Work Text:
It’s Annie’s end of day, watching her last visitors trail down the path to town, feeling the melancholia of acute awareness. Her heart is bound to the ebbs and flows of the community, the way of a healer staying attuned akin the sharpened knife. But with it brings shadows. Her wistfulness, however, is non-threatening. She’s known that since she was a young girl, a reality that she attributes to the quick growth of her spiritual skills. Deep breaths ground her in the day’s golden hour, throwing a hue of satisfaction to her heart and thoughts. She feel’s the town’s pulse, and while she may not have the power to steer it’s sways, she’s attuned enough to be witness to it’s flow, capable of taking action when stormy weather is visible ahead.
While she hasn’t been able to divert every tragedy to befall the town, she’s been able to redirect the brackish emotional waves of the affluent side of Clarksdale, surreptitiously setting wards on the fault lines of the racially hierarchized town, and nurturing the natural landscape of allies; compass plants, primrose and milkweed, benevolent helpers in metabolizing the runoff of turbulent full moons. Nights where it only took one drunken entitled aside to escalate to tragedy for the unfortunate coloured soul to happen to be nearby.
Over the years she’s also built her network of protective wards over the shallow wells that sustain her community.
She’s been the cause of many sparks behind the eyes of women shuffling up her stairs disoriented with self doubt and the silent horror of ailment they never imagined their body capable of sustain.
Simple truths, simple permissions to see themselves as the flesh and blood and spirit that they are, finding themselves in the give and take required from the tonic or syrups Annie places in their contemplative hands.
She feels it all in this wave of emotional expansiveness. Sensing beyond herself, under the lovingly watchful eye of her ancestors. Her daughter. To all knowns and unknowns who chose to be there to witness her heart.
Her breaths return from the depths they had settled into, gradually reviving to its typical cadence as she returns to the material present. Round breaths in the fullness of her body, she feels the satisfaction linger as her emotional landscape starts to turn, retreating into shadows where the painful reality of isolation and grief reside. The despair of accepting the reality of her community’s fragility: exploited, deprived and dehumanized as emancipation without freedom continues to be the norm of the day.
There were the personal pains, no more or less important, but adorned by poignant stings that sometimes appeared as quick flashes of rage, sometimes winding rivers meandering through her day like an emotional pull sinking her into despondence. Time was a gift, allowing her to meet her grief and understand it, befriend and accept its presence and in turn meeting herself more intimately. A better listener, better attuned to the precious moments her daughter visits her from beyond the veil.
She circles around her shack, retrieving the small vial of milk she had gifted her precious one that morning.
The emotional knot weighing on Annie’s chest won’t budge, with the batch of dandelion salve and hawthorn syrup she laboured over the past several days, she hadn’t had much time to still her mind, and It seemed like the accumulated chaos was finally ready to spill through. The pain of Elijah’s absence made an appearance, poignantly striking in contrast to a month in dormancy. Or rather a month of near stasis, silently maintaining a charge beneath the surface.
She kept moving, re-entering her home with a hand out to comb through the tall bunch of coneflowers next to the steps back up to her porch, gifting herself a softness as the silky sinews caress her fingers, awakening the calloused and worn skin to lighter, irreverent sensation.
She wanders into her home, grabbing twigs of dried lavender and bergamot, setting a pot of water to heat for washing up.
She knows she won’t be able to fully rest and recover until she does so, removing the dirt, sweat, and lingering grit from her week. Her current restlessness is a symptom of what she knows is her spirit yearning for release.
She waits for the pot to heat by arranging her bath with cooler well-water and herbs and removing her outer layer. The steps are mechanical – functional – in the dreary way that occurs when the soul yearns for stillness.
When she completes her preparation and lowers herself into the welcoming gentle waters, she takes her first relieving sigh of the week.
She stays there for drawn moments, allowing herself the time to soften. Then, with alternating hands she rubs broad, tentative circles down her calves. Stroking her knuckles from top to base does the trick, sending a flurry of sensation she feels spark, some shooting out as far as to reach her lips. She bites down gently on the lower lip as a sort of acknowledgement.
Her hands glide up to more needy territory, her thighs and hips, drawing a steady pace that lets her mind claim every inch on her path.
Her stomach is a sensitive thrill with folds that have her adjusting her hands so that every finger can have a taste.
The echo of a moan fills her mind as her hands reach the underside of her breast, swiping out in a tease, a playful nod to the full-bodied anticipation for more possessive touch.
She can’t deny herself for long. She sweeps the back of her hands down the fullness of her chest and fixes her thumbs on the tip of her nipples in the uptake. Indexes join the fray to pinch at the sensitive peaks, her left hand abandoning its post to grab her breast by the handful.
