(This is another story that’s bigger than I have time to write right now. So this is a placeholder)

She found that the magic worked better if she started the dance slowly. She could speed up once things got established but the beginning? That had to be super slow. Painfully slow. So slow that she felt like she was barely moving.

She could go pretty fast for the set-up, that didn’t seem to matter. Her ring of salt, the anchors at the edges, the chalk symbols. Those had to be done fresh every time of course, and she had to do them while holding the intention strong in her mind, but the speed was irrelevant. She didn’t have to slow down until after she had started the music.

For her first invocations, she had been very fussy about the music, but it turned out that music didn’t matter all that much either. It all came down to the speed of that first part. If she started slow enough she could be ready when the demon rose into the circle. If she was ready when it arose, then she could lead the dance and bend the creature to her will. If she moved too quickly, then she was at the mercy of the creature instead.

That was how those people died- she had been at the will of the demon. When she led the dance, she simply shaped the lives of those around her. She brought some to her bed, she had others bring her riches, and she chose chaos for the anyone she could bend toward it.

With every dance, she could feel her power growing. It would soon be time to put her true plan in motion.
When the whole village was hers she would march them on the castle and the prince would then become the subject.

She poured the laundry out of the basket onto the bed. She hadn’t folded the last load so she had twice as much to do as usual. She knew that she should probably be folding on a higher surface, to be more ergonomic, or whatever that word was, but it just seemed like too much trouble.

When she was a girl, she would sit on her mother’s bed and crawl around in the clean laundry pulling out the socks to match up. Her mother’s laundry always seemed to include both socks, but that didn’t often happen for Sheila, she always seemed to have odd socks lying around for ages before their partners would wander back into the clean clothes so they could reunite.

She folded everything the way her mother did. Once you learn these household routines, it’s hard to change them without a lot of work. She put the tin can lids inside the can before recycling them, she rinsed her kettle before boiling it and she dusted her tables with an old sock, the way her mother did. Her mother’s clean laundry always had a sort of precision to it, almost the way things were folded in a store. Her mother didn’t use a piece of plastic to keep the clothes folded the same size but they were remarkably uniform all the same. The shirts would sit in a tidy pile, the pants stacked nicely, the socks formed the same size lumps.

Sheila had resented it as a teenager, when she was too old old to do the sock crawl and instead had to stand beside her mother and fold. She only wanted it finished, she only saw the end result, she didn’t care about the evenness of the piles. She couldn’t see her mother’s pleasure in the tidiness of the clean laundry.

She could feel it now though, there was a pleasure in creating order in the things that you could control, in tidying things up, in making things even. It had taken her until her thirties to start to understand. Now she had some of her own ways of making things right but mostly she feel back on what she had been taught.

Her internal chaos was no longer reflected in her lack of housekeeping, instead, she created calm by tidying up. Her bubbling mind could be soothed by folding laundry, by doing dishes, by putting things away. It was meditative in its way, focusing on the details and letting the big things fade away while you worked.

She smoothed the wrinkles out of her mother’s sweater and moved that pile into the drawer. The nighties and her mother’s new housecoat – washed and dried to take that new stiffness out of it- went into the small suitcase on the chair. Once she threw in a tooth brush and some hand cream it would be all packed and then she could go. Her mother would be getting out of surgery soon and Sheila wanted to be there when she woke up.

(This story is missing something. Well, it’s probably missing many things, but, in particular, it’s missing whatever Eloise would say after the paragraph that ends with ‘The idea of that was far stranger than being calm.’ Got any ideas? If I think of something, I’ll add it in later.)

Eloise had always been able to react calmly, no matter what the news might be. She had gotten a lot of praise for that as a child. She always thought it was a strange thing to get praise for since she never had to work at being calm, it was just her first reaction to anything, to take it in and see what developed.

It wasn’t a conscious decision, she wasn’t trying to be mindful, she wasn’t trying to keep calm, she just was. And she managed to be that way on a regular basis.

That’s why she didn’t react with panic when Dana gave her the news, she just took it in.

Okay, Dana was leaving her, what was that going to mean for them both?

