"Okay. Let's head out to the woods then."

"Alright!" John says, and shifts to get up to follow her. (She's gonna be his she's gonna be his she's gonna be his and he's going to do such things with her. Fuck, he can't believe this is really happening!!) 

She traipses cheerfully out of the room.

"You brought something to read while I set up, right?"

"Oh! Right!" Damnit, he should have remembered! He practically dives for his backpack (he probably should not take the whole thing he doesn't need his change of clothes or anything like that with him, and he's pretty sure she said something about extra items messing up the ritual or something, so he better be extra careful) to retrieve the book. "Alright, all ready to go," he says, holding it up in the air. It's something he's read before, but hopefully will make easy ready -- The Diamond Throne, by David Eddings. 

."Excellent. Okay. So you can sit in the Witch Hut—uh, that is, the little cottage near the ritual space where we keep a lot of basic ritual supplies—and read your book while I set up, and then leave your book in the hut while we do the ritual. The Witch Hut also has a selection of fidget toys on wristbands so you can pick whichever ones seem useful."

Well, that works. "Alright," he tells her. "Lead the way." He's anxious and excited and excited and anxious (she's gonna be his she's gonna be his) but there's still like hours and he's gonna need to be careful and things (that's why he's having her do it twice) and hopefully the book will be a compelling enough read even if he does also have his phone and things. He should be okay. Pretty sure. 

She kisses him on the cheek and resumes leading him out of the house.

Rather than going out by the front door, she takes him out the back, and down the stairs to where the walkout basement lets out onto the grounds, and through the overgrown vegetable gardens that the house is still in the middle of restoring, and down a path that leads through the woods. She's got her own backpack with her, and a thermos of Contingency Tea tucked into the side, but it's still light enough out that she doesn't have to dig out her flashlight.

Right now, John has eyes for little else but her (and thoughts of the ritual, even if that doesn't directly use his eyes), and the stuff that comes after the ritual. He might be getting a little turned on thinking about it, even though he knows there's going to be more than a bit of a wait. So he isn't going to notice his surroundings much. Though he will notice the basics. 

It's a forest. There's trees. Rosy seems to know exactly where she's going at all times, but if called upon to retrace the route, John would probably have a lot more trouble; the trail isn't especially clear and the landmarks aren't super obvious.

The Witch Hut, despite the name, looks more like an old storage shed. Wood and concrete, with a corrugated metal roof. When she unlocks the padlocked door and opens it, the interior proves to be just as industrial, lined with metal shelving and lit by bare lightbulbs, like a tiny warehouse devoted to witchcraft supplies. Rosy grabs a folding chair from a stack by the door, snaps it open, and parks it in a nook that looks designed for exactly this use case, then marches down the narrow aisle to pull out a plastic bin from a shelf at the back of the room and give it a rummage. Shortly she returns with a selection of wristband-mounted fidget toys for John to try.

This is not what John would have expected from something called a witch hut! There's probably eye of newt (or whatever the magical supplies are, do they even use newt eyes or unicorn hair or anything like that) in one of the boxes, but it's not in some glass jar like he was expected. Though he probably shouldn't have expected otherwise from what he's seen of Rosy and such. The drawers are probably alphabetized or categorized in some manner. John grins a little bit to himself. She's clever and is going to be his. He's still grinning as he looks over the selection of fidget toys. They're a lot more modern than he was expecting (he'd been expecting things made of metal or wood or bone or something that were super old) but most of them are made of plastic. There's a ball that's good to squeeze with a hook for a string coming off of it, there's one that's just a set of rings that spin each independently of each other around a center core, there's one that's a big cube made of 8 smaller cubes that can be turned almost inside out somehow... there are others but that one is by far the most interesting of them. He fidgets with it for several seconds before he realizes that he's wasting time trying to figure it out and can do that later. "This one, I think," he says, feeling foolish. "It um, it's reasonably distracting, apparently." He blushes a little. 

"Adorable." She kisses him on the cheek. "Okay, next step is I show you the ritual space and we go over where we'll each be and how we'll be moving around and when - it should all be pretty simple but it's still good to know it ahead of time."

John grins a little at the kiss. (She loves him! She loves him and she's gonna be his and he'll... now is not the best time to think of what he's gonna make her do but the thought of her on her knees is enough to make some parts of him stir a little.) "That makes sense," he says, trying not to blush and cover for himself at the same time. "Lead the way, then?" His voice might have gone up a little too high at the end there, damnit. 

This is the fond adoring gaze of a Rosy who has ever met you, John, and can guess what is happening. She doesn't press him on it, though, just links arms with him and leads him a little ways through the woods to a broad flat clearing whose mossy ground is interrupted by a big circle of clean-swept dirt.

