The Prince

Song of the Day: Chicago by Sufjan Stevens

I haven't bloggity-blogged in a while, so I thought I'd throw together a little synopsis of something my brain did this afternoon.

We are having a particularly stormy week here in the beautiful northwest. Around here, fall means wind, and recently the weather gods have delivered. So today when I left the Performing Arts Center (where I pretty much live nowadays), it was dark, raining and EXTREMELY windy. I had 4 textbooks in my backpack (two of them necessary for today's class, two of them purchased for a class tomorrow) and had forgotten my iPod. So my brain decided to crank things up a little bit.

I was walking along a path in the foothills of the mountains with the raging wind doing everything it could to stop me. The storm was brewed by the Ocean Man, who was angry at the Shore-Dwellers for taking his children so often and so greedily. I carried a wolf upon my back; not just any wolf, but the Prince and my spirit vessel. Every generation of valley wolves has a Prince and he chooses a human with whom to share his spirit, and together they protect the forest. But once this connection is made, the death of one brings the death of the other. The storm had loosed a branch which had fallen onto the Prince, and I could now feel the pain draining his energy. I knew that the only people who could heal him were the shamans who guarded the mountain.

As I walked, the trees reached out with their sharp fingers to claw at me and whip at my face; the wind stole my voice away and so the trees could not understand my mission. They wanted only to protect the Mountain People. I could hear the Prince whine as wet leaves sliced at his face.

At last we came to a small valley, passed through it against the wind and began to climb the hill to the shamans' lodge. But the Prince's weight and the wind brought me almost to a standstill, and I struggled to gain a solid footing on wet leaves. The Prince told me to put him down, but I knew that if he tried to walk we would both die. He insisted and struggled to break free, but the lodge was in sight and as his energy waned, so did mine. I took my pack from my shoulders and gathered it into my arms to restrain him, then summoned what I believed to be the very last of my energy to make it up the towering stairs to the lodge.

When I came to I was warm and dry. The Medicine Woman and the other shamans fed our bodies with bread and our souls with music. The Prince will recover, given time. We shall have to make peace with the trees soon, and then we will go to the sea to meet with the Ocean Man and the Shore-Dwellers; we must speak to them on behalf of the trees.

...so yeah, that's what my imagination does when I force it not to think about my real life (because there's only so much of THAT I can take, you know?) I suppose I should go back to job hunting like a responsible adult. Boo.

I stand where the flashing swords gleam / And I try to shake my head clear of the dream / But I'm out of my element / I can't breathe / I'm out of my element / I can't breathe. -How To Embrace A Swamp Creature, The Mountain Goats