C-TWT-011
Barista: Jennifer Hepburn
Date: Feb-4-2020
Receipt: C-TWT-011
Subject: Witches
I looked through the planchette again.
I had to. We had arrived and the Sacred Tree loomed above like it had roots in every moment of history. If there was ever a time to see, it was now. I expected ███████████ again. The neon-bathed ziggurats. The endless city. Maybe even the █████, where ███████ once ruled. If not ██████, if not the █████, perhaps some “true” center of ███████████. Some long lost and forgotten pole in the Crags of ██████████ or the Shards of ███████████.
But this time, I didn’t see the ███████████.
I didn’t see any █████ I knew.
What I saw was smaller. Quieter. A hill, much like the one we now stand on. But atop it was not the ███████████. Just a small tree. An apple tree. Its branches were thin, silver-veined, and trembling with wind I couldn’t hear. Around it were dandelions. Specks of golden blood scattered in the grass. Hundreds. Maybe thousands. Not gone to seed, still yellow and whole. The kind from children's drawings. And there was someone sitting at the base of the tree.
I couldn’t see their face… I could barely see their form. The light around them was so bright it hurt. Not ████. Not ██████. Just... ████████. Like a ████ you couldn’t stop ███████. I tried to focus, to look just a little closer. And then the headache hit. Like a migraine from the soul outward. I dropped my planchette. Nearly blacked out. I think someone called my name, but I can’t be sure.
The only thing I know for certain was the phrase that rang out in my skull:
Over and over again.
Still echoing now.
I… don’t know what that place was. Or who that figure was. But it felt outside the █████████. Outside even the Otherworld. It didn’t belong anywhere… which is why, I think, it felt like it belonged everywhere.
Decaffeinate Receipt
"Half Kircher Decan."
Lateral Logic | Research | 1 Word