Ostara
Morgan loved the spring rite of Ostara. This one would be her last before moving to Montana to join her brother. She looked forward to leaving her mother behind, with her constant needy demands and unhealthy search to replace her father. Tonight’s rite of spring would be special.
Grandma and Grandpa had traveled for the week to join their family in Ireland for only the second time since they’d come to America. She had the house to herself, and she was planning her first Skyclad rite. Her gossamer robe of the sheerest white lace lay in readiness at the foot of her bed. She’d bathe in preparation, wash her hair with lilac scented shampoo to bring out the highlights in her long auburn hair. She’d inherited the color from her grandmother and her mother never let her forget it. Her deep blue eyes mirrored hers too.
There was a perfect circle of stone, with sentinels placed around it, in the lea. In the midst of the bluebonnets, the grey granite stood serenely, out of place here in southern Texas. Tiny crocuses bloomed in a carpet in the center of the circle, between slabs They were the reason Grandpa Harry had chosen this site to build their home, with the hopes of filling it with a laughing carefree family. Gloria had been their only child. Gloria, it was easier to think of her mother by name, she’d become the curse of her life after Daddy passed away.
Morgan hummed, an ancient Irish ballad she heard for the first time at a Celtic concert, where the flashing toes of step dancers had struck a chord of deep response. Her own feet tapped in rhythm, never truly settling until haunting ballads of lost love brought her to tears. Her own heart sore, fresh from a broken relationship with a man who seemed perfect but exposed a horrid rotten core. She couldn’t understand how she’d become a victim again. Her trust in him shattered in one ugly night of passion gone evilly sideways.
This year Ostara fell on March 20th, the moon at exactly half. Morgan thought It fitting, as she stood at the edge of a complete change. Everything hanging in the balance, waiting for her to take the next step to freedom from her life in Texas.
As she relaxed in the bath, her crystals, the lovely sodalite necklace her Grandma had given her on her 18th birthday, and the lapis bracelet she received when she’d turned 14 lay in the sink in a saltwater bath to cleanse them as well. They would be all that adorned her when she called the Goddesses to her in the stone circle.
Would the Goddess Gaia come to her? Her grandmother had been named for the Goddess of the Earth. She felt like this Ostara would give her the guidance, the sign she needed to convince herself she was right to make the break and head north.
