Found Story

Those of you friended to this journal back in August may remember my telling part of LM's past life story, including this episode about how he won his wife in one of their lives together. It's not the greatest of my griefs, but I do regret that he told me so few stories of our joint past, because he thought it was important to live in the present, and for me to remember on my own. I can't fault him for that, but since our time together here was so short, it would have been nice to have had some other stories to hold. It's actually not something I think about often, but it was on my mind yesterday for some reason.

Last night, I received my copy of Sandman: Endless Nights from Amazon. It's a collection of stories, each featuring one of the Eternals (Dream and his siblings Death, Destiny, Desire, Delight, Despair, Destruction), each illustrated by a different artist. The story about Desire, illustrated by Milo Manara, stunned me. It's not actually a story about Desire, but about a woman in an unspecified Celtic-Nordic mythic past who wins an arrogant chieftain's son, a warrior-hunter described as having "golden eyes" and moving with "the loping gait of a wolf" and then avenges his too-early death. The whole story, from the description of the man, to the pattern of the courtship, to the wedding night, to what happens after -- including a flower -- resonated deeply with the courtship story LM told me.

It's not the same. It's not us.
But it could have been.
It could have been our story.

Up a Level

I've been promoted from "acolyte" to "novice."

Last night I was talking to Ereshkigal about which writing project I should embark on. I have a series of articles and non-fiction book ideas in my head, and had asked for help discerning which would be most fruitful to work on first.

She wants me to work on an article about her. When I asked why, the reasons included (but were not limited to) Her desire to be spoken of, remembered, brought more into public consciousness. My response was that I would certainly do as she advised, and acknowledged that it was only fitting, after all She has been doing for me, to honor her publically like that.

It was, according to her, an appropriate priestess response: wanting my work to honor my gods, not just win regard for myself, or serve solely my own needs. And then she said I was now a "novice."