Chapter 12 #2
I gaped as silvery threads rose from the laptop, weaving themselves into the air between us, forming a delicate, three-dimensional web. They hummed with something old and powerful, a music I felt more than heard.
“Lass,” Bracken whispered, tiny claws tightening on my shoulder. “Do you see that?”
“You see it too?” I whispered back. My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my fingertips.
“See it? It’s like someone spilled the loom of fate all over your coffee table,” he breathed. “By the thistle, Liora, what are ye?”
“Is everything all right?” Greta asked, glancing between us, oblivious. To her, the chart was still just a chart. She couldn’t see the threads spiraling and twisting.
Focus. You’re reading for a very real, very fragile person. You can panic about glowing fate spaghetti later.
“Everything’s grand,” I said quickly, forcing my voice steady. “I’m just … tuning in.”
I reached out, hand passing through the luminous threads. A sensation like static skated over my skin—tiny sparks of insight or possibility, even.
And then images slammed into me.
Greta at her kitchen table, fabric strewn everywhere—tiny shirts, old rugby jerseys, a faded flannel shirt. Her hands moved with purpose, stitching pieces together. She was creating a quilt.
And then next, she looked to be at a summer market on the square and Greta sat behind a stall full of quilts, pillows, and textile keepsakes. A sign above her read HeartStitch Memory Quilts by Greta MacLeod. People approached with warm smiles and curiosity.
Next, it switched to a small studio room off her kitchen, where she worked at a sewing machine while the kids slept in the next room. Warm light cocooned Greta as she worked with a peaceful expression and light music in the background.
The images snapped back like a rubber band. I sucked in a breath.
Greta stared at me, eyes wide. “What … did you see?” she whispered.
Careful, Liora, just give her the basics.
“I saw you doing something with your hands,” I said, surprising myself. I wasn’t psychic, that I knew of. I took a moment, thinking about what I was seeing, and steadied myself. “Working from home. Something creative, but practical. Using fabrics? Textiles?”
Greta’s hand flew to her mouth. “The quilts,” she whispered behind her fingers.
The threads above the chart pulsed, one of them—stretching from her Cancer Sun to the cusp of the tenth house—glowing brighter. My gaze snagged on it. It pulsed again, insistent.
Almost without thinking, I reached out and brushed my finger across the glowing thread.
The world surged.
This time I saw Greta in a tiny, tidy shop front off the main street, shelves lined with folded quilts and framed fabric art.
Her kids were older here, doing homework at a corner table, the bell over the door chiming as a customer entered.
A wave of quiet, steady abundance radiated from it.
Not riches, but enough. Enough to breathe.
When I pulled my hand back, the thread quivered, then settled into place, thicker, more solid. Woven.
“What in the name of all the oaks was that?” Bracken hissed. “You just tugged the bloody thing.”
“I didn’t mean to,” I whispered in my head, panic and awe warring. “I just … touched it.”
“And you changed it,” he said, sounding half horrified, half impressed. “Chartweaver.”
The word landed like a bell toll in my bones.
“Sorry?” I thought back.
“Later,” Bracken said sharply. “Human first, existential crisis second.”
Greta cleared her throat. “Liora? Are you talking to the squirrel?”
“Right. Sorry.” I forced my gaze back to the screen, to the actual chart. The threads hovered like a translucent overlay now, but I made myself read the symbols I knew and tried to anchor myself in the familiar.
“Right,” I said, slipping into astrologer mode.
“Greta, you’ve got Cancer strong at the top of your chart, around your career zone, which means your work in the world is meant to be an extension of your heart.
Something that nurtures others. And your second house of income is in Libra with Venus there, which loves beauty, art, things that are aesthetically pleasing but also relational.
You don’t do well in jobs where you’re just a cog in the machine. You need personal connection. Stories.”
Greta’s eyes shone. “That’s … exactly how the supermarket feels. Like I’m just … inventory.”
“You’re also in a massive transit right now,” I continued, scanning.
“We’ve got Jupiter moving through your ninth, expanding your horizons, and Saturn has been slogging through your seventh and into your eighth—grief, shared resources, all the heavy stuff.
But”—I tapped the screen—“what’s really important is that the North Node is going through your tenth house of career and purpose.
