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Post by Sorcha'Rei on May 7, 2006 4:58:07 GMT -5
Open mine eyes that I may see. Glimpses of truth Thou hast for me. Open mine eyes, illumine me, Spriit Divine . . . ((Cris Williamson))
They told me to keep a journal. I feel so battered by what's happened that I am not sure I could tell anyone why I don't want to do it, so I'm just doing it.
There are so many rules. Wear only cloth. Wear only cloth that is appropriate for your new skills. Do not use your druid skills, ever. I asked them, "Ever?" and they said not for awhile anyway. So all that beautiful cloth clothing I have back at the Hall cannot be worn just now, never mind my leather and my weapons, the staves as appropriate for a priest as for a druid. They are, apparently, imbued with my druidic power, and would distort my priestly powers. So I need to use only new items, at least for the time being.
Today was hard. I went to Aldrassil again, and not much has changed there, surprisingly. There are still animals who need to be culled, and moss that must be gathered. I did what was required, and I did it as they told me to do it, calling on the Light and the Shadow, leaving Nature's grace aside. It feels odd to have Light and Shadow coursing through me like that. But it is what I came here for, so I must persevere, get used to it, start to learn from it.
In many ways, the fact that I must throttle my instincts on how to handle situations is the hardest thing for me. When many enemies swarm me, my body starts to shift to Dire Bear, but I must not do that. My advisors are clear. If I truly wish to understand the light that has begun to fill me, I have to give it room, not crowd it out.
It is a great loss to me, to leave my own weapons and armor in the Hall, and even worse to leave Ventus behind. He looked sad and forlorn again when I left, but when I told him he was the one who told me to go hunt my destiny, he swatted at me playfully and bade me get moving, then.
I did graduate today, and have been sent to Dolanaar to see what I can do to help there.
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Post by Sorcha'Rei on May 7, 2006 4:59:04 GMT -5
I met with my advisors today. They have told me to stop chewing things over in my mind and to write it all down instead, how I came to be here. They told me to meditate first, as priests do, and to fill myself with light before I wrote. These things I have done. I am grateful that they have left me with permission to fill myself with light, in the way I learned in the glade that night, in the Dream. Ah, bah! I get ahead of myself again.
I will write it all down, trying to capture two threads at once, how it seemed to me then and also how it seems to me now.
Where to start? Well, he is the center of my life, so I suppose I should start wtih Vlad. I met him when I was finishing up my leatherworking apprenticeship in Darnassus. He was passing through and needed armor repairs. We fell in love. I kept thinking it would pass off, but it never has, even now. We had wonderful times together, but I was too young, really. At the time, I believed myself passionately committed to Balance, and I utterly convinced myself that his commitment to Light was skewed and wrong. We fought about it. I told him Light and Shadow just are. He told me Shadow hides horrors I could not imagine, and that it was wrong to encourage it. He was stubborn, too, and convinced that given time he could talk me out of the wrong-headedness of communing with Shadow.
But mostly, I could see Light shining out of his eyes, and it seemed alien to me in ways that his human body and heart did not. I could not reach him, and it felt to me that to build a bridge to his Light-filled world would be to compromise my commitment to Balance beyond bearing. In the end, we were no longer fighting, and we were still very much in love, but we were separated by our views of the world. And I never did learn to bear the Light when it shone out of his eyes.
Well, I told him to leave and he did. We wrote to one another from time to time, sent each other things we found along the way that made us think of one another. The loss has never healed, although I have learned to live with it, at least until recently. In the meantime, when I completed my apprenticeship, my Master sent me to the druids in Aldrassil and they accepted me for druid training. I learned to Dream more lucidly, and to use my soul and skills to help keep the world in Balance.
