The Ace of Cups (Reversed)

The silence was deafening. My stomach was turning into intricate knots while I waited for him to respond. I mentally reached out to him, but quickly pulled back thinking that I shouldn’t. But, just as quickly as I was withdrawing those mental tendrils within myself, I felt him reach back and latch onto me with the determination of a man whose life depended on it. I gasped, and felt the familiar sensation of pain course through my entire being. For once though, it wasn’t my pain…it was his. After about three minutes of this, I broke through the mental agony and spoke.

“I already know why you’re calling…”

His mental sigh was louder than what he had planned it to be. He released his grip on me. Then answered

“She’s been snooping. Going through my thoughts. Digging way too deep. But she wasn’t able to see what almost happened last night. That was a Goddess send.”

“She wasn’t able to see…why not? Did you cast a blocking spell before you slept?”

“No. I was too tired. What about you? Did things seem tense when you woke up this morning?”

Thinking back to everything that transpired while I was at home with my husband, I came to the conclusion that nothing seemed out of place. He acted no different towards me than what he usually did. He was completely oblivious.

“Everything was normal. We are supposed to be going out on a date today when he is done at the office.”

I felt S- wince to the word ‘date’. “Sorry…,” I whispered back. We sat there for a few more minutes letting our emotions flow freely. No words were needed to express what we were going through. We didn’t need to even see each other to know the hurt that was deeply etched across each of our faces.


“You don’t have to do this. There are ways around this…,” I said sounding like a child again.

I felt S- steel himself for what he was about to say, and then…nothing. His emotions were clipped. He had grown cold. I almost fainted from the force of the transition. I physically felt Delia wrap an arm around my shoulders, and push my locs out of my face with her other hand. Her warmth was comforting. I leaned in accepting the strength, the grounding, the support. I fought back the tears that were welling up in my eyes. He finally spoke.

“I can’t do this anymore. I can’t be with you.”

His words came through loud and clear, icy almost, but with a hurt that pulsed through every syllable he uttered. I didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to respond. Every bit of who I was started to shatter at that moment. Every image of him…every memory I shared with him flashed before me, and then faded into nothing, as if it had never existed.

“No! You can’t take them from me,” I screamed over the phone.

His words were laced with a spell to erase my memories of him. I grabbed onto Delia and did something that any witch with a sense of ethics would never do, and that was to steal energy from another being . I worked my magick fast without hesitation and broke his spell, reversing any damage his might have caused, and I blocked him from my thoughts . I felt the last threads of him recoil as if he had been cut with a sharp hot blade. When all was said and done, I collapsed from the surge of energy I received from my friend. She was behind me panting heavily and none to happy. I would have to deal with her anger later. Right now I needed to finish this with S-.

“You want to be in pain? You want to have these memories of me, and know that nothing can be done to bring us together? I can’t let you suffer like that. I WON’T let you suffer like that.”

“It is not for you to decide, S-. It is not for you to decide how I walk my path. Just like I cannot and will not remove the imprint of myself that I have made upon you, YOU have NO right to do that to me."

What I said seemed to have sunk in with him. He became very quiet, then said, “I understand.”
We sat there in silence again…waiting…holding each other mentally, wishing that we could physically be in each other’s arms. I released my hold on him, and sighed.

“You know I am not going to give up on you. I am going to fight.”

“I know, but I can’t…I just can’t be with you. “

“You can, you are just letting you sense of obligation make you feel like you can’t.”

“J- we can’t see each other anymore…for anything.”

The “anything” stabbed through my heart, and I grabbed the edge of the table for a sense of stability. I started to open my mouth to tell him what I had felt since the first time I saw him all those years ago. What I felt the night before when we were about to join ourselves as one with the Goddess & God as witness. I opened my mouth tears flowing, heart pounding, and started to let the words flow,

“I lo…”

“Shit! She’s trying to enter my thoughts again. I’ve gotta go. I am sorry J-, I truly am.”

He was gone. That was it. I didn’t get a chance to tell him that I loved him. I needed him to KNOW that I LOVED HIM. But now, that chance was gone. I sat on the floor, sobbing, hurting, ripped apart internally, and then…and then…the anger welled up. The pain turned into the pure fire of rage and hate. And I felt it flow from my core out though my arms and my hands. I rose, set aflame by the power that flowed through me. I saw my reflection in Delia’s mirror portal into the Other World. My eyes glowed red, the flames that encircled the outline of my body licked at me gently but did not burn me. Each step I took closer to the mirror burned my foot prints into the floor. I stopped two feet from the portal saw the still flowing tears evaporate into steam on my burning cheeks.

“Oh My Goddess…J-!”

I turned to see Delia with hurt in her eyes as if she felt the shockwaves my pain was sending out to the space around me. I shook as the rage and heartache, built to its crescendo , and let out a scream that shook the foundations of the building, and broke every glass window and display case within my friend’s store, and in every shop front within a 3 block radius.

Then…I stopped. The flames extinguished. My vision blurring before the sweet embrace of darkness took me. The last thing I remembered before I relinquished myself to it, was Delia catching me in her arms and saying, “Sleep child, sleep.”