Love was walking away again, chasing it wasn’t an option this time. For maybe the first time since he could remember, he was worth more than this. He was worth more than the begging and the pleading, the questions and the answers, the tears and the stars he would see if he closed his eyes that tight again. She walked past the windows and around the corner, out of sight. His heart exploded in anger and misery.

‘Bring her back’ it demanded of him. His own heart would always be his worst enemy, but this time his ego was gone, there was no more pain that would push past the summit of his self-love. She would come back or she wouldn’t, either way he would survive.

‘No, screw that’, he told himself. He would do more than survive.

Saturday afternoons seemed to breed these fights. Why didn’t matter, not that he knew why anyway, but what did matter to him now was that he could breathe again. A deep, full breath, the kind that makes your head light, rushed into his chest. The smell of honeysuckle came in through the kitchen windows. Suddenly he could hear the birds and the neighbors dogs, the sounds of cars on the street below and the bamboo wind chimes hanging outside.

Opening his eyes he sees the coffee pot sitting on the white counter tops. The kitchen is all her. The stainless steel toaster oven, the coffee pot blinking 12:00 eternal, the metal utensils she still uses on the non-stick pans. The whole thing is her, where is he in this house? What can he point to that lets anyone know he is alive and living here?

A painting on the wall that he would have chosen? Nope. The furniture he wanted at the store? Uh uh. Oh wait, the color of the paint in the bedroom! Wait, no, she talked him into that one, not really his choice - so it doesn’t count.

Maybe it was time to paint.

The stars are shining, billions strong in the pure black night sky. No fires are lit, no candles light the path to the sacred place this night; tonight is full of prayer and magic. Seven women stand clustered together, wrapped in white linen, bare feet in the thick green grass. They are silent, gaze upon the skies, each reciting the timeless mantra in their own minds, over and over, perfectly synchronized in each syllable, breath and heartbeat.

On this moonless night, like countless before, energies moved over the land, calling out to the energy locked within these human bodies, and waiting to be heard. From the land of Twilight they came forward, as gods, faeries and nightmares alike, formed and broken by the humans who bowed to them. Tonight, the energy that had once been called king and god was listening and gaining strength.

The linen wrapped woman in the center of the group dropped to her knees, closed her eyes and smiled. He was close now, he had heard them and came from the other side.

Thunder-Father, Rain God, Life-Bringer; these names and others, since before humans walked the Earth, he had been called. He could will the rains to fall and the fields to bring forth a rich bounty, but was nothing unless remembered now. Manipulating matter was mere thought for him, but gaining form was something beyond his grasp without the intentions of those who believed.

“Thunder-Father, we call to you this night. Mother Moon hides her eyes and now is your time. Come to us and step upon the lands once more,” she said looking into the skies above.

A glow fills the small valley, like the soft luminescence of a giant firefly, and then; a nameless one walks back into our reality.