Regina’s father was a sorcerer from Kyrakkos. Soon after Josefina had given birth to a son, he’d taken the boy and left Faerie. Regina blamed her mother for her father’s abandonment.
Josefina ran the back of her fingers against her cheek. Her skin felt warm. “That hot gust?”
Regina offered pursed lips and an impatient shake of her head.
Josefina returned her gaze to the bowl, the air remained still. With reluctance she wrapped the basin with the same thick cloth the dwarf had used to cover it. She re-tied the twine to create a handle. Despite its size, the bowl was light and easy to carry.
At night, Josefina slept with her hand resting upon the bulky package. Her dreams became vivid and troublesome. She kicked and moaned, often waking her daughter. Regina said nothing, only moved her pallet farther away.
The pair veered from their original path and found themselves before the roar of the Great White Sea. Josefina quickened her pace. Regina dawdled.
Josefina knelt before the tide. She scooped up sea water with both hands and poured it into the bowl. When it was full, she carried the full basin back toward the beach, away from the waves.
An aching melody drifted above the roar of the ocean. Its forlorn sound sliced opened Josefina’s heart. The bitter loss of her son poured out. She bowed her neck and peered more closely into the basin. The song became louder and more anguished. The melody rose higher and higher, fluttering around the muannaye like a wounded bird.
A black flame unfurled beneath the water’s surface.
The bowl grew warm to the touch. Josefina remained mesmerized. A promise rose from its depths, annihilation of both pain and joy.
Exquisite emptiness.
Josefina gazed into the Void.—Josefina and the Magic Basin, Isolt's Enchantment
Quantum Musings: A team of scientists announced on Thursday that they had heard and recorded the sound of two black holes colliding a billion light-years away, a fleeting chirp that fulfilled the last prediction of Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
That faint rising tone, physicists say, is the first direct evidence of gravitational waves, the ripples in the fabric of space-time that Einstein predicted a century ago … It completes his vision of a universe in which space and time are interwoven and dynamic, able to stretch, shrink and jiggle. And it is a ringing confirmation of the nature of black holes, the bottomless gravitational pits from which not even light can escape, which were the most foreboding (and unwelcome) part of his theory. — Dennis Overbye
Did the gravitational wave of Josefina's grief (black hole) over the loss of her son collide with the grief (black hole) of another mother—"a billion light years away"? Did the force of this "collision" excite quanta and/or ignite mirror neurons to manifest as heat? Did the basin serve as a conductor, the particle accelerator?
Richie Sambora's cool song "Church of Desire" captures Josefina's plight:
Woke up in a cold sweat
In the middle of the night
Seems like a lifetime
When you're wondering who's wrong or right
One confession would resurrect the truth
Revenge or forgiveness for sins between me and you
Now we dance with the devil down lonely
Street, lonely street
Looking for a window in the house of tears
Living in hell, I pray the rain disappears
I'm headed for a breakdown
And the fever runs higher
As I kneel at the altar I can feel your fire
In the church of desire
Church of desire
You never find a reason why love falls from grace
Some kind of voodoo, like a spirit you can't embrace
There's a voice in the mirror, and a ghost in my heart
That relives the passion before we were torn apart
Now we dance with the devil down lonely
Street, lonely street
Looking for a window in the house of tears
Living in hell, I pray the rain disappears
I'm headed for a breakdown
And the fever runs higher
As I kneel at the altar I can feel your fire
In the church of desire
Church of desire
Now we dance with the devil down lonely
Street, lonely street
Looking for a window in the house of tears
Living in hell, I pray the rain disappears
I'm headed for a breakdown
And the fever runs higher
As I kneel at the altar I can feel your fire
In the church of desire
Church of desire
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