After a large meal everyone except her fell asleep beside the road. Seeming unbothered by rain she decided to explore. Walking amongst the trees she sees many different kinds. Some smelling good and others not so good. Among the trees set deeper back, and down a tumble of large roots she sees candles burning. A shrine of a large Winged Goddess with a crescent moon crown stands in the heart of the largest tree.
Many other minor Goddesses have shrines all around, the way they are set up you can only see them from within. Its impressive, offerings of food and drink lay on copper plates beside wreaths of flowers and many old coins, turned green from the elements. Wanting to honor the shrine she puts a coin at the foot of the carved Goddess.
Just then a slow wind picks up, blowing chimes in the trees. Dorotea feels intoxicated by the air and the sound. Feeling like she is one of thousands of strands of grass blowing in a gentle breeze. As she smiles and closes her eyes, a furtive sound alarms her. A twig breaking.
Dorotea feels suddenly like she is being hunted. Calmly she looks around into the distant trees and begins to feel like an ominous movement all around her is coming closer. Looking around she sees the trees are formed from the withered corpses of people, each tree holds the form of a Tormented Soul, twisted and curled into bodies suffering eternity in anguish.
Losing all composure she runs as fast as she can to her companions, but the way she came in seems different. Where a simple path led up to the cottage is now ugly brambles of branches and thorny vines. She sees blueish faces, with yellow eyes. Subhuman like some kind of feral ape in a children’s story.
Then she hears Great Wings flapping and just as she looks back to see a black mass of Blue-headed pursuing Primates and horrible Bird Women she knew from greek myths were Harpies. She hears a huge crunching of wood splintering and a horrible knotted arm grabs her by the neck.
Lifting her almost to the top of the tree line. An angry face glowers at her. She notices now a horror beyond her imagination. On every tree branch are impaled bodies, pecked apart by birds and beasts until they seem almost like they have shriveled and become the same wood as the trees. She remembers tell of a bird called a Shrike that takes small mammals and sticks them on thorny trees to eat alive. Is this to be her fate?
An awful Old Man’s face on a Burning Tree Spirit stares at her. The titan creature has fiery eyes and a mouth curled into a well of hate like a deep volcano. His visage is like the horned Celtic God of the forrest. Cernunnos, the burning Tree Spirit screams. “Wait!” At once the primates and ghoulish Harpies screech and flee. Dorotea loses consciousness. She vaguely feels wind on her face and movement above the treetops like she is being carried by a great bird.
She awakens in the cottage. Its warm from a fire in the hearth. The roof is a mangle of trees and branches open to the sky and in a mesmerizing ray of light an Angel comes down through the opening in the roof. A golden glow of the Angel-like being is too dazzling to look at. A Fairy Goddess from a story book with smiling face, with skin clothed in the black and sparkling stars of the universe, eyes like rays of the sun.
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A warmness comes over Dorotea from within. A sacred inner feeling of safety, of love and nourishment, of everything she never had from a mother or any one at home other than Grandma Nann at the Moran farm. Dorotea realizes this is the Goddess Artémis. Dorotea was wise to leave a coin on the alter. Still unsettled she also notices dozens of monkey heads peaking in and naked harpies flocking around the roof. Most startling is the giant Burning Tree Spirit standing behind her whose every move is like trees breaking in a storm.
The Goddess says “Do not be afraid. That Burning Tree Spirit is Cernunnos. He comes from a time when a much earlier Planet Earth collided with another World from deep space on an elliptical orbit of untold millennia. Creating our Moon but destroying a verdant paradise in the process. That is where the Garden of Earthly Delights known as Eden was obliterated. Cernunnos, God to the Druids and first Mysteries could be called the ‘Oldest Spirit or The First Tree’ a guardian spirit of all forests. The first seed and the oldest of all my allies. All of these creatures are my messengers. Although they would have eaten you immediately if you harmed by sacred woods, they grew curious when you honored my alter. The children of men have long turned against the old ways, burning my groves of trees and chopping down my alters.”
Dorotea falls into tears. “I don’t know where I am, I don’t know whats going on. I just want to go home and run away to find my brother in the Revolution. Is this Mexico?” The Goddess smiles. “I don’t think so. This is a place where very few of the living ever go, and the restless dead are waiting to learn the things they don’t know.” Dorotea looks unsure but wide eyed.
The Goddess thus spoke “Our land is divided between the Epoch of Taurus in the North were The Queen of Heaven once ruled, long before the common era. Persephone, a young Goddess of Spring and Fertility was stolen away to the underworld by Aries, The false God Yaldabaoth. Creating a dark period of frozen Earth during the Winter Solstice. There was a civil war between the gods Aries and Mars that burned our land for centuries. Aries the Ram was once my nephew, but raised a great revolt. His Epoch is to the West land of smoke and sacrifice. The South is contested, the Epoch of Pisces. Overtly ruled by The Fisher King, but he is an absentee lord pretending to be dead to run from his duties. The armies of Aries: The Ibex Storm God, ‘Who blackens the noon sun.’ Runs freely to murder and rape in his absence. There is a long war between them over who will lead the living. Both are short sighted and follow savage practices outlawed by the old traditions. We all await the coming Epoch of the Aquarian age that will create a new world to the East where now only the dead ancients live in a city from before the creation of the universe. A sad remnant of a wholly different version of reality, an obsolete tradition that is remembered by only the wind and sky, mountains and the sea, living in memories deep bellow the sediment.”
Dorotea feels her spirit lifting from her body and floating off into the forrest. She hears the Goddess voice. “I have a very special journey for you Dorotea, and if you do this for me. I will see to it you have every thing you need to return home and reach your wildest dreams.” Dorotea sees giant plants growing souls in embryos like seed pods. Red hearts and minds floating in a purple cocoon.
The Goddess continues “I have a Champion who fought to his last breath to save our people and was murdered. His body is strung up from a gallows in the heart of the City of the Dead, it is a great city that has fallen into the Ancient Eastern Sea. Its temples rise above the water so you will find it easily.” Dorotea has an image in her minds eye of a glowing red soul, a young boy made out of star fire and molten glass, his life and becoming a soldier, hiding his light in a suit of a Black Knight. His body now hanging from a gallows with a blacksmiths Anvil tied to his feet somewhere deep under an oily black sea, surrounded by Jellyfish, Bobbit Worms and Angler Fish.
Dorotea awakens feeling unhappy and unsafe. She is laying beside her friends. Looking up at the stars in the sky she wonders about the infinite amount of stars and if her brother is looking at the same sky somewhere else. She looks around to the moon and thinks of all the times she had to walk home in moonlight. She wonders if the Fairy Goddess was a dream or if the grove of trees and cottage were real. She sees a shooting star and wishes she could understand what was happening and if she could just go back to the Moran farm where she was happy and where the days held such wonder and mystery.