Then I joined the Defenders of Valor. One night, I was wandering in the woods, because I could not sleep. News had come that Vlad, newly married, had disappeared under suspicious and alarming circumstances. My friend Rheyna had gone to see his family (she is a cousin of his, through a coincidence I don't think was entirely random) to try to find him or at least get news of him. While she was gone, I had begun to dream of him in torment, and of his suffering. I think I began to go a little mad. I refused to wander in the Dream, for fear it would be like my nighttime dreams, only moreso. I wrote to Rheyna and told her I needed to go find him, that I believed he was in the Undercity, that I could not wait. She came home immediately and convinced me to promise her not to take any action at all until she and I agreed on the course of action. How she got me to promise this is, I think, not pertinent, except that her passion for finding the truth was so apparent to me that I was able to trust that part of it into her hands.
Still, the promise weighed heavily on me, as the dreams refused to stop. Vlad as a forsaken, scrambling in the gutters for trash to eat for supper. Vlad, still human, in red hot chains, suspended over an acid bath, screaming despite himself. More and more graphic, more and more terrifying. Eventually, sleep began to be something I chose not to seek.
One night, with the promise nearly choking me in my bed, and unwilling to sleep, I wandered in the woods near the Hall. There, I encountered a glade I had not seen before, and two people I barely recognized, the Lady of Virtue and the High Lord of the Defenders. They were fighting a mighty cat who was deeply injured and badly corrupted inside and out. I laid a druidic song of sleep on him, and delayed their deaths.
When I stepped into the glade, I discovered that the High Lord bore his own mark of corruption. I did not know what it was then, but I could also see his wise and shining spirit glowing within him. When the corruption he bore tried to take his body for its own, I made a Dream connection to his spirit and allowed Elune to use me as a conduit to channel Her love and light to him. It worked, at least for the moment. Once that struggle passed, we remained connected for the rest of his life.
But I get ahead of myself again.
That night, he asked me to go into the Dream and try to cleanse his beloved saber of the corruption that the cat carried. Although I was terrified to Dream, beacuse of Vlad, I did what he asked. Lady Polrena shielded them so that the High Lord's demon corrupter could not destroy us, and I went into the Dream. There I fought the demon possessing the cat for the spirit of the cat, and won. I won by filling myself with light: moonlight, starlight, sunlight. I used the light as a weapon against the demon's avatar, although he assaulted me in all the ways he could. And as I sat in the Earth Mother's hand and carried the grace of the moon goddess, I won. The light destroyed the avatar, and I was able to rescue from the Dream, well, not the injured saber, for Elune called him home, but a new kitten, a gift from the goddess to the High Lord, who carried the old saber's spirit within him.
They carried me home unconscious that night, and when I awake the next day, I discovered that I was still connected to Lord D'ana'no, and also that I still carried the light of Elune within me. There was quite a lot to do, as we worked to discover who or what had possessed the lord of our company, and why it might be so, and for the most part, I was able to ignore what I was learning about myself.
Eventually we made our way to the ruined city of Stratholme, where we faced our enemies for the last time. Many of us fell that day. I myself spent some time in a prisonhouse of pain constructed just for me by the demon Balnazzar, but the High Lord rescued me and we went on to the final battle. In it, he gave his life to prevent the Black Dragonflight from re-entering the world, and I came face to face with myself. As if I stood outside myself, I could see the light of Elune shining from my eyes, and at the Earth Mother's behest, I finally looked at myself.
There is no less light shining from me than there ever was Light shining from Vlad's eyes. I was forced to face the reality that I had been wrong. When one cleaves to Balance, as I still do, there are many ways to serve that Balance. And I appear to have been chosen to serve Balance by being a cradle for light. Whatever Vlad and I were meant to do, it cannot have been turing away from one another. I worry that we all suffer, he most of all, because of that error.
The druids of Darnassus could not help me understand myself, much to their chagrin and my disappointment. I ventured to Wailing Caverns to consult with the Druids of the Fang, and they were no more help. Plus, they then tried to kill me, so I had to destroy them. I found myself drawn to the Temple of the Moon, where I sat bathed in the light of Elune, and could feel that it was shining inside me as brightly as outside.
