Open Mine Eyes

[Sorcha'Rei]

There is sand everywhere. I wonder sometimes if I will ever do anything again that doesn't involve sand between my toes. When I am not running back and forth between Gadgetzan and Shimmering Flats, I am doing things in Desolace.

This new fascination with enchanting and the reagents I use to empower things has given me a new perspective on sand. In the right light, sand reminds me of magical dusts. And my druid eyes can see the power of the Earth Mother in the sand I hold in my relaxed hand -- it shimmers as if it were a part of her. It is that shimmer, perhaps invisible to those who cannot see as I can, that reminds me of the dusts.

The sands of Tanaris are hard-edged. The individual grains are translucent, a light tellowy tan in color, but the light of the sun catches on the corners of the grains and splits into tiny rainbows. In the right light, a handful of sand looks like a wild and crazy mixture of all my carefully hoarded dusts.

The sands of the Shimmering Flats are flaky, more like talc. Normally, the Flats don't seem sandy at all, the stuff is so tightly packed. it is only later, when I empty my socks of the accumulation of flaky sand that I see what it is like. Each little piece of this sand is a white flake, with smooth edges, as if it broke off the tightly packed ground evenly. I can smooth them over a dark piece of paper and cover its color completely. What use they might be, I do not know, but their share of the Earth Mother's power is not visible. When I spread some of this powdery sand out before me, and hold my open palm just an inch or so above it, I can feel the power in it. Silent, invisible, and very much there.

The sands of Desolace are nearly dirt. But when I take a handful of it and wash it off with water, and the dust is carried away, ah, what beauty. These grains are all different colors, round like tiny tiny pebbles. I place a few on a piece of polishe dwood and blow gently, The little spheres roll away from my breath. When I look at them with my druid eye, I see them holding their gift from the Earth Mother inside themselves, waiting for the right time to release it. I wonder what might cause all the sand in Desolace to release that power, and I pray that I will not be fated to be present when it happens.

I traveled to Ironforge today, to get some supplies I could not find in Gadgetzan, and while I was there, I ate a picnic lunch on the same fountain, same precise location, where I met Rama in that other Ironforge. I found myself missing him, missing all of them, even their Vlad, whom I was so glad to get away from when I left. My mind wandered towards the entrance to the Dream, and I wonder if I should go visit them.

So far, I have not done it.

[Sorcha'Rei]

Since the Defenders struck their tents, I have been even more solitary than usual. I sometimes drop into the world where Vlad is whole and healthy, but it depresses me more than cheering me, for I still do not know what has become of my Vlad, nor do I understand fully my own part in causing his fate.

I do know that I was wrong, very wrong. I struggled for months with the shame of that, but it isn't something to be ashamed of, really. It's something to know about myself: that in the interests of principle, I can become rigid and inflexible. And it is something to regret, that I came to this knowledge too late.

There's something else I have realized about myself. I was a romantic. Part of me, the very young part (I hope!) was in love with the thought of being in love with someone I had to leave for ethical reasons. I understood our parting as a great tragedy, when the tragedy was our youth, our stubbornness, our inflexibility. And now, Vlad's death, or worse.

Ah, but life goes on, and even though my life has become a finite string of days, there are likely to be many of them. And I was not made to sit in a darkened room and sulk over my failings. So I go on. And going on, have learned to embrace what was always there: the light of Elune that shines on me and through me. I do not know how I came to be what I am, but I accept that I am a vessel for something I rejected out of hand.

I see it all now. Light, shadow, life, death. Everything is physical, attached to the world, with power from that attachment, Everything is not just physical, pulsing with the patterns of light and shadow that underlie and support the physical nature of the world we live in. When things are in Balance, the physical form and the underlying form are in synch. Not the same, but compatible. When things are our of Balance, corrupted, there is physical distortion, there is distortion of the patterns, and there is a bad mismatch between the surface and the essence.

It comes more easily to me now, this duality in the world around me, because I am learning to live with my own duality. I am, at heart, a druid. I am connected to the world as it is, and I pledged my future already to the Dream, where I will help keep the world going by Dreaming parts of my life away. But I have the soul of a priest, the carrier of light, the kind of priest who knows both shadow and light. I use light to help restore Balance, and shadow to support that. I weave patterns I once could not see, let alone create.

The heart of a druid, the soul of a priest, the memories of a woman who has erred badly, the task of the Dreamer, and the burden of the fool. I carry all of these, and yet their sum is less than I am.

I climbed on Ventus' back today for the first time, dressed in the cloth of the priest, and rode him across Teldrassil.

When I act the priest, I see with the eyes of the druid. When I don my leathers and sing the songs of nature, I am aware of the dancing light and shadow. Slowly, I learn how my patterns and my songs affect the totality of those I weave for and sing to. Slowly, I learn who I am.

Bound by my promise to Rheyna, I must travel my own road. It is a solitary one, but not so much a lonely one, since the great sabers travel it with me again. When I can shift to cat to sleep with them, I do. When I cannot, they cuddle me and protect me as if I were a helpless kitten. And we ride like the wind.

On the wings of the wind, I hear the breathless fragments of a call. I chase it, and do what I can to restore Balance as I seek my own destiny.

