THE REVISED VERSION > PART 1 — DESERT

Green Man of Destiny: 5/To the Desert

The One; Gren into the Great Expanse

“What’s the matter with you? How do you expect to survive in the oven of the desert on foot if you are so dizzy?”

“I don’t know, Father.”

“Get up, Gren,” Wry ordered. “Maybe the One will have an answer to your dizziness.”

Gren walked along as though drunk. The father led him north of the village, over the line of boulders into a scraggy group of trees. The One’s small hut stood there. The One was standing invisible in the shadows.

“Enough,” The One said with force. The father halted and shoved Gren forward. He tumbled down into the shadows amidst the rocks.

“Goodbye. And don’t come back without the Green Man.”

The father disappeared over the rise. Gren groaned in the dust.

Gren was sitting next to a small hearth inside the One’s hut. He hadn’t stood. He hadn’t walked. The magic of the One?

The One handed him a bowl of stew. “This will restore your sense of balance.”

Gren ate a few bites of stew and felt a strange sensation flood his body. A sense of power filled his loins. It passed. The One had been correct, his body centered and the dizziness had begun to fade.

“Now drink.” The One shifted a bowl of drink between Gren’s palms.

Gren sipped at the foul liquid. “Drink all,” the One demanded with quiet force. Gren made himself drink the contents of the bowl.

Smoke began to fill the hut of the One as the fire smoldered. The smoke made Gren’s eyes wet with tears. The smoke and the drink churned in his stomach. “I am sick … dying …”

The One twisted, his body elongating into a blur of brilliant light and color. He was long and beautiful. He curved and flowed like liquid sunshine as the smoke parted. The fluid formed blues, whites, reds, and golds. The colors wound around each other like a maiden’s braid and pulled back through the envelope of smoke. Gren’s spirit went upward from the top of his head into the smoke. He followed the One.

In a place of no place, the One sat opposite Gren and blew images into his mind. He blew them into the dark place surrounded by light at the core of Gren’s being. Blew them across the stillness. Gren saw the Raven markings on the One’s arms fly off and away.

The Raven flew high over the lifeless desert, and up and farther. A white stone city appeared. A dying oasis surrounded the city with withered trees and abandoned farms in ruin. The wind gusted and the oasis vanished back into the desert.

Out of the nothingness of sand and wind grew a tall mountain. The Raven flew over the mountain and down into a river valley. Flashing on high to a forest, meadows, and pleasure. The great bird flew over a mead hall, and the lightning flashed into the heart of his stillness. Green light at the core of the darkness …

“Open your eyes.” It was the voice of the One.

Gren sat with a coat pulled up around his body. He realized it was the Spirit Coat of the One.

“How did this happen? I have the Spirit Coat of the One. I am in the desert.”

“Remember and you will see.” The voice of the One floated in the air stilled by the heat.

Gren closed his eyes. The herbal mixture he had taken in the One’s hut had provided a vision. At its end, the One had carried Gren to the North Wall. They passed through several corridors and narrow passageways to a door. The door opened onto the great sands of the North Desert. The One had carried Gren onto the sands of the desert before sunrise.

“I give you my staff of crystalline stone to guide and support you,” the One declared. He drew Gren’s hand to grasp it, for at that moment the staff was only as long as Gren’s forearm.

“You must think of the staff as your divine leg, an extra one for support,” the One said.

“Do it!” he shouted into the core of the boy.

Gren closed his eyes and saw the staff as it had been when the One held it. He saw it for himself and leaned into the staff. It completed itself by extending down and up. It was taller than Gren and planted in the sand.

“You may need the staff to remind you of your connection with all — and to draw on for strength. Now store it.”

Gren obeyed, letting the crystalline staff revert to its smaller size.

“I give you my Spirit Coat, for beyond all Traditions your vision stands clear. Let the winds of truth eat the Tradition of the Eight. Step out into your destiny.” The One draped the Spirit Coat over Gren’s shoulders and whispered into his ear:

“I spin you thrice so that you may travel to the edge of the first salt flat. Let Raven be your Guide. When Raven leaves you, your Spirit Animal will find you. Farewell, Gren, I will see you no more face to face.”

The One spun Gren around three times.

Gren sat with the Spirit Coat up around him, over his head as protection from the blaze of the sun. He opened his shoulder sack, removed bits of brown cake, and ate. He had discovered the water pouches within the Spirit Coat. He emptied the inefficient water bag into the coat’s outer lining. Now he could draw a small amount of the water through one of the tubes in the coat. This also kept him cooler in the day when the heat was a hammer.

He ate in high heat and then slept until the sun slid down the sky and opened into the night. He flung the coat back and lay looking up at the heavens.

I must have traveled far already, Gren thought, because the moon is a sliver. The twirling sent me far.

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Thank you for joining me in the hero’s adventures across a dying planet ready for resurrection through the ways of alchemical magic. And in search of the Being to restore the world to greenery once again.

Blessings, Passion, and Grace on your journey. May whatever or whomever you looking for — find you.

(If you do NOT wish to be tagged, let me know, and I’ll tag you not):

Barbara Murray | K. Pearson Bradley | Rebecca Romanelli | Joseph Lieungh | Dr. Preeti Singh | Pene Hodge | Dr Mehmet Yildiz | Kris Bedenian | Alberto García 🚀🚀🚀 | Blaine Coleman | Lee David Tyrrell | DL Nemeril | David Price | Rip Parker | Annelise Lords | Libby Shively McAvoy | Alison Hollingsead