I sought the help of the priesteses, and after prayer and meditation on their part, they offered me a chance to find out for myself. They offered to take me -- a fully trained druid -- and teach me to be a priestess of Elune as well. The part of me that had sent Vlad away screamed out in protest, but here I am, a priestess of very few seasons, trying to learn to carry the light with grace.
I will never stop being a druid. It is who I am. But perhaps learning to act as a priestess will teach me how to live into who I am really meant to be. The Earth Mother told me to have the courage to face myself, and here I am, trying hard to do so.
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Post by Sorcha'Rei on May 7, 2006 4:59:38 GMT -5
Today was the funeral for the High Lord. An odd kind of funeral with no body, but we carried on. I met a young warrior who is afraid of me. It was sobering to know that I can scare someone. But I realized when talking with him that this new thing is the scariest thing I have ever done -- and I, too, sometimes lack courage. I offered him a cliche or two, and I hope they will help me, too.
After the ceremony, I spoke with both Lady Polrena and Lady Celera, to let them know what I have embarked upon. I do not know who I will be when I am done, except I carry the hope I will be more fully myself.
. . .
They can take away my clothes, my weapons, and my skills, but I won at least one argument, and have plenty of bags with me. They arranged to give me a new bank account, too, not cluttered with the detritus of my druidic wnderings, but clean and new and waiting for my priestly self to put her mark on it.
I am slowing getting into the habit of priestly meditation. It is maddeningly easy for my spirit to seek the Dream while I meditate, but I am learning not to let it go there. I miss the Dream so very much! And my advisors have decided that it is not right to keep me from it. However, if I wish to Dream, I am required to remove all my priestly garb, cleanse myself both physically and ritually, and don my druidic garb. Only then may I Dream or shift or otherwise act the druid. When I am done, I must reverse the process.
At first I found it cumbersome, but I now find it comforting. As I gain the barest comfort with my fledgling priestly abilities, I find I feel protective of them, and do not want them overpowered by my admittedly more fully developed druidic skills. Sneaky Kitty is not going anywhere. When I am ready, I will integrate it all. Until then, well, if a long life hasn't taught me patience yet, it never will.
Things take time.
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Post by Fechak on May 7, 2006 9:10:48 GMT -5
((Well done as usual, I hope there's more!))
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Post by Robbyn Jonathan on May 7, 2006 13:13:21 GMT -5
((great stuff! I look forward to following her development))
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Post by Sorcha'Rei on May 8, 2006 13:23:45 GMT -5
I miss D'ana'no. When I knew him, he was so consumed by his burden that I never felt free to talk to him in the ways I wanted to. I kept thinking "When this is over . . ." but when this was over turned out to be very different than I expected it to be. Instead of a return to himself, we got a heroic death. I wept tonight for my loss, knowing it made me very selfish indeed to wish I had the chance to sit under a tree with him and just talk and listen. I have seen his spirit in the Dream. I do not want to intrude on the peace he has found there, but oh! what a loss for me!
. . .
I finally wrapped up my work in Teldrassil and am moving on to Darkshore. I begin to see a pattern in how the different callings make use of the same needs in our damaged lands. When I trained as a druid, my work in helping to restore the balance in Teldrassil taught me the basics of calling the power of nature to my fingertips, and helped me gain the strength of body and spirit to allow me to enter more fully onto the druidic path. I left Teldrassil that time ready to learn how to slip into the form of a Bear at need.
Well, the island is still overrun by various corruptions, and I have again spent some time struggling to put things right. This time, I find that what I am learning is to feel light fill me up, and spill over. I am beginning to learn how to weave light and shadow into power of a different sort. And I feel more solidly held in the Earth Mother's hands than ever, as if she is cradling me to allow me to learn what I need to know, now that I have accepted that I am not who and what I thought I was.
