Month: February 2017

Farmer’s Almanac

Remove grace, and you have nothing whereby to be saved. Remove free will and you have nothing that could be saved.      Anselm of Canterbury

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As Oracion was leaving the home of her estranged sister, the home where she sensed she was no longer welcome, where she had found not hospitality but the remains of an evil priest’s poisonous flowers in a window box, there was an instantaneous change in the atmosphere.

Though there was no apparent reason for it that Oracion could intuit, no breeze or wind shifting hair about her face, or tossing dark branches of trees across a moonlit sky, the temperature had plummetted suddenly, from sixty to about thirty degrees.

Oracion instinctively wrapped her cloak more tightly about her, and pulled its hood further down over her face not so much to disguise her appearance, for it was night anyway (and when traveling, she found night was best) but because it was so cold. It was also as if to shelter herself from something yet unknown, advancing behind her.

Indeed from somewhere behind Oracion, down the cobblestone alley through which she hurried like a silent vision to some and a disturbing nightmare to others, below many shuttered windows and many bolted doors, Oracion become aware of a possible second hurrying presence, although she had heard nothing audible.

Strangely, her companions Alacrity, Velocity and Joy had not become aware or alerted by the presence of a stranger behind them approaching stealthily, or if they had, they made no show of it.

In fact this evening her godmothers had cloaked themselves as a Great Dane, a German Shepherd and a mischievous frolicking alley cat, solely for Oracion’s pleasure and amusement. The first two now flanked her side, and the latter was casually distracted by a single, dry leaf tumbling rebelliously across well-swept cobblestones like the last laughing hold out against order, high society and sophistication.

This thought, this odd leafy analogy, passed through the back of Oracion’s mind so half hazardly (just like the leaf) she made a casual, mental note to examine it later when she wasn’t being stalked by a possible executioner.

Yes, it was a very strange night indeed, so unusually silent, motionless and now cold, but the canines continued to stride in undisturbed sleek formation right next to her, their soft velvet fur as unruffled and smooth on their backs and their necks as when Oracion first buried her face in it and kissed them as dogs a few hours previous.

The suddenly incarnated “dogs” had seemed to smile at her in return, in deep reciprocated love, devotion and obedience, but now their wide canine grins and lolling tongues seemed to express only idle amusement at their sister cat’s antics.

If they were undisturbed by the stalker, could it be because the mysterious stranger was not an enemy, but a friend?

She remembered the lessons Father had taught her as a child centuries ago, about the meaning of the weather, when Oracion had bent down to carefully place precious, tiny, pearl-like seeds into holes Father had dug in rich, chocolate brown earth with his well worn, much larger, and much stronger hands.  Dropping temperatures and silence could mean many things, he had told her, but two she recalled now were someone imprisoned, or someone being sacrificed.

As Oracion halted and turned around to look she let her hood fall back, boldly exposing her easily identifiable pale face and features. She would not be afraid this evening.

And there he was.

He was a lone dichobot, not advancing upon Oracion and her animals aggressively, but looking rather startled himself.  In fact the robotic dichobot looked frozen, frozen in the street –  and frozen in time.

The smooth, heavy, all concealing body armor had revealed his presence to Oracion out of shadows when it reflected the moonlight and now he stood motionless, in the middle of the street facing her, uncertain whether or not he should move forward, approach or even if Oracion were friend, foe, or perhaps illusion.

Slowly he removed his mask, and when their eyes met and she read the sadness in those ancient eyes of yet another time, it almost moved Oracion to tears.  But in another dimension, it would never have come to this. In one, they would have embraced, and in another, Trock and her would have valiantly fought side by side, and been willing to die for one another.

In another yet to come, perhaps they would.

Quickly, Oracion redrew the hood back down about her face and started running away from Trock as swiftly as she could, because having seen her, he would obey his vows he made to his master to kill Oracion, or be killed.

And if he tried to kill her, how could she obey her vow to her own father to help set Trock free, without hurting him in the process, while defending herself?

