The Dark Well & The Salon

There is always some hither to person, who is a proficient speaker, that narrates his opinions on the news or sports of the week. His entire conversation, unmitigated in its flow, as if the words were as prolific as the bartender's hand on a Sunday night.

The audience, within hearing distance of his saintly tongue, garnered no conversation while those opinions of his were bellowed amongst the wooden pillars and slot machines of the "Dark Well" being the name of the institution.

As if their tongues and mouths were considered pariahs to his ears, their customary stoicism of silence was an unspoken arrangement. For he would eventually pay for all the drinks of those that did not utter a word. So they watched for the sign of his diatribes end, and slacked their thirst on another glass rim.

Were any of them, to step away from this Dark Well, they would find an odd neighbor to this establishment just around the corner. "The Salon," that was by no means to be mistaken as a salon for beauty, was one of a witch.

The decor of both pub and salon are so indomitably separate that no sober patrons would attempt to cross the second's threshold. It would also, take significant amounts of alcohol to have one blitzed enough to deign the mistake of walking in the wrong door.

As to oversimplify the setting, one place, as you may guess due to it's more common occurrence in any town or city across the world, had the numbing invitation of beer, vomit, piss and rocker music. Whilst the other diffuses an inspiring concoctions of herbs, forest and meadow ambiances. Accompanied by the chimes and waterfalls that expel the roughness of its neighbor's dominance.

Along with significant resurgence in floral patterns and dreadlocks. There is a neon display on The Salon's window that is easily identifiable as the 'evil eye'. Never wavering in its bright mission to keep out unwanted visitors and banish all hexes from the owner's doorstep.

Were there an occurrence, as there always is, that some weak-kneed drunkard insists on a tarot card reading for their birthday, attempt some hasty barge in, the door becomes inexplicably stuck. As though the bolt flung itself in it's slot without any hand guiding it. And the neon sign blinking 'open' would morph into the words 'go away.'

This would occur almost every full moon, and in tandem with some gathering of the regulars, who would pass unhindered by the same door. With a trail of the woody floral sauna like smells that follow their shadows as if their flowing ribbons and chiffon floral prints had the meadows interwoven among the layers of imitation.

These descriptions of The Salon, and clientele leaves no doubt to the observer that the place is unabashedly magic. Which in most metropolises of the 21st century, has been considered works of fiction, myth, mad-persons and a liberal use of imagination.

If this subject antagonizes the beliefs of the reader, we invite you to click away from this introduction and all future additions of this winding story. To antagonize, another is precisely the opposite of the intention. As we may dare to say, without any animosity or banishment, this story may not be for you.

Nor are we of a professional practicum, as the author admits a varied curiosity with a tinge of quantifiable revolt for all she has known thus far. The quest, as this could be, is the supposition of a world, that does admit the possibility of even an ordinariness, with the existence of magic.

Indexing

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