Draw the mark that holds your burden, then give it to the one thing that erases without anger. The river does not judge what it smooths away.
Fire unmakes a sigil in a breath, but water unmakes it slowly, and slowness is its own kind of mercy. To let the current wear your mark to nothing is to accept that some releases cannot be hurried. You draw it whole, knowing it is meant to vanish, and that is the whole of the spell.
The Working
- Choose a flat river stone that sits easy in the hand, and dry it well.
- Warm a little oil between your palms and, with a fingertip, trace upon the stone a sigil made from the letters of what you carry, bound into a single mark.
- Pass the stone once through a thread of incense smoke and speak your intention over it, that the water take what the oil holds.
- Carry the stone to a stream or river where the current runs steady.
- Set the stone in the water where the flow will pass over the mark, wedging it so it will not tumble away.
- Leave it, and do not return to check; trust that the current is working while you sleep.
- Consider the release complete on the day you can no longer picture the sigil in your mind.
The Incantation
Not the fire, but the flow;
not the flash, but the long unmaking.
Water, take my careful mark
and wear it patient into none.
What you smooth, you do not give back;
what you take, stays taken.
The current works in the dark and the light alike, asking nothing of you but patience. One morning the stone is bare, and so are you.