Writing Study: Scene: Setting

Caroline shivers. The night is unseasonably warm, but she can't suppress a second shiver. She quickens her pace through the rows of gray tombstones. Their orderly rows make her feel like she is rushing past the teeth of some huge beast ready to devour her. Dew on the clipped grass chills her bare feet, and dampens the peeling black polish on her toes. "I should not have taken this job, Bill."

The ear-piece in her left ear transmits Bill's basso voice from the cellphone in her pocket. "Well, jobs haven't been coming, so you need it."

Frustrated, Caroline brushes her hair behind her other ear. "Are you blaming me again for that apartment fire? I can't help that the clients didn't give us all the information we needed."

"If you hadn't been rude to them, they might have."

"Did they need to treat me like I was dirty? It's not like my curse is infectious."

"And that's why they treat you like you're contagious. You treat it like a curse and not a gift."

"You try living with it."

"Like you said, not contagious, so you can't give it to me to live with it."

"Har. Har. Well at least this graveyard isn't as old as some. No mausoleums. But there have been no taibhse níghe here in a while. Whatever's here has been here for a while, and... I think it's stalking me."

"The request mentions that it has started to become active in the daytime."

"What?! You didn't tell me that. I didn't prepare for that!" Looking around, Caroline mumbles, "I thought this felt wrong." She turns to her right and sprints to the nearest fence.

"That matters?"

"Yes, Bill. That matters! Déithe"

"Sorry."

Taking deep even breaths to keep the oxygen flow steady, Caroline pants, "Read. The. Book. Or. I. Get. A. New. Agent."

"Okay. Okay. I won't let it happen again."

"Crap!" Caroline narrowly dodges a small grave marker that flies up from its place towards her head. She speeds up to avoid the next marker as it flies behind her. She tucks into a roll, getting her light cotton ceremonial shift and pantaloons wet with the dew, making them cling to her skin. Another marker flies over her. Caroline stops, crouches and dumps the contents of a small felt bag. She grabs one of the tiny cotton bundles tied with different colors of yarn. She yanks an athamé from its sheath and cuts a slice on her scarred left palm. She does not bother to untie the cotton bundle but slices it open, dropping the comfrey it contained into the blood welling in her palm.

Caroline jumps as far as she can from her crouched position. A fraction of a second later, another grave marker flies through the space where she was. She uses the athamé to slit her thin shift down to her belly, then places the handle in her mouth. With the fingers of her right hand she mixes the comfrey with her blood. Pushing her pantaloons down slightly, she spreads some of the mixture over her coccyx bone. She collects more of the mixture and spreads some on her exposed solar plexus. With one finger dabbed in the mixture, she puts a single dot of the mixture on the center of her forehead. Her first, third and sixth chakra now anointed, she snatches the athamé from her mouth and concentrates her will from her solar plexus to her root and intones "Tegere!"