No, that's not right. I *am* a druid. I will never be anything else. And I *am* a balance keeper. But I was wrong about how I ought to live into that truth, and I am learning now to be the kind of druid I am meant to be.
When I came to Darkshore, it was eyes that see differently than I saw before. I remember this area when I was child. Deep dark forests, teeming with life, cultivated by my immortal brethren, a place where elves lived in balance with nature. Now it is corrupted, teeming with disease and undeath, populated by demons, tormented souls of the highborne, and those members of deadly cults that seem to destroy the world in the name of some greater evil. When I came here as a young druid, I ws focused on the ways in which nature itself was out of balance. Now I see the ways in which light has been corurpted into evil, and shadow twisted into harmful traps for the unwary. It is as if I see with new eyes. The taint here runs deep, as deeply wrong in the ways in which light and shadow are balanced as any place I can imagine.
Of course, we are no longer immortal. When the days of my life are finite, the time I spend is all the more precious to me. I feel some of the urgency I have often seen in humans, even though I can expect many more days yet to come than any of them will ever have. I begin to suspect that their short, brightly burning lives account for the ways in which they experience their own encounters with the numinous. Vlad was in the fullness of his young manhood when we loved one another, and I was nearly ten times his age, but very much younger in spirit. I wonder if it is sometimes to hard for me to learn things because I was designed to have infinite time to learn them? And I wonder if his glorious stubborness grew out of the knowledge that his time was limited? What a gift they have, these humans, to be able to take time from their hectic race toward their destiny to laugh and cry and love. I admire it.
As I begin to see what it means to be a priestess of Elune, however, I know that the elvish priesthood is a different kind of thing than the one humans follow. I can see it in Lady Polrena, and in Rheyna, too. They do not serve a goddess, which is a superficial diffference. For them, Light and Shadow really do need to be capitalized, because they are the end-all and be-all of what they experience the greater pattern to be. For me, light and shadow play across the face of the moon goddess and fill me at need for me to weave into the patterns the world requires in the moment. How did I ever think I could be a balance keeper without being a weaver?
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Post by Sorcha'Rei on May 9, 2006 16:31:32 GMT -5
I got a wand today, and I am infatuated with it. How nice it would be to be able to use a wand in moonkin form! With the wand in my hand, I can control my use of magical energy much better, which gives me more control over light and shadow in turn. I use the wand to buy me time to weave my patterns.
Darkshore work goes well enough. I am gradually growing in my capabilities as a priest. Yesterday, I came upon a party of people who had been ambushed by a pack of moonsabers, leaving two of them dead. Almost without thought, I revived one of them and opened my mouth to apologize for not being able to revive the other one just yet, when I realized that as a priest, I could call them both back. I felt myself fill with light again, and poured it into the second body. Before I knew it, the two victims were standing before me, drained and in need of healing, but both alive.
Naturally, I felt ambivalent about that. Glad I could help, of course, and pleased not to have to remember to carry seeds around with me for such occasions. Still, I am not yet entirely comfortable with calling so much light to me, so regularly. When I was learning to see myself as a cradle of light in service of balance, I only did it in extreme circumstances. Now, I am learning to do it routinely.
My advisors push aside my concerns. I could not learn this, they assure me, if it were not the will of Elune. But I have found in my life that Elune lets me do what I will, whether it is for good or evil, and then expects me to live with the consequences. Still, I feel the urgent need to learn what I am learning, so I persevere.
Cloth is not as warm as leather on a cold night.
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Post by Sorcha'Rei on May 13, 2006 4:24:52 GMT -5
I took the day away from the priesthood. I cleansed myself carefully and dressed in leather, finding it both comforting and oddly uncomfortable to be in the fullness of my druidic power once again. Like a small child with new toys, I swtiched back and forth from one form to another, just to remind myself how it feels to shift in body as well as in spirit. I danced in the moonlight of the early morning hours, and then I went to see Ventus.
