I want to cook the soup tonight, but I can’t. The moon is half-full and the air is cool. When those conditions meet, I must not gather from the garden. That’s what I’ve always known. I don’t have any vegetables stored inside; its been a harsh winter. So, my mother’s recipe book eyes me suspiciously from the corner of my cabin and I hear the wind whipping on the eaves; another foreboding omen. I wonder what I will awake to tomorrow, with these conditions met. A pillaged courtyard? Toppled trees? Screams of a distant storm?

My bed is calling, but on foreboding nights I must not sleep in the bed. It collects the emotions and spreads them into your dreams. So I sleep on the floor of the kitchen, wanting nothing more than my mother’s soup.