Sometimes you knew.
You looked at a woman at your doorstep, a woman you knew was there for some personal tragedy, and you knew by looking at them what theirs was.
One in three of us knew that look in her eye. Knew the depths of despair that would lead her to a place such as mine.
I was one of those three as well.
Our souls, they spoke the same language.
I’d ushered her right inside, making her tea, then holding her hands across my beaten-up little round kitchen table as she cried her way through the story. Her pain and hopelessness and helplessness seeping out and filling the room, slipping itself into the fabrics of my clothes, into my very skin.
The thing was, though, when women came to me, there was hope. We could take their power back.
That was what I’d done for Madison.
After that, and thanks likely to some therapy, she started to heal. Then she started to work to help others heal.
This pretty blonde woman at my doorstep, she was one of those people that Madison was trying to help.
Which meant I was going to help her as well.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Everleigh,” she said. “I know,” she added, smirking. “My mom,” she finished, shaking her head.
“Do you want to come in for some tea?” I asked, waving toward my small home.
“Sure,” she agreed, nodding, then following me inside.
It was a small space, no bigger than your average tiny house, with two lofts that led to my sleeping area to the right, and my makeshift office to the left. Under the office was my minuscule bathroom with the composting toilet, and the shower that ran on water that was caught and filtered and also filled from a local stream since we didn’t get enough rainwater in the area, and meant that it was pretty much always cool.
The rest of the space was open, making my living and kitchen and dining space all mingle into one.
I didn’t live a minimalistic life.
I liked my creature comforts.
So my high-back reading chair was covered in many blankets and pillows. My kitchen with its open shelving was littered with mason jars full of dried herbs, flowers, and plants. There was a wall shelf full of tinctures.
I had dried flowers hanging from small branches from the tree that had dared to try to live in the relentless heat and sun of the area, succumbing to the elements, and leaving lots of wood for people like me who scooped it up.
The space looked like what you imagined a witch from a fairy tale might call home.
And, I guess, to these women who came to me for help, that was what I was.
What I really was, was just a woman who disliked most people, who loved nature, and who knew things about the ways humans could use nature for their own purposes.
“Have a seat,” I invited, waving toward the table, even though the surface was still littered with leaves. “Herbal or black tea?” I asked.
“Ah, black,” she said, sitting, and folding her hands in her lap so she didn’t accidentally touch my stuff.
I drank herbal, but I also preferred black. It was an indulgence that I had to go to town to purchase, since it wasn’t easy to grow tea in an area that only got, maybe, six or eight inches of rain a year.
As it was, I had to trek into the Valley to get barrels of water each day to keep my food and herb and floral garden going.
I had a specific reason for choosing Death Valley to call home. Even though I needed better climate conditions to grow all the things I needed.
The mountains just called to me, though.
And the local town, Shady Valley, was just big enough to have everything I needed in it, but also small enough that the number of people didn’t feel overwhelming.
Was it a little sketchy of a place? What with the prison and the Irish mafia and the Russian Bratva, as well as what seemed like a new biker gang? Sure. But there were ways for a woman with knowledge like I had to be able to feel safe walking shoulder-to-shoulder with them.
“Okay,” I said, turning back with two of the teacups I had made and painted myself, taking them a few towns over to get fired in a kiln since my solar power was not strong enough to allow for me to have my own. “So, now you have to tell me your story,” I told her, passing the honey across the table.
She probably would have preferred sugar. I would too. But the local bees let me steal a little honey from them in exchange for all the flowers I grew to help them flourish. In my life, you mostly ate what you could grow, forage, or harvest yourself.
“His name is Kyle,” she started.