As all the possible scenarios and possible outcomes of this unfortunate meeting played themselves out in Oracion’s mind, as unexpectedly and randomly as a leaf – passing over sterilized cobblestone upon some mysterious air current –  Oracion felt herself reaching for her sword just to make sure it was still there. Instead, she found herself grasping the coarser hair of horse’s mane as she herself was lifted high, and swiftly carried away from all danger, on the back of a giant destrier stallion, escorted by two noble canines that now barked excitedly at its side.

Lenten Grievances

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Oracion, upon hearing her neighbor was sick, dared to venture into the village one evening by light of the remaining stars. She donned a simple black cloak which was roomy enough to hide herself, and her offering for the poor – which in this instance consisted of waxed candles, fruit pastries and clover wine, a bundle of hearth pumpernickel, a bundle of rye, and a pound of soft, sweet cheeses and herb butters.

Oracion had packaged the gifts in pale papers and wrapping twine, placing them carefully into a small, moss-lined basket, adding as if in after thought, a clutch of gypsy blue violets, gathered before dawn on the previous day.

As she drew nearer the house she was marveling at how her flowers  (those that grew in Oracion’s hidden part of the wood) were different,  and she hoped they might bring her friends a secret kind of joy and health.  Indeed, flowers that grew freely seemed to benefit from a wild sturdiness not intrinsic to most.

Oracion recalled in comparison, the stunning genetically cultivated flowers she had marveled at in the priest’s chambers, so long ago when she had been imprisoned there, which were all perfect, identical and grew artfully arranged in rows – but which were somehow strange, and without heady fragrance or longevity.

They grew in even numbers as well, not odd, and they bloomed for just one day, then curled up to rot like obedient expendables.

Oracion was aroused from such botanical contemplation when the house which she sought loomed suddenly before her, modest in size and well shuttered.  How ironic that a row of the priest’s day roses had perished recently in a tidy window box attached to the dwelling, and as per usual, there remained just a neat pile of thorns, for it was night.

Ascending the porch steps, Oracion thought she saw for one moment – behind the shutters, though closed – curtains fluttering slightly in a cool evening breeze, then realized the windows were not open at all to welcome her, such a night, or any heady, woodland breeze borne fragrances in anticipation of spring.  And the windows not only were shuttered and curtained, but had also been sealed.  There it was.  She saw it plainly now;  a pane of thick, sealing glass.

The cleansing had begun.

And what Oracion really had seen behind the glass –  someone drawing the curtain aside to peek out from within  – which would once have been welcoming  (it’s our beloved friend, so come let us open the door) had turned furtive and cold.

The Dichobots had already been here, and Oracion was to be shunned.

She had drawn in such a sudden, startled breath, that she almost dropped the carefully laid basket at her own feet, as if the added weight of realization, loss and sorrow in her heart had also caused the small basket gravitational pull, and her own rare wild violets to tremble, wither and collapse.  Then Oracion caught hold of herself, considering.

She would not disturb her friends in the night.

She would leave the gift basket however on their steps without gift card or note, and in that manner, and in only that manner, could the small offering still be used.  This way in the morning her beloved could still take part in it, and be nourished without excuse, blame or shame, nor threat of scourging or punitive dispatch.  They could not be punished for any reason at all.

For though Oracion’s guilt was imaginary, as long as it was still imagined by some or by one, she would not share it with another, especially not with those that she loved.

And although the scentless gasses emitting from the wicked priest’s genetically designed flowers were sure to have already altered her friends’ minds to some strange and curious degree, plucking and destroying memories and understandings from their brains as efficiently as dying day roses (leaving just their thorns) she prayed that in their hearts they would still know she had been present, and remember her name.

For they had been sisters once.

Shape Shifters, Part II

“It’s really about the trans fight.”  ~ Anonymous

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In that moment many things happened at once, because Oracion sometimes saw and heard many things, all at the same time.

Though she could not yet understand them as simultaneously as her brilliant companions could, Oracion hoped in time (when she had grown just a little bit younger) her mind would be as clear as Alacrity’s –  and her thoughts as fast as Velocity’s –  but that time was not now.

She was well aware of the priest’s snake, that she knew he fondly called Onion, as it hissed and slithered out of the open bedside drawer. The snake was raised up in an instant, as if suddenly balanced on the tip of tiny feet, that were somewhere hidden but now emerging at the base of a still undulating tail.  In that instant Oration also observed Onion’s fangs, the tongue, and two small fetus size bulges packaged within the snake’s body – one in mortal stillness, but the other still slightly moving (Oracion realized in horror) and trying to get out.