Ah, how I miss him! He is glorious, and growing more beautiful by the day. He is strong and swift and courageous and so fully himself I cannot help but grin at him. I have never met a being more fully living in his body and in the moment. It is as if because he came from elsewhere, he is somehow grounded here in ways that few beings manage who were born here. When he is playing, all there is is the game. When he sleeps, he sleeps more fully than anyone I have ever met. And when he is communing with another soul, he is fully present. He is a Saber and yet he is more, for he is touched by Elune, and when we spend time together, it is almost as if I spend time with Her, except more comfortable.
We hunted together for a bit. He asked me when I would be back and I had to tell him I am still very young in the priesthood, and I will not be allowed to ride him until I reach the fullness of my priestly powers, at least not when I am garbed and acting as a priest. So he bade me climb up on his bare back, and he ran off, taking my breath away with the speed and smoothness of his gait, and with his ability to take me where I need to be. We came to rest by a waterfall above Northshire Abbey, and he dozed in the sun while I sat back and wove patterns out of last year's grass.
After awhile, I realized I found it as odd to be in my druidic self, and cut off from my growing abilities with light and shadow, as I ever find it not to be able to shift or use the power of nature when I act as a priest. I chafed again at the rules I agreed to, and then I let it go. One day in the future, I will trust myself to decide how this all fits together. In the meantime, I will trust my advisors and simply enjoy what I have when I have it. I cannot think of a thing I gain by pining for what I have put down purposely, whether it is the ability to shift to Sneaky Kitty when I am on a mission in Darkshore, or -- when I am wearing leather -- the ability to see the light and the shadow with eyes that are learning to know them, hands that are learning to weave them, a spirit that longs to know her place among them.
A peaceful feeling came over me. I am learning to honor Balance in the most profound way I know how. And I hope to dance in the light of change, now and forever.
Leather is not as comfortable as cloth when one takes an afternoon nap under a tree, cradled in the Earth Mother's hand.
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Post by Sorcha'Rei on May 16, 2006 4:16:39 GMT -5
I had druid business to take care of today. A trip to Moonglade to meet with the man who was my last trainer there, who taught me to shift to moonkin, to take the energy that crackles between those things that are held in Balance and bend it to my needs. Two small deliveries to friends who have settled into scholoarly roles among the Cenarion Circle.
And a meeting with Dendrite Starblaze. For whatever reason, he is the first I have spoken to about my new studies who does not approve. He roared with anger, his own control slipping for a moment, and his Dire Bear form flashing in and out of view. He struggled with himself. I could see it. And then in an ominously calm voice, he bade me visit him monthly so that he could monitor my progress.
I do not know that the Circle can actually require this of me, for I am fully trained, and fully sworn to the Emerald Dream. However, I see no real reason to deny this request, for all it was presented as a demand.
After our encounter, I sat down by one of the Moonwells, trailing my fingers through the shimmering water, and letting my spirit wander. I was not in the Dream, but instead wandering my own memories. And of course, as so often, my memories soon turned to Vlad. Like a well-worn path in my mind, I thought again of our trip to Ashenvale, of the love and laughter that this one quiet day has come to epitomize for me.
I remembered the quiet moments we shared, the laughter. The time I dragged him into the woods of Ashenvale, where I grew up, and tried to teach him to walk quietly. First there was frustration, for paladins are not folk of stealth, in general. Then there was hilarity as he tried so hard, and so unsuccessfully, to walk along a path without crunching any leaves or breaking any twigs. And finally, exhausted from our efforts and laughter, we sat beneath a tree, he leaning against its trunk, I leaning against him, and were nearly silent in our mutual wonder at the world that spread out before them.
I pointed out the small animals he never noticed for himself, and he showed me how he knew that forsaken members of the Twilight Crusade had passed that way earlier in the day. Then he pulled a small leather pouch from his pocket, and took a small book from it. Without preamble, he began to read to me, an essay about the importance of persistence and how to cultivate it. His voice, so musical, so dear, washed over me, as I listened to his human philosophy, and I knew that his stalwart heart would not allow him to fail in the things he set out to do. When he finished reading, I pressed my face against his shoulder and hummed a simple tune my father taught me, in the days when Vlad's grandparents were just children themselves. He held me in silence, and perfect companionship.
