, I'd held it in my palm and whispered my intention and my request. While I slept, I wore on my middle finger a large moonstone ring, which Pim had given me permission to borrow. The stone was meant to promote psychic intuition.

While my dreams of the horse were getting more fantastic, I wasn't sure that I had a greater insight into their meaning. Perhaps Pim was right and the time for understanding was not yet. I grabbed a little notebook and pencil from my nightstand and jotted down all the details that I could remember. Celeste would be ecstatic that I'd taken her advice about journaling.

As I recalled my dream-self, bedecked in shells and pearls and wearing nothing but silky, slippery seaweed, I wrote down a few words about how I'd felt. Natural, regal, beautiful. Like myself. Perhaps my dreams were about coming to some new knowledge of myself. A journey to self, guided by my horse. Although that was only half right. The horse was with me and he was important, too. Not just a guide. I dashed off these ideas, then closed my book and got out of bed, stepping over the circle of shells.

I wanted to hang onto that dream impression of myself for as long as possible, so from my dresser drawer, I pulled a little box that held three pearl earrings of increasing sizes. I slid them into the holes that ran up the lobe of my right ear. The pearls came from bay oysters found on Saltash shores, and when I wore them I felt their connection to the sea. I imagined them clustered together in their reef and it reminded me of our home, of the villagers banded together on this beautiful, wild cape. I slipped a cotton shift dress over my head, the fabric dyed with onion skins to a mustardy green. It looked remarkably like the color of the kelp I'd worn around my waist.

I loaded up my pedal bike, a yellow three-wheeler with a large cart attached to the back. We stored our booth display and chairs at Mary and Celeste's house since they lived in town, but I'd bring our wares for sale. Most of our charm work was tailored to clients' specific needs and done in our kitchen, but we had enough requests for certain items that we brought them with us to market every week. Crab claw talismans for fishers to hang on their boats to protect them from storms at sea were always needed. And people liked our fresh goat's milk soap in both lavender and yarrow flavors, even if it wasn't precisely magickal.

After a quick breakfast, I grabbed my jacket and a sweater and plopped my straw hat onto my head. Sunrise on the winding coast road into town was beautiful, a bright, golden light bleeding into the still-dark roof of the sky. On my left were the gently rocking waters of the bay. On my right, the rolling ridges of Duneflower Hill, green with the rugged pitch pines and bayberry shrubs that could survive salt spray, wind, and sandy dirt.

By the time I got to town, the square was already bustling with vendors setting up. Virtually every Saltash business as well as the civil services were represented with a booth on market day. Celeste wheeled out carts of books in hopes of enticing those in the community unlikely to enter the library. Layla Flint and the other local midwives ran a free clinic in the meeting hall. Mary was at her own booth further up the square where the food vendors were gathered. Alder should be there as well, at the table for his father's bakery.