Oracion also noticed a flash of light about the fat snake’s neck, which registered meaningfully as her own diamond bracelet, constricting the poor snake’s breathing, but preventing Onion’s expulsion of dinner.  She drew back and screamed an inaudible scream – as the snake tried to strike at her face, even though Oracion did not really scream in fright. She screamed more in anger for that which the old priest was using the snake.

For since night was like day to Oracion, and although she knew what she saw during her travels was real and had real meaning, she also knew her guides and her Father would always protect her, even from snake venom.  The danger was never real. Therefore her scream was more a horrified outcry against evil and the horror of everything she saw and now knew to be true, rather than one of sudden fright – or personal defense.  The castle chanters were singing “decoy” anyway –  to inform her there was something else she must look at (though the word sounded more like a silent chime, as their words always did in this venue) even as Oracion was also made aware her scream, however silent as she was invisible,  had been heard in the chambers below.

She was made aware of this because in that same instant she heard men in heavy boots pounding ominously, as they ran up the stairs.

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The fact that the wicked priest seemed to hear what was silent was more significant to her in this moment than the fact that his guards now ran up the stairs with murderous intent, and it was this fact that did mystify – and somewhat frighten her.  For hearing what was silent was reserved to the shape shifters and to her Father’s people, not to those whose business was soul murder.

But nonetheless, even as Oracion struggled with her desire to help the second baby out of the snake’s body, and knew that second baby was also her (in some mysterious way), Velocity laid an invisible hand on Oracion’s own invisible hand. In the next instant she was transported to the evil priest’s closet, as if in hiding from the angry men with the monstrously loud boots.

If the old priest had stolen the secret to hear silent things, had he also obtained secrets to see secrets as well? Could he find Oracion here?

Could that be even possible?

Though the enemies had seen shape shifters in various formula and format, the shape shifters were the only ones left that Oracion knew of,  to see reality for what it actually was.

To the pathetic wicked priest, when he could see her, at least as far as Oracion could tell, she would always just be the deeply disturbing garden nymph, with wild eyes, too pale skin and a cloud of black hair, the one he had cast off into the forest for being too intelligent.  He probably had fantasized that the girl would be taken in by the other commoners he had banished from his kingdom, and somehow, as if through what he viewed as a lower, less than pristine class contamination, forget everything she had seen within the castle walls.

How could the old priest actually see or understand who Oracion really was, when he did not even deem her human, or understand how she could be present when his tap dripped, babies cried, or even when he had flash backs to his own mother, hundreds of years ago, screaming at him for some imagined offense?

But while in the closet Oracion sensed, if not smelled, the unmistakable odor of long decayed flesh, it was so dark that Oracion could no longer see anything either.  The priest’s closet engulfed her like a sickening tomb.

She could feel around with her hands, however, and though what she felt disturbed her much, it suddenly made her see clearer than she had been ever been able to before.

Alacrity was whispering something silently into her ear that sounded like “Fuhrer” then “bioethics” even as Oracion was hearing the voices of booted men, perhaps a woman, and some other visitors (good or bad she could not tell) right on the other side of the door.

“ok, Miss Spider…” a voice began.

Oracion felt skeletons hanging from hangers, their little bony feet knocking and clicking against her back, as Oracion found a place to crouch, making her own body very little by kneeling on the floor.

“they found her…has a business now…probably should have stayed away”

The bodies must have been stacked together and compacted quite tightly in this closet, pressed together to get in as many hanging skeletons as possible. Surely they could not have been all of this one priest’s kill Oracion thought, as her small movements disengaged a sprinkling of loose toes from several dry, ancient feet, but this clink, clink, clink of the bones, apparently, the outsiders could not hear at all. The men continued their chatter, as if they were women gossiping about the next door neighbor, not soldiers with guns in front of a closet containing ancient bones.

“very sincerely misguided.  It’s like getting a tongue lashing from a snake…all of her comments are crazy…starving children can’t talk…standing up”

But at Oracion’s own feet, another type of body lay… lifeless, but still warm.