Her hips sway with purpose, riding the wave of arousal that is building. She feels open, like she’s expanding beyond her material borders to engulf the room, her home. An expansive aura within which she can melt into need and pleasure.
She falls into the motion of riding with her things held tightly together. With a sudden turn of awareness, she finds herself imagining what it would be like to see herself, to know exactly where to palm and feed her building ecstasy.
She’s a strong-willed, powerful, vivid woman. And she deserves – no – is destined – to experience this all consuming pleasure in abundance. She mentally holds on to this sentiment as she adjusts herself to lay back, far enough for her back to lay in the water and for occasional splashes of water to crash to the side of her breast. Her left hand moves back to rolling her nipple between her fingers while the other hand moves back down to comb through the hair between her legs.
She’s suspended in this position, feeling into the release of tension in her pelvic floor, the entire area slowly contracting and expanding with anticipation.
By the time her hand travels further to clear the path and swipe her clit. It’s as sensitive as she expects, but no less thrilling. She widely circles the sensitive clit, a new level of elation awakening within her from the center out. She bites her lip again to keep up with the sensations blooming under her skin.
Letting her fingers drag and linger on their way down to her entrance, then, pressing firmly along the edges. She could breathe more intentionally into her depth when she brought an index to take the lead, sinking an inch and change into her entrance. Two more ventures and her finger was firmly inside her, already feeling for the firm anterior ridge that held the most feeling.
Her other hand kneads her breast insistently, channeling an undercurrent of self-possessiveness fueling her returning sway. It doesn’t take long for her walls to join the push and pull of sensation overtaking her. She’s already experiencing bliss from her ministrations, supplementing it all with the satisfaction of controlling her own pleasure with precision. She adds another finger, expanding in breath and spirit at the feeling of fullness it brings. It’s moments later that she feels a change, her walls take on a taught quality in demand for release.
It builds steadily, but as she starts to truly sink into the sensation, she pulls her fingers from her core, determined to be unhurried. This sentiment guides her hand’s trajectory up to her face, parallel and untouching, but close for the musk of her arousal to beckon her nose.
She breathes deeply, calling her mind to quiet, to empty save for the sensation of her arousal, the smell of it, and the threads they weave through the fierceness of her being, her wholeness.
It feeds her spirit – what she can feel expanding around her even as it wraps her in a protective, affirming embrace. On one plane she’s still, taking in sensation and breathing out the foundation of her defiance. On another plane, she’s leaning into this cosmic embrace, grateful, and as needy as she is wanted. She seals the moment by tasting herself on her fingers, tongue dragging steadily up the index.
Restraint suddenly feels like denial. She returns the hand to her vulva, tapping and pressing alternately before sinking three fingers into her entrance. Her other hand moves down to her clit, starting a steady circling rhythm, like a bass line coaxing the remaining melody in its wake. It takes several unhurried moments for the hand inside her to join the flow, easily sparking the previously roused walls back to their previous level of arousal.
Her full body is swaying again, hips rising, and the movement helps to make up for the limits of only having two hands. Feeling her breast, the soft flesh of her arms and core, moving like reeds in a dense current.
It’s the moment that her mind broadens, looses the sharpness of every individual action and entity in the room, that she feels the pull of release again. This time it’s unquestionably full bodied – her entire being is alive and nurturing the sweetly deep pleasure she rides, every inch of her begging to witness, to be present and channeling the great power she embodies. She may be wired to be a part of greater things, communities, stories, change – but she is also undeniably herself, powerful, blessed and abundant.
Yes… Yes!
A slight increase in pressure is all she needs, reaching for release and accepting it all in one. Her orgasm feels like a claiming, behind the waves of pleasure overtaking her, from her clit and core to the reaches of her head and toes. She lets out a moan, can’t be shy about the overwhelming waves of fulfilled desires she’s gifted herself this evening. Even as she comes down, soft and spent, she closes her eyes and lets the aftershocks visit the layers beneath her skin.
Her path has brought her to witness more painful truths of the world than she can name. But it’s brought so much light and self as well. It’s a duty she has to herself to stay connected to that side of her coin.
She rests in the splendor of her ministrations until she feels centered again, the impulse to move waking on her energetic horizon.
She goes through motions she’s followed hundred of times before – hydrating her skin and hair with creams and oils – but there’s a distinct softness to it. A peace and presence that may not erase the pain and scars, but beckons in lights beyond the sun’s shine, connection beyond the fraught human landscape.
And in the moment, it’s undeniable.
She’s whole.