Juniper “June” Callahan lived in a crooked cabin on the edge of a foggy Oregon town, where the Cascade Range cast long shadows over her days. At 28, she was a barista with a botanist’s soul, her red hair a wildfire against the evergreen gloom. Raised by ex-hippie parents, she’d grown up chasing the secrets of plants—especially the forbidden ones. So when she found a rogue patch of Salvia divinorum tucked in a fern-choked hollow, her pulse quickened.
The plant was a outlaw in Oregon, its serrated leaves a quiet defiance of state bans. June knew it well from late-night rabbit holes online—Salvia divinorum, the “seer’s sage,” a psychedelic so potent it made mushrooms seem tame. She’d browsed sites where you could
In her cabin that night, June prepared with ritual care: candles casting golden flickers, a journal splayed open, her cat Moss purring nearby. She’d read that chewing salvia was the ancient way—slower, deeper than smoking. Her hands shook as she tore the leaves, their bitter juice stinging her gums. “Let’s see what you’ve got,” she said, sinking into a nest of blankets.
Five minutes in, reality shattered.
The cabin’s wooden walls rippled like water, then burst into a torrent of fractal prisms—emerald, amethyst, gold. June’s body unraveled, her limbs stretching into threads of light that spiraled through a void. She landed on a crystalline plain, its surface a mosaic of glowing shards that pulsed like a heartbeat. Twin suns blazed overhead, one crimson, one sapphire, their light weaving a symphony of warmth and hum. Sage bushes loomed around her, impossibly tall, their leaves shimmering with iridescent veins. They swayed in a wind that sang—a chorus of voices threading through her skull.
A figure coalesced from the air—a being of liquid light and woven leaves, its form shifting like smoke. “Greetings, seeker,” it intoned, its voice a cascade of rustling foliage and distant bells. “I am the Sage Keeper.”
June’s breath caught, her mind a tangle of awe and terror. “Where—what is this?”
The Keeper extended a hand, and the horizon unfurled into a cosmic tapestry—a lattice of luminous strands stretching infinitely, each thread vibrating with life. “The weave of all that is,” it said. “Salvia divinorum is the bridge. You crossed it.”
Her knees buckled as the lattice pulsed, flooding her senses. She tasted ozone and honey, smelled star-dust and wet earth, felt the tug of a thousand unseen worlds. Faces flickered in the strands—human, animal, alien—dissolving as quickly as they formed. “I didn’t buy salvia online for this,” she gasped. “I just found it.”
“Yet you sought it,” the Keeper replied, its eyes twin galaxies. “Many buy salvia online, chasing echoes of this truth. Few arrive. You did.”
The ground beneath her shifted, tilting into a spiral of liquid crystal. June fell—or flew—through layers of the lattice, each a glimpse of something vast: a jungle where trees wept silver, a city of glass orbiting a dying star, an ocean of light where voices begged her to stay. Her identity frayed—she was June, then a bird, then a speck of dust, then nothing at all. Panic clawed at her, but the Keeper’s voice anchored her: “Earth’s thread weakens. Your kind forgets the roots.”
“Roots?” she croaked, clutching at the word like a lifeline.
“The green that binds you,” it said. “Salvia speaks—will you hear?”
The lattice surged, and June saw Earth—a fragile strand fraying at the edges, its colors dimming. Guilt and wonder warred in her chest. “I can’t fix that,” she said. “I’m just… me.”
The Keeper shimmered. “Stay, then, as a guardian. Or return with a seed.”
June thought of Moss’s green eyes, the Oregon rain, the cabin’s creaky porch. “I’ll go back,” she whispered. “But I’ll listen.”
The vision imploded—colors bleeding, sounds crashing—and June slammed back into her body, sprawled on the cabin floor. Moss yowled, batting her face. The clock read 7:12—seven minutes since she’d started. Her journal was a chaos of ink: spirals, lattices, “LISTEN” scratched in jagged letters. The salvia taste lingered, sharp and alive.
She stumbled outside, the March night crisp against her sweat-damp skin. With trembling hands, she planted the salvia cutting in her garden, its leaves catching the starlight—or glowing on their own. She brewed chamomile tea, sat on the steps, and stared at it. “You’re more than a plant,” she murmured. “Aren’t you?”
Days later, June dug deeper. She scoured the web—shamans using salvia in Oaxaca, scientists debating its chemistry, forums buzzing with trip reports. Some linked to sites to buy salvia online, others warned of its intensity. “Like I needed to buy salvia online,” she muttered, smirking. “It found me.” But the Keeper’s words gnawed at her—Earth’s thread weakens. Was it ecological? Spiritual? She didn’t know, but she felt it.
The salvia grew in her yard, a quiet enigma. Locals whispered about June’s “weird sage,” and she’d smile, saying only, “It’s got stories.” Under the Oregon stars, she tended it, her journal filling with questions. The lattice lingered in her dreams, a call she couldn’t ignore—and wouldn’t.