I chafe sometimes, knowing that it is not my task to pursue him, wherever he has been taken, to bring him back to the world of the living, to the world he loves so much. My task is different. I do not know if we will ever meet again once Rheyna has found him, but I strive to be worthy of him and of the love we shared anyway. He is my talisman of Light, and I seek to understand my own light-filled ways, if only to make up for what I am more and more sure was the grave error of my youth.
I wish we had been smarter, wiser, older, calmer, more patient, more trusting in each other and in the powers that surrounded us. I wish I had not sent him away, but instead had found the courage to look into his eyes when the Light shone out of them, and found the courage to love him like that. That Light, that was his essence, and I rejected it because I was afraid.
I am still afraid. Afraid for him. Afraid for myself. Afraid, often, of the patterns I weave of light and shadow. But this time I will not turn away in fear, but will face myself. Elune willing, doing so will give me the strength to face Vlad, or Vlad's fate, with love, compassion, and serenity.
This time, I will embrace who I am and who I am becoming.
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Post by Vangelis on May 16, 2006 13:42:24 GMT -5
(( Lovely stuff. ))
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Post by Sorcha'Rei on May 21, 2006 5:15:48 GMT -5
I spent a bit of time today in Westfall, once again hunting down murlocs and helping out around town. Then my communicator buzzed and it was Emi. He told me about a terrible incident in the Temple of the Moon, so I hurried back to Darnassus, and was shocked to see what I saw there. I know I was in no shape to help them as a priestess so young and so untried, so I took advantage of the Moonwell outside town to cleanse myself and ritually re-engage my druidic way of being.
By the time I was fully clothed in leather and entwined once again in the rhythms of the Earth Mother's breathing, Emi had also arrived. We wandered around and looked at the signs of whatever chaotic, explosive events had occurred, even as workers moved quickly to hide and repair the damage. I learned a bit about what happened, but not enough.
Then Emi started to talk about things even he did not know how he knew -- and yet we were both convinced he was right. He used some kind of breathing and centering exercise and, well, I have no other way to describe it, he turned into someone else. Someone still Emi, still aware of what we had been doing, but not the same man.
And I became afraid.
I could feel myself opening wide, as if I were about to start gathering light into myself, and yet there was no reason. We were simply sitting on the grass in the Temple, speaking to one another. I wanted the comfort of my wand at my side, and yet I knew that even my fully trained druidic powers would not be enough if what threatens us had come to us in that moment.
But I know what it was. The Changing Beast has settled into our world. It is too soon. I do not yet know what I need to learn. And yet, the time has come. She is here.
And I remain Druid, Priestess, Dreamer, Fool.
...
After Emi left, I took advantage of my druid form and called Ventus to my side. We rode many places as I executed some commissions for this odd goblin in Gadget. I now have a lovely new pair of gloves, and yet the best thing about this interlude was being with Ventus. His gait grows ever smoother and he gains speed every time I ride him. But most of all, he likes me, as I am, who I am. His love is uncomplicated, born in the Dream, and I cherish it, for it is something clear, inviolable, and I cannot destroy it with pride, willfulness, or youthful error.
I feel a strand of sadness in him, as the spirit of Adumbro yearns to be in the Dream with the one he loved so deeply and so well. It is bittersweet to me to know what the cost to all of us was that I should be able to share the companionship of so noble and luminous a beast.
We ended up at the Halls, where we parted again, and I went to the Virtue wing to bathe and remake myself as a priestly acolyte. I have discovered that I experience the formal rituals I use to transition between Sorcha the Druid and Sorcha the Priestess as a slow form of shape shifting. Just as I can do things in my feral and moonkin forms I cannot do as an elf, I can do things as a priestess that the druid cannot fathom, and vice versa.
