A story about rain and perfume. And weather witching.

When I'm getting ready for the day, I put on one of the dedicated Cherry-Ka's Trunk perfumes that I keep in a little painted wooden Russian bowl on my desk. I have one of each of the Norse god dedicated scents. The four heathen scents Derin had already created before I started buying them are Silver Wordsmith for Loki, Hidden Goddess for Hel, Bilskirnir for Thor's house and family (I use that one to honor Sif), and Thunderstrike for Thor. The three I helped inspire are One-Eye for Odin, The Hornsman for Heimdall, and Vanr Volva for Freya. I also have three of Derin's non heathen perfumes, Siren, Library, and Wild Mojave. Sometimes I select the one I want to wear for the day. Sometimes I stir around in the bowl and pull a scent for the day.

The first one of these perfumes I acquired was Library. When I wear one of the non god related ones, I consider that to relate to what I'm doing that day in some way. Organizing books or videos might go with Library, swimming with Siren, or going out in the local desert for Wild Mojave. I honor various gods in various ways, but I've come to use putting on one of these perfumes as a way to honor a power. For example, I might select Odin's fragrance if I'm going out on the road. Previously, I've only worn Thunderstrike when it's either raining already or I'm sure it's about to rain.  On this day, I drew Thunderstrike. I mentally shrugged, thinking, well, it's not supposed to rain today, but I drew it, why not wear it, it doesn't necessarily have to rain every time I honor Thor. So I put it on.

You know where this story is going, don't you? lol. I'm not sure if this is about divination or about calling rain. So I'm just calling it weather witching.

I noticed some gray clouds in the sky that day. The afternoon wore on, and the clouds gathered. I didn't pay too much attention to them, because I was kind of busy. Mom and I were going to one of the monthly folk dance dinners at a local restaurant that night, and a friend of ours was on-again-off-again about whether she could go. We had the timing of our expedition planned carefully so we could pick her up and all three stop and visit T.N. in the care center on the way, since it was only a few blocks from the eatery. We were in the car about to leave the driveway when a cell phone call came in; we weren't picking her up after all. So we didn't really notice the clouds until we were on the highway.

The clouds ahead of us were a dark gray and had tendrils trailing from them toward the ground, which I think means they are raining, just only raining below where the clouds are. I can't see them do that when it's actually raining above me. "Those are some rainy looking clouds," I said.

"It's not going to rain today," mom said. "The weather report said there's a zero chance of rain today and tomorrow."

A few minutes later, we were under the clouds. There were these little droplets on the windshield. "It's raiiiinniinnng!" A minute later there was full blown rain coming down. It's my custom to raise a toast to Thor whenever it starts raining, usually with coffee, but the only thing I had at the moment was a refilled bottle of water in the car's cup holder. So I raised a toast to Thor with water. "Hail Thor! Thank you for the beautiful rain."

My perfume-o-mancy proved more accurate than the weather forecast. There was indeed a thunderstrike.

Image: lightning, image by Free-Photos from Pixabay