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Rum and Raisin
My name is Gwen Higgins. Well, my name is Guinevere Isolde Higgins Sharma if we're being completely honest but that's such a mouthful, isn't it? And it's technically not even correct since me and my Arjun were never married, formally, at least. I mean before graduation we did jump over the bonfire and pledge ourselves to each other for a year and a day, even though the bonfire was only a small magical flame, with a sheet of paper I fed it curling up into ash to make it a symbolically real fire, but that is neither here nor there. To me it counts. And in fact marriage is an artificial construct of the patriarchy anyway, so actually our little ceremony was more real than anything else, in my opinion, but still. I don't like to use my full name. The Sharma's wouldn't thank me. In fact, they'd actively hate it, and while I don't think they'd come after us - we're a long way from Mumbai after all - it's still better not to tempt fate, isn't it? I don't want to upset anyone. Live and let live, and turn the other cheek. It's how I try to live my life and I'd like to hope that my chakras are as clear as I can make them, but thinking about the Sharmas in too much detail threatens that.
It was such a shining moment of hope, you see. Galadriel only really remembers the rainbows from the fountain and some people that looked a bit like her for the first time ever but for me... It was such a cruel thing to do to us, I think, to promise safety and support and a chance to belong, to have a family again, and then. Arjun's grandmother. The prophecy. And I watched it all crumble to dust in a second. The look in their eyes, turning to hate. To realise that such good people, strict Hindus who carefully avoided even pulling a hint of malia, were all suddenly realising that they were capable of it after all. To even begin to think about murdering a small child who was their own kin... It was all in their eyes, in the atmosphere, and in that moment I knew they would turn on us, on Galadriel, and that the hope they had offered us was the true cruelty and that they knew that too.
I mean - it was horrible for us as well, of course it was, but what a shock it must have been for them to realise that they weren't better than other people at all. For them to know that their shining goodness was just as grubby as the rest of us, if push came to shove. To know that they could even think such a thing when they hadn't even realised it had been possible before - that they had to work at being decent human beings just like everybody else.
I felt so sorry for them.
Neapolitan
I met him in India too, as it happens. A very kind taxi driver had let Galadriel and me off at the airport and I was on the concourse looking at the flight boards. He was just starting to sweep through with his entourage - he doesn't like them, I found out, but apparently an entourage is almost inevitable at his net worth - so there he was, designer sunglasses and all, and I was blinking a little, and my darling girl was beginning to squirm to be put down, when he stopped suddenly and stared at us. I don't think he knew why and I certainly didn't either but, well, karma, you see. Sometimes it knows when you need help.
He offered us a seat in his jet. A whole plane of his own, that's how rich he was! And he was flying to London, wasn't that handy? Of course, we must accept a lift, he wouldn't hear of anything else. Payment? He didn't just refuse, he actively looked hurt, and that was when it all became real to me somehow. Karma knows when you need help. I looked again, at the bags under his eyes behind the sunglasses and the twitches in the always moving hands and the lines of care carved in the cheeks hidden by his sharp goatee.
The plane was very comfortable and Galadriel could run up and down the aisle as much as she wanted but I sat curled up in one of the leather reclining armchairs and waited. It took a while, of course, and I had to accept a green tea and some snacks - dried blueberries, how lovely that billionaires choose to eat healthily when they have so much - but eventually he calmed down and looked out of the window a little blindly. Then at last he talked - about his dead father who he could never please and his friends who seemed to constantly be putting themselves in danger and his lovely girlfriend and how he wasn't good enough for her. Poor boy. He was older than me but that didn't seem to matter.
Karma knows when you need help. All I needed to do was listen.
Mint Choc Chip
"No! Shan't! You can't stop me!" said my darling, my angel, my pain in the backside.
She'd always had an opinion, my Galadriel, from when she was a tiny baby, grumbling away to herself in her crib, but now she was getting bigger, her opinions were definitely getting... louder. There was a pause of a few seconds as she drew in a breath to start shouting again and I could hear the pattering of rain start on the felt of the yurt. I find it soothing. It reminds me of Galadriel. Even though Galadriel isn't soothing at all.
We both looked at the line of ants as they marched across the floor. They were on the trail of food perhaps or just looking to get away from the rain.
"They have as much of a right to life as you do," I suggested gently. But Galadriel didn't want to hear that, was too young perhaps. How could I explain that pulling malia, even tiny amounts, from living creatures would stain her soul irrevocably?
