Unholy union

In nothing but the light from a candle he drew a circle in the altar and drew the names. 

With a long white beard with yellow around the moustache because of the tobacco used for divination. 

With a hand full of rings he moved the hair off his face to see what he was doing and opened his book. Black leather blue ink, masterful in the stroke of every word in cursive. 

Inside the circle on top of the names something to represent both of them the man and the woman. 

The circle, made with a red string left overnight to bathe in moonlight and dipped in morning dew collected from last spring. 

He started to read the words without rushing, letting every word fill the space from one corner of the room to the hallway to the next room. 

As the voice echoed through the house, the string moved closer to the names. Shrinking and wrapping around the objects on top of the names. 

As the fire from the candle shrunk it grew at one end of the string, which was now fully wrapped around the objects. 

His words echoed around the house almost rhythmically letting one word come back as he started the next and before the last one was fully gone. 

The fire lit the objects without burning them and the string was also intact as he said the last word mixed in with the rest of the echoes, the fire turned blue. 

The silence that followed the last word slowly dissipated coming back from the other corner of the house taking with it the fire that then went back to the candle. 

On the other side of the word, the man lay in his bed looking at the ceiling wondering why his cheek was hurting if it had been a while since his last smoke. 

She was crying, it was another night that he was gone and nothing seemed to bring him back, in the center of her chest there was no pain but cold, a cold that almost burned.

The man started to write letters that would never be sent to a woman whose name he dare not say. 

The words started to come to her, like whispers on a cold night and they didn't have her name.  

As the man wrote, it came back. The pain in the chest that wouldn't leave but it wasn't always there. Every word on the paper would bring a sting uncomfortable enough to be noticeable but nothing else. 

As she walked, the stings would match with every tier that would form and then inevitably fall from her eyes. In her heart, she felt the warmth that was there once was now hollow. 

Inside her heartbreak the cold layer of the words whispered by the night. 

Another sting but the man didn't understand. He stood up and looked outside the window at the busy city moving tirelessly down there. 

A thought crossed his head, she was out there somewhere. His chest went quiet, with no pain, a warm cloud, like bubbles almost took its place instead. 

And then it was gone, he sat back to write again and the pain came back. The man didn't know the name and she knew it.

Back in the house, he ran his hand across his beard as the rings made a sound when he grabbed the arm of the chair to sit down. 

He lit the tobacco and chewed the other end a couple of times as the smoke blurred his vision and started to dance into shapes to the light of the candle.