A little girl, around seven or eight.

Oracion felt the small, still, familiar hands of the child, and her familiar, round cherubic face, the cloud of tangled hair as soft as she could imagine the silk threads of the blouse of a madonna, and impossible ever to comb… while the most brutal pain of all and heavy understanding suddenly settled on Oracion’s heart.

Would she die an eighteenth death at this moment, in an evil priest’s closet, just so she would understand, with dangling skeletons above her, and her third beloved fairy godmother,  dead at her feet?

“I don’t know what to tell ya…her father called the judge. The North Door ceremony, over expenses, music… accomplished. I realize depression –  but the only possibility is a mixed seed”

Oracion wept bitterly, holding the poor, lifeless body of Chagrin in her arms.

“the only thing to do…threats, sticks, making stars…hey, what are we waiting for…you know in theory his father’s outbursts pre determine dream obsessions, an isolated bath…maybe the tin man did what he did because she wouldn’t even get a book – a false prophet, to deceive the elect…”

“Father, be with me!” Oracion shouted, no longer able to bear this moment, but fearing the next –  her rightful anger and love for Chagrin suddenly igniting into a desperate urgency, and so of course,  Oracion’s surroundings changed once again, instantaneously.

She was back in her forest home with Alacrity and Velocity, and Oracion was running through the leaves and sticks and underbrush to find where she had put her most innocent Chagrin down to sleep earlier in the evening,  on a blanket of warm winter edelweiss.

There was another moment of excruciating grief and understanding in The Seeing.

For all daughters who see, also grieve.  And all mothers who see, also grieve.

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It was seeing the child motionless, the child that was at the same time Oracion’s child, and at the same time her fairy godmother, as still as that first motionless baby within the snake’s body, that ripped another bloody sword into the center of Oracion’s heart. For she had to look to see if she could ascertain the gentle rising up and down of the child’s chest, to see if there was any life left, but Oracion knew the moment of death had just arrived, when she had arrived on the scene.

For in that same instance, the moment Chagrin’s chest ceased all movement, the child was already shifting into her new form, and breathing life’s breath once again.

Chagrin was an even younger child now, her hair a prettier and paler shade than the paleness of that winter moon, and her eyes brighter than the sparkling diamonds in a once treasured wristlet band. For what these eyes had seen while asleep and would always see now, was what Oracion could sometimes see as well, or at least intuit –  the Constant Presence, the Father Made Known, Who lived where He Would – to be with them always.

“I never left your side” she finally heard His Voice say in a voice that rang out though silent, like a loud crashing waterfall, in answer to the helpless cry she had shouted out to Him in the priest’s bedroom closet.

Chagrin’s laughter rang out as well and echoed merrily,  like a sweet musical note ringing loud and clear and finally free throughout the forest. And as the child sat up and reached her arms out to Oracion, Oracion beheld in them the gift of a small bouquet of edelweiss, clutched in a hand.

But Oracion knew she was no longer Chagrin anymore.

“Mother,” Chagrin called her, for the first time ever.

“I am finally Joy.”

Shape Shifting


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Oracion had been warned not to go near the new castle that was already old, that stood in danger of crumbling at the end of the wood.  It was there the wicked priest had taken the sun a long time ago, on a night so dark it lasted the length of three nights, and if not for the light of the moon, her kind would have died of grief.

Happy to be released, Oracion had made her new home in wood and flower, to trod upon moss and fragrant violet, ponder the graceful movement of heliotrope, and listen to chimes in the wind.

The three fairy godmothers that Father had given her were with her still.

Athough Oracion appreciated their companionship, she had to take care of them like little children, because all fairy godmothers will be, in some ways, little children. Subsequently, they often got tired and clung about Oracion’s neck heavily during the day, or pulled at her hair. Chagrin was the oldest, and was often found wandering off into the dangerous parts of the wood where the fog was deep, and had to be fetched before the child fell into the moat, or worse – got mistaken for Oracion.

If anyone found Oracion, the old priest would have her murdered instantaneously. If any of his servants dared to speak to her first, they would be executed as well.  And she felt it would have been her fault, although she didn’t think it was.

But she missed her friends.