"They're icky," said Galadriel, firmly but honestly. She was never anything else, my girl. No comforting social lies for her. I wondered if she'd ever learn them.
"That's not their fault."
I tried to reach out with my aura, to wrap her in calmness and love, but she was getting too big for that. Her own developing magic was beginning to overwhelm mine. She was so special, my Galadriel. There had to be another way.
Her aura felt as cool as the rain, rumbling with distant thunder from her tantrum. I could taste mint and bergamot and dark bitter chocolate. It gave me an idea.
"If you leave them to their snack, we'll find something nice for you to nibble on too. What would you like?"
I knew before she even drew breath what it would be. "Ice cream!" shouted Galadriel. Everything had been ice cream lately, even when it was freezing, even in the rain.
I mentally sighed and reached for my wellies. "Come on then," I said. We'd have to go to the village for ice cream.
Her dark eyes stared into mine, looking for the trick, looking for the lie. I tried to never lie to my daughter and she knew that, but it never stopped her looking. I hoped it never would. Instead she caught sight of a spider dangling from a bamboo strut and her eyes narrowed in thought.
I sighed again. There would be a lot of ice cream in my future, I could tell. I hardly needed a prophecy to see that.
Salted Caramel
I never expected to see her again. Arjun's mother. Somehow there outside my yurt in the Radiant Moon commune like some kind of exotic bird. The sight was as unlikely as it was unwelcome. But I didn't really care, I doubted I even raised an eyebrow, although I backed away from the door to let her pass. It was that time of year, you see, graduation quickly followed by induction at the Scholomance and my darling girl, my Galadriel, had been gone from me for two years. She was always in my thoughts but it was worse at that time of year and so I was feeling rather low. Perhaps a little uncharitable. So I wasn't as polite as I might normally be. After all, I owed her nothing and she was in my home.
She didn't beat about the bush, at least. Standing there like a queen, she declaimed in Marathi, which I'd learnt while sweating blood and falling in love in my final year in the Scholomance, she declared, "It is happening again."
I put the kettle on. There is nothing better for thinking than a nice cup of tea.
She sat and drank it too. The rules of hospitality. And then she said she felt she owed me - us - the new prophecy her mother had made. It was grudging, but I could still see the guilt in her eyes. Galadriel was still her blood.
The new prophecy was simple. A lake reflecting a particular constellation. Another pregnant child fighting through monsters, only to lose their love. It felt like a horrid reflection. It felt like losing Arjun all over again. How awful. I didn't want that for Galadriel even though I wouldn't have changed my own fate, not and be without her.
But I couldn't let it happen without trying to warn my girl, could I? I've been fighting the first prophecy all of our lives, so it wouldn't be impossible to fight this one too. Before induction next year I had to let her know, I had to try. Goodness, I would have to try and buy space with a new inductee. I could do that. 'Stay away from Orion Lake...'
+
Black Cherry
I hold a meditation circle every day. Sometimes it's just for those of us at Radiant Moon. Sometimes we have guests, like my billionaire. Some people come for the day, or for the week, or regularly trek up from the village like clockwork. People come and go as they need to, as their spirits move them. I've never minded that, people should do as they feel is right.
That day, my billionaire had flown in specially. He'd felt the need for a spiritual cleanse, he said. All my Radiant Moon regulars were there, and those from the village. All of them. We barely fit in the largest tent, the communal one where the community singalongs are held. I was surprised but it made me feel warm, it made me feel loved.
Everything happens for a reason. I believe that. But I don't believe that we always understand that reason. Or like it. Afterwards, years later, I understood in that moment my Galadriel must have been battling a mawmouth in the Scholomance library.
It was as I was calling for focus on our breathing, slow and deep, as I began the shared visualisation. Picture yourself walking along a path in a forest, I said. It was such a beautiful forest, dewey with shafts of sunlight through the trees, and then... Suddenly he was there, my darling Arjun, walking towards me, somehow both as I remembered him as a teenager but also as he might have been now, still too tall and too thin, but his shoulders were broader and his eyes had laugh lines. He walked along the path towards me and as he reached me he looked at me and gently smiled. He looked at me like he was at peace, as though he was finally unburdened.
"She did it," he said, in a soft murmur, like the sea whispering on a shore, "Our girl. She set me free." And then he walked on. Slowly but inexorably he walked past me and I couldn't stop him. I had to keep walking ahead and I had to leave him behind in my past. I knew that. I knew it was the right thing to do but I also couldn't help but weep, knowing it was the last time I would ever see him.
It was over. But when I opened my eyes, at least I wasn't alone.