“I don’t want to leave you high and dry here, Eloise. That isn’t my intent. I don’t want you to be stuck. I just can’t stay any longer. I think that we both have to admit that things haven’t been right for a long, long time.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, let’s not pretend any different, okay? We know that there have been problems. We haven’t been getting along.”

Eloise’s mind turned to watching movies with Dana in her arms. Them making supper together and laughing until the had to sit on the floor. Dropping Dana at work and Dana being reluctant to get out of the car because she wanted one more minute with her beloved.

Her beloved. That’s what Dana called her. It had been awkward in the beginning because Eloise had never even heard anyone called that. She had been overwhelmed by the emotion implied by the phrase. It felt like a lot of responsibility to be someone’s beloved.

Now, she was apparently no longer Dana’s beloved. She was something else. She wasn’t sure when the transition had occurred, she couldn’t mark a moment in her mind’s eye when things had gone from beloved to this. She couldn’t admit that things were not working because she couldn’t see how they weren’t.

Dana was staring at her. Usually Dana’s face was soft when that happened, but not today, today she was closed to Eloise, there was nothing there for her to see.

“Eloise, are you even listening to me?”

“Of course, I am.” She was confused, what else would she be doing during an important conversation like this? This wasn’t a time to tune out or to do something else.

“Well, aren’t you going to say anything?”

“What would you like me to say?”

“Damn it, Eloise! Why do you have to be so frigging calm all the time? Do you ever get stirred up? Do your emotions ever come out? Can you just let it all go sometime? Aren’t you just going to explode?”

This was even more confusing. What did Dana want from her? Was she supposed to freak out about losing someone who obviously didn’t care about her any longer? Why would she want to be with someone who didn’t want to be with her? The idea of that was far stranger than just being calm.

–

Dana shook her head and smiled but there was no happiness in it. Then, she picked up her purse and walked out.

(The Story-A-Day writing prompt for today was a story in letter form. I had fun with this one.)

Dear Ms. Carew,

As you know, I am not usually one to complain. I generally like to keep a positive attitude and it has been my experience that most situations will improve if left to their own devices. This does not seem to be the case with our new manager, however, and I feel it is time to bring one of the more challenging aspects of the situation to your attention.

On her first day of work ‘Miss Charlene’ (as she requested we call her) was very popular because she instituted an extra break time and she suggested that we put our heads down on our desks for a nap in the early afternoon. I assumed that this was part of a greater workplace wellness strategy, and since it feel in line with some recent research on the matter, I went along with the practice. It felt very strange to nap at work but I found it very refreshing and the quality of my subsequent work was high, so I did not think it would become a problem.

I’m sure that we could have continued with the midday naps and the extra snack for quite some time without negative effects, but her changes didn’t stop there. About two weeks ago, she started taking us all for a walk at about 10:45. Again, being outdoors for part of the workday made sense to me, even though it was a little disruptive, so, in the interest of workplace harmony, I encouraged the naysayers to go along with the plan. I could not go along with her suggestion that we all hold a skipping rope to keep us together in a line while we walked but otherwise the excursion was enjoyable.

Please note, I have also found ways to adjust to her morning ‘sharing circle’ and her ‘sing-a-long time’ in the afternoon, so I don’t think that I can be accused of being anything less than a team player.

I cannot, however, go along with Miss Charlene’s latest approach to managing her team. When Steve* in IT was unable to make his deadline on our latest project, she did not offer him more support or encourage his coworkers to help him work through the database issues. Instead, she made him sit in the corner and (this is a direct quote) ’Think about what you’ve done, young man.’ After an hour, which I believe he spent napping, he was allowed to return to his desk.

Personally, I find this method infantilizing and I do not think that they improve productivity in any way. In fact, I am beginning to think that ‘Miss Charlene’ may not be management material and may, in fact, be a preschool teacher. I believe this bears further investigation…

Oh, Miss Charlene is singing the snack time song, so I have to go before Jenny takes all of the goldfish crackers again, but please contact me at your earliest convenience regarding this matter. (Miss Charlene’s methods, I mean not Jenny and the goldfish, I can handle that meanie on my own.)

Yours truly,

Elizabeth

*I believe in her account she will refer to him as ‘Little Stevie’- these diminutives may also bear looking into.