[Sorcha'Rei]

Sometimes, just when I think I have finally found my equilibrium, I lose it again, and am rocked back on my heels. Last week, I went to confer with my mentors at the Temple of the Moon, expecting the usual refinement of my priestly powers, and some useful advice about living fully into myself. Instead, they shocked me with a demand that knocked the breath right out of my chest.

"Put down your focus on the light," they said, "and take up exploration of the shadow in earnest."

I do not have words to express how much this frightened me. Even though I was dressed in cloth and wielding the weapons of the priestess, I could feel myself instinctively start to shift to Cat so I could stealth and hide.

"But, I study the priestly arts to understand how Elune has gifted me with Her light," I protested feebly.

Implaccably, they declined to back down.

And I, well, I am left to try to understand this demand and to decide what to do. I summoned Revery to me, and buried my face in her soft fur while she nudged me and purred. I need to sleep on it, so I have donned my leathers, and come to Moonglade, where I am about to curl up in a feline pile with Revery and Conundrum, under the watchful eye of the Great Cat Spirit.

Perhaps Elune will speak to me in my dreams.

[Sorcha'Rei]

I slept the dreamless sleep of those who wish to dream but cannot. I arose in the morning and made my way back to the Temple, where I sat down with one of the women who seem sometimes to be mentors and sometimes tormentors.

"Why?" I asked her, unable to keep the childish edge of whine completely out of my voice.

All morning as I prepared for the day, I had been unable to get the memories out of my mind, of being filled with light that was given me my Elune herself. Or of times when, with Elune's blessing, I harvested light and used it to transform basic druidic castings into something completely different. And so doing, I defeated a demon, and enabled the presence in this world of the Great Cat Spirit.

There was great darkness there, and I stood in opposition to it, with my light-filled body and hands.

It shattered everything I knew about myself and my world -- I was using light as a tool to help the world achieve Balance. Somewhere in there, I learned that things are rarely simple, but nuanced in ways that make them opaque to the most eager observer.

So I came to the Temple of the Moon, hoping for some conversation and guidance, and they set me upon this pathway to embrace that which I had rejected when I saw it filling Vlad, and to become a priestess of the light. So why, why are they now asking me, telling me in fact, to put down the light and pick up the shadow?

My priestly studies have taught me that light does not exist alone, that it needs shadow as a ground. The patterns I weave when I am in my priestly form require both, generally in equal or near-equal measure. I weave them together and bring something into the world that was not there a moment before.

And I do this because I am blessed -- or cursed, perhaps -- with the memories of standing in a clearing of ancient power in the forest behind the old Defender's Halls, filled with unworldly light, and using it to drive back a demon from the possession of an elf's soul.

It is light I seek to understand. I do not carry similar memories of shadow dancing in my veins, and so I am left with the question I lay before the priestess. Why?

[Sorcha'Rei]

She did not answer me directly. Instead, she said, "You are familiar with the pattern to create a Holy Nova, I believe?"

I nodded warily.

"Weave it," she said firmly, "but do not use it."

So I reached for the ray of sunlight pouring down onto the statue in the middle of the Temple, and under a nearby bench for some cool shadow, and I carefully (and with some defiance) wove the pattern she requested. As I did this, I could see her doing the same thing, no more quickly or more confidently than I did it.

A split second passed, and then we sat on the ground before one another, each holding the same pattern.

"Look closely at them," she said to me in a voice that brooked no response other than acquiesence. I looked.

And I was stunned at what I saw. The patterns, superficially the same, were wildly different.

I remember once visiting a gallery in Stormwind where I saw a striking painting of a flock of dark birds flying up into a light sky. The painting pulsed with the power of the birds and the energy of their flight. As I stared at it, someone behind me coughed slightly and I looked away. When I looked back at the painting, I was shocked, for it now appeared to be a painting of a flock of white birds descending out of a darkening sky to find a place to roost for the night.

After I blinked a couple times, I could see what this unknown artist had done. She had subverted the ideas of figure and ground. You could look at the painting as that of a group of birds in the morning or as a different group of birds in the evening. Painstakiingly, she had made the figure of one view into the ground for the other, and the views had entirely different feels to them, each expressing a different trugh about the world and the way that the artist sees it.

That was the difference between my pattern and the other's pattern. In mine, shadow was the background to the foreground figure of the light. In hers, they danced in full harmony, neither being shoved into the background or pulled too far foreward. I could see before my eyes that her weaving, the weaving of a spell of the light no less, was in far better Balance than mine.

"You disregard the shadow too much, Sorcha," she said with a sigh. "Perhaps it is because you carry that thread of Elune's light within you at all times, or perhaps because you have simply not paid sufficient attention to the shadow part of your priestly craft. But you will fall to the Bruning Legion if you do not correct this bias in your work."

I stared at her silently, no longer the least bit petulant.

"Sorcha," she finally said, "I do not know what Elune plans for you, although it seems likely that your ultimate priestly destiny is to be one who primarily fights and heals with the light. But I would be remiss in my own duty to the Goddess and to the priesthood if I did not insist that you immerse yourself in the world of the shadow. I know it will be hard for you, but you were right when you told Vlad that light and shadow simply are. You must learn to understand both sides of the pattern before you can weave at your best."

I nodded, slowly, and began carefully to unweave the pattern I held in my hands. Without letting the light or shadow flee away, I began to weave again, and discovered that I could not achieve what she achieved. And I knew then that they were right.

So I sit here tonight in my small room on the Temple grounds, writing this entry in shadow form.