I remember a conversation between D'ana'no and Lady Polrena. He said he did not understand this Light that humans worship, and she tried to tell him that it was not worship, for the Light they follow is not a deity. What strikes me, however, is that even for a priestess of Elune, light is different than it is for a druid. I am baffled that I can even begin to understand both ways of being at the same time.
When I am a druid in the fullness of my powers, I feel a powerful connection to the world, and I use light to rebalance what is being unbalanced. I would call that which unbalances, Evil. Otherwise, I use the power that flickers in every living and non-living thing to allow me to shift my shape and my capabilities. It is through my connection to the world as it is, balanced with my ability to walk the Dream, that I live, breathe, sleep, act, and love.
When I am a priest, I see light and shadow. I see balance not in terms of the world and the Dream, for as a priestess, I do not Dream. I see it instead in the play of light upon the face of shadow, the way in which shadow acts as a ground for light, making it visible and meaningful to us. I weave light and shadow directly, into patterns that flicker off my fingers and act to bring the two back into balance. I do not sing, as I do when I use druidic powers. I weave with my fingers and my mind and my heart and my spirit.
I came to explore the priesthood of Elune because I was gifted greatly by Her, touched, and filled so often with Her light. I did not understand it, not being a creature of light and shadow. Now I am. And it deepens the ways in which I am also a creature of balance.
Druid. Priestess. Dreamer. Balance keeper.
Fool? Perhaps. But it is the foolishness of the idealist. I will be who and what I need to be, for myself, for the world, for the goddesses who have blessed me with their care. I am not human, to burn brightly and briefly. But I hope to shine as a small beacon of hope for those who struggle against all that corrupts our world.
There are worse things than being a fool.
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Post by Emizael on May 21, 2006 6:56:26 GMT -5
(( Cheer!! Awesome stuff, Sorch! ))
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Post by Robbyn Jonathan on May 21, 2006 13:17:26 GMT -5
((very strong writing, as usual. a pleasure to read))
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Post by Sorcha'Rei on May 25, 2006 16:57:27 GMT -5
I was Blooded last night.
I don't know how I feel about that. No, that's not quite right.
I feel honored by the process, and doubly honored that Arvaitha was willing to be my sister in this ritual. I was moved by the ritual, and felt the new commitment to the House of the Beast in my blood as Celera played out the ritual with us.
But it was also strange. Even as a druid, I am a creature of spells and light. I fill with Elune's light, I sit in the Earth Mother's hand. I use my feral forms sparingly, only to investigate the world, and settle more deeply into it. I don't fight in feral forms.
However, in order to account for the difference in skill and experience between Arvaitha and myself, I divested myself of my weapons and the skills I normally use, and fought her in Bear form. As we hoped, this made it a close and credible struggle, and she did very well. As did Gorgy. I used a combat rezz on Gorgy, to honor his courage in the fight, even though I did manage to defeat him in the end.
Still, I wonder who was really Blooded last night? It wasn't the druid I normally am, I think. It was someone more feral, more closely connected to the violence of nature than I usually am, even in the fullness of my druidic power.
It is odd that as I spend my days working to be more authentically the light-filled vessel of Elune I so often seem to be, to understand what happens to the moonlight, starlight, and sunlight that fills me . . . even as I strive to know myself better in this way, I find myself ensnared by the parts of my druid self I often ignore. Dire Bear? Good for sleeping the sun. Yesterday, I used it to kill Gorgy.
I wonder what it all means.
. . .
I feel awkward around Emi. I have known him as so many different people, in so many different ways. Sometimes, he is so solid and stolid, so sure that his existence has no connection to the numinous (or as he would call it, the 'Verse). Other times, he knows that what we can see is not everything, he speaks to me in words that carry the weight of higher truth. But when I encoutner him, I never know which Emi it will be. And in his more stolid moments, he clearly thinks I am deranged. Such is the power of the Changing Beast, I suppose.
