Flash Fiction: Cauldron

They went hiking in the Santa Monica mountains and she pulled a branch from an oak tree to make a wand. She carved away at the rough spots while he unpacked their picnic from a high-tech basket. He wasn't much of a lover so far, in her opinion, but he was very much of one, and more, in his own. He didn't understand the wand, or the iron cauldron in her fireplace off Fairfax Avenue, or her tiny silver pentagrams, or the ace of cups. He smirked at things he didn't understand, and she was one of them. He spread out the gourmet items, telling where he had purchased each one, how much it cost, reminding her again how to slice an avocado properly, how to trim the rind from brie, how to tap a hole in a coconut. How to dress and speak and move and breathe. She was carving, floating above, imagining. In her haste to leave him she would take an entire year. She would have drunken sex after an Irish bar on Saint Patrick's night with her future husband.