One stone every sabbat, twenty-two years

When I was initiated, my High Priestess gave me one piece of advice I've actually kept: at every sabbat, wherever you are, pick up a stone. Not a special one. Whatever's at your feet.

Twenty-two years later it's a big glass jar on my altar, mostly hidden by cat hair. Gravel from a festival car park. A slate chip from Wales. A crumb of concrete from the hospital car park, the Samhain I spent in a waiting room. A perfect white pebble from the beach, the year my mother died.

Samhain is a week away. I'll add one more, and before that I'll tip the whole jar out on the kitchen table and remember every single one. It's my book of shadows, in stone.