The thought of burning at the stake didn’t frighten Oracion, but stoning did.  For her kind would be found guilty of knowing whatever sins the old priest had committed, and she would have been stoned for each one of his sins, as well as each one of her gifts, and each one of her fairy godmothers, the priest pocketing these things like plucked pansies into his robe.

And the moat into which she feared Chagrin would fall, was not like regular moats that Oracion had read about in story books when she was little (many lifetimes ago) or the one that had surrounded her own home in the Other World, but one that ran deceptively through pine and leaf throughout the forest floor like a giant, tangled snake set out to catch its prey.

Now that Oracion was even younger, she was very wary of this slippery inlet’s particular danger, and the fog that rose up from it in cloudy mists. It was the type of poisonous fog that had blinded some.

But the nights in the forest were beautiful because the fog never reached the sky, or obscured the moon.  And although the stars were falling now at regular intervals, the nights were getting brighter than ever before.

Some said these bright nights were day, and of course they had always been, to Oracion.

For it was in the night that Oracion could shape shift like the other children into invisibility and fly.

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Sometimes, after securing Chagrin, she would gather Alacrity and Velocity to her, and together they would slip into mysterious places forbidden, all walls dissolving in an instant at the touch of her hand. She saw books lining shelves that contained the hidden things, and passage ways that were really there, but hidden from plain sight, invisible to earth.  Once she found a bracelet of baguettes of exquisite clarity the old priest had stolen from her when she was just little. Then, as if he found it useless, he had tucked it into his bedside table drawer.

Yes, it was as if the priest just stole out of jealousy, yet when obtaining what he wanted, could not understand the things he had stolen,  in spite of their brilliance. Or perhaps, jealous of the shape shifters  (who could turn matter into other forms good) he had stolen the power to turn, but could not turn them good.

She hoped it was not that.  For for the first she had pity, but not for the latter.

And sometimes, during the night, Oracion found her real Father here and there in the woods like Aslan the Narnian beast, from a tale told in other demensions, and he drew her to him with more tenderness than ever expressed this side of heaven.

It was those nights Oracion liked the best.

But on one night, when the moon’s fullness made the castle more ominous and dark by comparison, Oracion found herself suddenly standing within its transparent walls in a place she did not wish to be, to view something she did not wish to see.  For Oracion was standing beside the dresser drawer that contained the stolen diamond baguettes she had once worn around her own tiny wrist, laughing, once upon that time.

Only the priest’s drawer had been pulled roughly open and the bracelet was missing – or changed. And, as if in desperate attempt so her kind would never find or want to look for such a priceless bracelet again, a monstrous black snake slithered out, raising its ugly head at Oracion to strike.

Oracion’s Fire

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I saw grief drinking a cup of sorrow and called out:
“It tastes sweet doesn’t it?”
“You have caught me”, grief answered,
“And you’ve ruined my business
How can I sell sorrow, when you know its blessing?”  -RUMI

 

He looked at her with undisguised and unapologetic contempt, but not before she caught sight of another expression that played briefly across his features; an expression not very unlike those that are known to depict fear.

This first, fleeting expression was one of being startled, that which a child’s face might possess when caught with a hand in the cookie jar, or the expression of a robber pulled over with stolen goods in the trunk of a car, or a sodomizing priest – facing a child ignorant of society’s standard of politeness and therefore not afraid to scream.

Yes, in that moment the troubled man looked very startled, as if she were some clever nymph that had emerged out of the woods with the purposeful intent to cast her spells upon him, or shed what was referred to in days of old  – as Oracion’s Fire.

This was just before the priest’s expression hardened into one of cold, impenetrable hatred.

It was in the preceding startled expression that the cleric revealed he knew not where to run and hide from such a deluge, and feared should he actually have to come in contact with the tears of the blessed – his skin would become instantaneously charred.

Did the mysterious nymph not know (in her innocence) he had no choice but to attack her then, for if her burning tears did not literally kill him, they would imprint upon him forever the evidence of his own guilt?

No, she had not known, but in retrospect, when thinking about that startled expression he bore her, Oracion knew that was when the wicked priest first devised his plan.  It was a plan to bear false witness against her, dispatch her… and started calculating the attempted murder of her soul.