I slept.
By God, I slept.
When I finally woke, it was out of desperation and panic. I was strangely afraid that I was out of coffee and felt a sudden urge to get out of bed to go make some.
The light was a bit off in the room, but I expected that as I had gotten to bed very late so of course I would be getting up very late just the same.
The clock told me I have been sleeping for nearly eleven hours. I barely remember two bathroom shuffles that I accomplished without turning on a single light.
I had slept like the dead.
It has been a long time since I slept that deep, that well, that… restful.
I sat on the edge of the bed allowing myself to feel the competing and simultaneous desires to go back to bed where I knew I would fall right back to sleep without effort and to get up and make the coffee that would officially start my day.
I thought I knew what “good, deep sleep” was. As I traced the shoal sigil in the air before me to acknowledge the surprise education, I reflected on the other goals and wondered if the sigil would improve those already underway as well.
Ten minutes later, I found that coffee is as coffee does and it will take more than magic to transform affordable grounds into gourmet. I traced the sigil to acknowledge the daily coffee anyway.
As pleasant as the comfortable sleep was, it set my schedule back for the height of the day and threatened to force a week’s delay on other shenanigans. Not wanting my concerns to bring down the day for those around me, I traced the shoal sigil on my face with intention of forcing “good cheer” to be reflected on me, if not actually infect me.
Maybe it was the shoal sigil, maybe it was my willful decision to not dwell on mistakes, but the day went well and those who were with me seem lifted as well.
Progress was made towards one of the hidden goals of the shoal. As I worked for seemingly no tangible reward, I was reminded that it only takes one blow of an axe to fell a tree, but a hundred blows of the axe to prepare the tree for that last final blow. I resolved to stop reading so many damn inspirational blogs.
As the evening settled into night I wondered if I was drawing and imagining the shoal sigil too much. Despite myself, I could still easily recall what the ten desires that went into the making of the shoal sigil were. But the form of the shoal sigil was too lovely to forget and too easy not to doodle. Each angle and turn of the line was like a different facet of a small gem. Admiring one face was to admire them all, even the ones I wasn’t thinking of.
I didn’t trace the shoal sigil before going to bed. I have work in the morning, and I’ve pushed my luck enough already. I resolved to be more judicious with my active engagement of the sigil at work, turned off the light, and fell quickly asleep.