This is literally the stars screaming that it’s time to step into something more aligned with who you are. ”
“So … that’s good?” she asked.
“It’s very good,” I said. “Scary, but good. It means you’re at a crossroads. The choices you make in the next year or so can set the tone for the next couple of decades. No pressure or anything.”
Greta let out a watery laugh.
The glowing threads thrummed in agreement.
One in particular tugged at me again, this time stretching between her Moon in Taurus in the eighth—grief and shared emotional resources—and her second house.
When I focused on it, I saw flashes of worn baby clothes stitched into a tiny blanket.
A woman smiling as she ran her fingers over the fabric.
“What is it you love doing?” I asked quietly. “The thing that keeps tugging at you?”
Greta swallowed, fingers twisting together.
“What you’re seeing is correct. It’s sewing I love,” she admitted.
“My gran taught me when I was wee. I used to make doll clothes, then my own skirts. My husband, well, he was terrible at throwing things away. I’ve got all his shirts still.
I couldn’t bear to give them to the charity shop, so I started cutting them up and stitching them into a quilt.
For the kids. So they could still have him with them, you know?
When they’re on the sofa watching telly, or in bed on a stormy night. ”
My eyes prickled. “That’s beautiful.”
“It made me feel … close to him,” she whispered.
“And then my friend’s mum passed and she asked if I could do the same.
And then someone at the school gate saw it and asked if I’d make one from their dad’s ties.
It’s just been word of mouth. A wee side thing.
But when I’m doing it, it’s the only time my brain goes quiet.
I feel … like me again. I thought…” She took a shuddering breath.
“I thought maybe I could make a proper business out of it. Memory quilts. For folk who’ve lost someone.
Or just … keepsakes from baby clothes the kids have outgrown.
I could do them from home, when the bairns are in bed.
Then I’d be there for them more. But I’m worried.
What if it isn’t enough? Is that selfish of me to want this? ”
The threads above the chart buzzed, like a hive of bees agreeing she was asking the right question.
I nearly laughed at the absurdity of it. Here I was, sitting in my borrowed house with a man I’d accidentally hexed, my squirrel familiar, and a cosmic loom hovering over my coffee table. And this woman, this brave, exhausted woman, thought she was the one taking irrational risks.
“You are not selfish,” I said firmly. “You are human. You are a mother trying to make a life that actually works.”
“But is it … allowed?” she whispered. “Astrologically, I mean. Am I meant to do this? Or am I meant to suck it up and stay at the supermarket because it’s sensible?”
The question pulsed through the air, hitting the web of threads. They flared, two distinct paths brightening. Reaching out, I brushed my hand lightly across the threads, careful not to pull on them.
On one side I saw Greta at the supermarket, ten years from now. Eyes flat, shoulders hunched, an air of defeat around her. The money was … fine. Stable. But she was shrinking. It wasn’t a job suited to what she needed to light her up.
On the other side I could see Greta with her sewing business. A quiet pride in her posture as she locked up her tiny shop one evening, the lights of the village twinkling around her.
I stared, pulse racing. The truth wasn’t that one path was “safe” and the other was “dangerous.” They both had risk. The difference was which kind of hard she chose.
As I watched, the path of the quilts flickered, some threads thin, others thicker. It wasn’t a guarantee. It was a possibility.
Instinct guided my hand again. I reached for one of the thinner threads that branched from that path—the one tied to her Venus, I realized. To her willingness to be seen.
Now another image flickered. It was of Greta hiding her business, treating it like a guilty hobby versus Greta actually telling people, putting up a proper website, showing up at markets.
The latter wove stronger lines of support from the community.
I took a breath, then plucked that thread gently, imagining it thickening, anchoring.
The weave shifted, subtle but real.
Power thrummed through me, hot and bright. My fingers tingled.
Chartweaver.
The word echoed again, louder this time. Somewhere deep in my memory, a whisper surfaced—my gran bent over her big leather book, muttering something about a weaver that I’d half tuned out as a teenager, more interested in boys and eyeliner.
“Lass,” Bracken murmured, awe in his tiny voice. “Ye just nudged her future.”
“Is that … bad?” I thought, panic spiking.
“It depends,” he said. “On whether you remember that threads can tangle if you yank on them.”
“Bracken, you’re not helping,” I hissed internally.