. . .
Robbyn continues to interest me. He is one of the bravest people I know, because he is so scared all the time. It seems we have different ways of understanding "brave", however. He seems to think that bravery means never being scared, never being tempted to run away, never actually running away. I wish I could comfort him, but I clearly alarm him.
Besides, he won't believe anything I say. I don't think he believes me when I tell him I am scared. But I am, oh Elune, I am.
I am afraid of failure. I am afraid that Vlad is beyond saving. I am afraid that if this is so, I will never forgive myself for what I did those years ago. I am afraid that I will never find what I am looking for, and so will never truly know myself.
At times like this, I am drawn back to Ventus and his uncomplicated affection. I shift to Cat and curl up with him in the sun, and we sleep. My heart eases, with his companionship and the warmth of his huge body. Still, I often wake in tears.
The path through contrition is much harder than I ever dreamed it might be.
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Post by Sorcha'Rei on May 31, 2006 3:09:45 GMT -5
I spent two days in the Dream. I put aside the cloth armor, the attitude of the neophyte priestess, the weaving of light and shadow. Instead, I wandered in that place that is nowhere, that time that is never. I wandered. I saw many wondrous things, many distubing things, many puzzling things.
Everywhere I went, I saw patterns woven of light and shadow, but I did not understand them. I could feel my new priestly sensibilities tugging at my heart, as if to tell me that I could have understood them if I entered the Dream in another state. But it is not the priestess or the fool who is the Dreamer. It is the druid.
I felt Elune gazing at me, knew myself to be full to the brim with all kinds of light, and yet . . .
The Dream was a comfort to me this trip. It offered me many many paths, and I wandered. I will not say I wandered aimlessly, for it was the Dream and nothing there is without meaning. I will say that the patterns of my wanderings are not yet apparent to me.
While Dreaming, I sat in one of Ventus' favorite places, under a tree, and he guarded me. When I awoke from the Dream, we hunted a bit together, and I knew he had been with me in the Dream, just a little bit, even as he waited for me in this world.
When I got back to the Halls, there was a pile of fresh handkerchiefs in my room in Beast. After I bathed and wrapped myself in a soft robe, I made my way to my very small room in the Virtue wing, where I donned my priestly garments and meditated on the light, allowing those powers to rise to the surface and putting to rest my abilities with nature and balance and the very fabric of this world. When I was done and I opened my eyes again, there was a pile of handkerchiefs on the stand by my cot there, too. Handkerchiefs?
I left the Halls and headed back to Darnassus to consult with my advisors in the Temple of the Moon. They sent me back to Ashenvale and Stonetalon, where I work wtih corruption again. I can't feel the corruption of form when I live and breathe as a priest, only the corruption of spirit, of which there is much. At their advice, I arose this morning and did the slow shift back to druid, and revisted the same places. This time, I could sense the physical corruption, the imbalance, but not the corruption of spirit.
I sat down beside the dead body of a twisted and corrupted furbolg. I put my hand on its corpse and felt the echoes of its physical wongness in my hands. Then, tentatively, I reached for my inner eye, the one that sees shadow and light, and without letting go of my awareness of the physical wrongness, I looked through that eye. For a moment, I was fully aware of both. Of the ways in which Nature is unbalanced in these poor furbolgs, and the ways in which the shadow and the light try to consume one another instead of dancing in their rightful patterns.
It was almost too much for me, and is something I clearly should not try when I am in priest form, since the priestess is so much weaker and less sturdy than the druid form. But I got a glimpse of what I am trying to achieve, and it took my breath away. It was all there, before me, in perfect harmony, and for a moment I understood it all at once.
For this clarity of mind and spirit, this union of soul and body, I would give anything, even days, weeks, months, years of separation from Ventus and my full powers. The day I visit the priest trainer for the last time . . .
I still wake crying. Even my small successes do not wash from me the bitterness of my losses and failures.
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