The Expansion Framework

A story of possession and the unwritten.

The Fuchsia Witch is a series of stories woven from life and a little magic. There’s no need to read in order; step in anywhere and you’ll find your way. But if you’d like a proper introduction to the witch, you’ll find one here.

---

The fuchsia witch has become obsessed with writing.

Not with her own - it’s a friend’s writing.

And it’s not even real writing. It’s someday writing. An ambition, a goal, a dream. Less than that. A fairytale sublimated below her friend’s life in service of the everyday.

The witch thinks about it all the time and does not know why.

It weaves in dark threads through the tapestry of her dreams.

It haunts her while she’s making her boys lunch.

She’s hungry. Her mouth waters for what her friend is not writing.

She picks up the phone and texts her:

Your words are important. You need to be putting them down.

There is no reply.

She texts again.

It’s time. They are going to change the world.

Still nothing. She moves to text again.

It’s the last thing the witch really remembers for some time.

That’s okay, because this isn’t her story anyway.

---

In a house not so different from this one, in a place not so very far from here, there lives a witch not from this planet, and her husband, the Bear.

Her skin is a pale and pretty chlorophyll and her hair is spun from the void of space, stars peeking from the depths. And the Bear is, of course, a bear, though it must be said he is no ordinary bear. His fur is a sweet red chocolate, his claws emerge in tender silver from each paw, and he is a giant among his kind.

Each day, the Bear steps into his workshop, where a small furnace and minuscule tools await him. He melts his claws down to drip into well used crucibles, shapes and reshapes the molten silver, creating beauty from his own body. The jewelry he makes flashes on ears and belts and collarbones around the world.

And each day the witch leaves home (with a silver flash on her ring finger) to sit in the quiet with the dispossessed. They come looking for their own names, which she cannot give. They come looking for their own center, which she cannot find for them. But she stays with them while they spiral, patient because she sees what they cannot; the spiral is bringing them closer. The spiral is the way home.

And the witch and the Bear have a child, a three year old little godling, precocious and sweet, whose birth was written in the stars and who creates with a focus worthy of his foretelling. Someday his art will be a portal to the same heavens his mother came from.

This is not the story of the godling, or his giant Bear father, or their creating. It is not, strictly speaking, the story of the witch, either. Though before the story is done, she will do some creating of her own.

This is the story of a text.

Okay… several texts.

I want to ride everywhere perched on your shoulders.

I want to eat your words as they flow from your mind.

They fall out of your ears and are wasted. Let me lap them up.

I want to roll them on my tongue. Rub them against the inside of my cheeks. Gag on how big they are.

I want to mix them with my saliva until I cannot tell what was yours and what was mine.

I want to spit them on unsuspecting strangers, to be absorbed into their skin.

Like acid.

Like shea butter.

Like acid.

Like shea —

Perhaps this is not the story of a text; perhaps it is the story of a possession, for these messages clearly do not come from her friend. The chlorophyll witch picks up the phone to call, to talk to whatever has taken the guise of the fuchsia witch. And what she receives is:

You are meant to be ridden by a god and she is pissed.

You have been ignoring her calls and this ridiculous pink body is not the one she wants.

But she will use it as long as she needs to get your attention.

Hekate

wants her

to write.

The witch resists. She argues with her friend (who is not there) about the timing, the lack of inspiration, the fact it’s all been written before. It’s futile. She is arguing with a frequency vibrating through fuchsia neurons. Not with the woman. Not even with the god.

She’s arguing instead of saying

I’m afraid nothing will come.

I’m afraid everything will come.

I’m afraid of what will happen after.

I am

afraid.

Because actually, this may be a story about fear. And when she is done arguing on the side of her fear, she simply ends the call. Who needs to talk to gods anyway?

Even so, when she sits down to her computer, she opens a blank page. Her fingers twitch, keys clack and clatter. The white screen is stained with emerging black characters. And when the words stop, pages stretch before her.

We are gorging ourselves on self-help language and we wonder why we are still starving.

Days pass. She writes in her office, in between the unnamed people who come to her. During meals she forgets to eat, fork halfway to her mouth. Dictates in the car and in the hallway outside her yoga class and walking through the grocery store. This is the story of the writing she channels.

Self-trust is the antidote to everything that plagues us.

Weeks pass. In the morning she sets out a canvas on the floor. Art materials and a naked godchild fill the space with her, and in the spill of sunlight they Create together. She doesn’t know what she feels. Was this really possible all along?

When her husband reminds her to come to bed, she is not tired. When he implores again she has to pause, to assess; is this the same night? Or the next one? She doesn’t know.

Nobody said that peeling back layers of skin would be easy. And there was never a promise it would be painless.

There is nothing new in this. It is not revolutionary. She will never publish it. (Miles away, her friend nods and smiles and knows this is false.)

To speak is to be broken open into a thousand pieces.

And then one day she steps back to see what she has made:

A labyrinth rises from pages scattered on the floor, and she stands at its center. From here, she can see everything. From here, she can see to the beginning of time, a holy place built of energy and scattered to the stars, to re-become through all of us.

She can see the dispossessed, the unnamed, the broken ones, and she knows they are ready to walk this path. Her role is not, and never was, to show them the way to their center. Her role is to show them the ways into the labyrinth.

This is not a system you follow to heal. It’s a movement that happens when your system begins to restore itself.

This is the story of the Expansion Framework.

She has to publish it.

---

The fuchsia witch puts down her phone. Stretches her neck, shoulders, arms. Ruffles her feathers, licks her fur, and resmooths herself into her skin. She loves talking to her friend; shame she doesn’t remember much of this conversation.

Looking around the table she sees the two year old is finishing his peas, the twins have spit out all their mashed sweet potato, and everyone’s eyelids are heavy. She tastes… vinegar? Citrus? And something rich and fatty.

Maybe lunch is all this story was about after all.

It was delicious.

---

Is someone in your life creating something you’re deliciously proud of?
Brag on them and maybe drop a link in the comments or the subscriber chat.

And! Check out the link above yours. Let’s feast together.

---

Reading chronologically? Click for the previous post or the next one.

Curious about all the witch’s stories, spells, and recipes? You’ll find them in her grimoire.

---