"Okay, so places," she says. "You're going to be over on this side—I'll have your circle drawn out for you, but for now, here." She sweeps a quick arc into the dirt with the toe of her shoe. "The first thing we do is stand outside the circle being Not In A Ritual Yet, and then," she lets go of him, "you wait here while I walk around the circle, and I light up my pretty lights to start the ritual, and then we each step into our place."

She walks around the edge of the circle and looks at him over the cleared ground. "We don't have to take our places at literally the same moment or anything, just, I step in and then you step in, in a reasonable timeframe. Okay?"

(Now is not the time for daydreaming, now is the time for paying attention.) "Okay," John nods, following along carefully. She said something about chairs before, right? Should he ask? He doesn't want to inconvenience her or make the ritual more difficult but he doesn't want anything to go wrong but he can stand still for as long as he needs to if he needs to. So maybe he shouldn't bother her. But... she wants him to, doesn't she. "I, um, did-you-say something-about-chairs?" he asks, all in one breath. "If it's not too much trouble!" he quickly adds. "I can manage if necessary, I just..." he trails off. She doesn't look unhappy, it's probably fine right? 

"Yes! You can absolutely have a chair. We can drag one over now if it'll make a big difference to how easily you absorb the place rehearsal?"

"Oh." That would be dumb, he doesn't need it now, he can wait. "I just... I thought I'd bring it up I guess," he says, feeling a little dumb. "In case. It can wait until later, please keep going, don't worry about me." (He could have just asked afterward damnit! Why does he keep fucking all of this up?) 

"No, it makes sense that if we're rehearsing places without the chair present you'd wonder where the chair fits into things! Totally reasonable. Anyway, so I conclude Lighting the Way, I look over at you to make sure you're with me, then I step into my circle and you step into yours right after me." She steps neatly into whatever imaginary mark she's probably picturing on the ground in front of her.

John doesn't have an invisible mark but he does have a visible circle, and so after a second or so of uncertain hesitation (not a good idea for rituals! Even if this is just practice he doesn't want to fuck it up!) he follows suit and steps into the circle where he will be for the ritual. Or in this mock ritual. (Should he ask? Yes, he should, he doesn't want to fuck this up even though it should be obvious and she probably said so already.) "And then once I'm in the circle I can sit in the chair and fidget and do whatever until it's time for me to say my lines, right? I don't have to wait for anything specific or anything?" 

"Yes. Once we've seen each other take our places, you can sit down and then comes the several phases where I do important ritual tasks and you fidget with your cube. After all that, I'll catch your eye and make sure you can see me cross the circle," which she does, "and then you stand up if you're not up already, we say our lines, and then it's all done." She smiles at him.

John grins back. "And then you're mine?" He blushes a little, thinking about it, even through his excitement, thinking about what he's going to do with her. "I mean, temporarily, at first! I really do want to make sure you're ok with everything and stuff." Though he probably is going to spend a few seconds telling her to do things (kneeling). It's important, to make sure that she can feel like what orders are like and stuff (and also he's really, really, really looking forward to it) before she confirms that it's okay. 

"Mhm!" Tiny happy bounce.

Gosh she's so cute. He might maybe possibly want to kiss her right now. Is it a good idea to kiss her right now? She's busy and stuff. Maybe it's a bad idea. He imagines grabbing her and kissing her passionately and... fuck. He tries to shake off the feeling (and hide his um, body parts). There's time enough for that later. "Should we do anything else before you start getting set up and stuff?" he asks. He has a book and things (and maybe he can like, review his lines a few hundred more times. It's really important to get this right!). 

"Well, do you feel like you understand when to stand where and do what, or should we go over places again?"

"I think so," he says. He's pretty sure, there's really not much for him to do (go in when she goes in, sit in the chair, wait a while with the cube, stand when she catches his eye, do the lines, done!) but maybe it's better to be safe. He doesn't want to get this wrong. "But just in case, let's go over it again. If you don't mind!" If she doesn't want to repeat this a bunch of times (though actually Rosy seems very much like the kind of person to practice a bunch and it's probably fine but maybe he's annoying her even though she doesn't look annoyed), then maybe he shouldn't have asked, but she doesn't seem unhappy with the idea at all. It's probably fine?

"Sure!"

She kisses him on the cheek and leads him out of the circle again.

"So, step zero, both of us being outside the circle not doing a ritual yet. Then I go Light the Way," she lets go of his hand and walks around the outside of the circle, "and catch your eye and take my place, and you take your place right after me." She makes sure he's looking and then steps in, right on top of her earlier footprints.