Vanadium’s Move Into Politics

Neptunian Life Coaching Therapist: When was the last time you had a normal day?

Taking the question as accusatory, Vanadium bristled. Did Neptunian Life Coaching somehow know that she’d sat up nearly all night drinking Lilac Wine and listening to Moonlight Shadow on repeat?  Actually, probably yes.

She was composing a chic comment about the musical merits of this particular remix but the therapist clarified: “No, really – when was the last normal day for any of us?”

Unsure whether Lachesis was trying to bond with her or bait her into some sort of psychological reveal, Vanadium pretended to be thinking. Weirdness was rife but nobody could remember the unweird times so whatever. Weren’t Neptunian Life Coaching all about being weird-adept?

The latest outbreak of weirdness was a venomous spider-bite thing going around: nobody got sick but they developed crazy aspirations. Her friend Xanthe had been bitten and while she’d already been getting interested in using lipstick again for various reasons, after the bite she became obsessed with getting Lynx Lauder Jr to personally create a lipstick for her.

The hubris was hyperbolic, the sort of mindset Vanadium’s mother – a grade 2 certified narcissist and vibe vamp – would have called ‘ideas above her station.’ 

Vanadium snapped to, realizing Lachesis was telling her a tale to illustrate the new paranormality: another client of hers had been at the adult entertainer awards when sadly, the person a few seats down expired – as in died. Of what…?

Over-powering Nag Champa incense, apparently. Was the therapist just saying that to coax Vanadium into elaborating on her problematic past life issues with Nag Champa?

Anyway, the crux of the story was that this other client then saw the person who’d definitely died up on stage receiving an award for ‘most credible adherence to plot.’

“The plot of fuqing what” exclaimed an exasperated Vanadium. She needed pragmatic, actionable advice. Robo-drones had finally, definitively, robbed her of Space Archeology, her first career choice and primary passion. She’d been so stretched that she’d had to move back with her mother, who had just discovered there was Space Dust Shaman blood in her ancestry.

“This explains everything,” she’d declared dramatically. Vanadium was unmoved. Born on a Piscean Eclipse during a solar storm strong enough to rain satellites on some parts of the planet, her mother lived for paradigm-altering realizations.

On the day Vanadium had moved back in her mother messaged her to request ‘no expectations around performative meal creations’ and to not try and drink the hydrogen water, because it was for bathing. Her new regime also involved stopping everything to meditate every time the Hydra constellation rose or set and wearing silver-lurex threaded capes to ‘harmonize the frequencies.’

Lachesis smiled like a Sphinx: “Perhaps what is really fuqing you off is that it’s working for her?” Vanadium vaguely recalled Neptunian Life Coaching claiming narcissism to be a neuroconvergent syndrome and braced herself for a lecture on charitable impulse.

“You need a new outlet and no, not charity – politics. The Heliocentrics are looking for new candiates, it’s lucrative and you’d be perfect.”

The Heliocentrics were a new progressive party dissatisfied with the government’s mandated Mercury Retrograde go-slows – they did not, like the Stoics, want them banned but they wanted more awareness of Mercury Retro’s alternative dimensions, heliocentric astrology to be taught in schools and a better elemental mix within parliament.

Vanadium exploded: “It’s not the elemental mix! It’s that they’re nearly all Saturn-10th house types – understandably so but no! We need more Minervas and sketchy Mutables in power”

“Exactly, you’ll be perfect. I have arranged a meeting for you with the head of the Heliocentrics for your lunar return. It’s highly confidential so I won’t share the location here. Check your dreams first thing upon waking…so sorry, I’m late for my next appointment…”

Lachesis waved merrily and spiralled into a poof of Fracas-scented indigo disco mist, stylishly dematerializing as always. Vanadium wasn’t sure if the snatch of Moonlight Shadow was a mocking last word from Neptunian Life Coaching or her imagination.