Sleep Journal - 190120 - Fairge Anma

[kimurho]

Index of Sleep Journal entries on Fairge Anma"

Sleep Journal
20 January 2019

Dr. Stevenson's class was my last one for the day and, as luck would have it, I wasn't scheduled to work that night either.

Luck.

That's another of those words that I think I know but it's used differently here in the World. Here, it means exactly the same thing as chance. Here, what I know as luck, they call magic.

There is another name for luck in that Otherplace. Power. That's what it was to him.

That's what I was to him.

Every natural living creature has a little bit of luck in them.

It's like love, it wells up from the soul, from the small piece of the Spirit that moves Creation, and the more you share it, the more you have.

In most people, it is a slow, steady, small seepage. It ebbs and flows through a person's life like the tide, sometimes more. Sometimes less.

In a MacRath, a child of luck, it flows like a river, steady and constant.

I am NicRath, a daughter of luck.

Granny was NicRath, as well. That's how she recognized me after I was rescued from the raiders. Most of us born of luck are daughters.

Another word for us is sianaiche - changeling. The ignorant of the village would make the sign against evil when they thought I wasn't looking because they thought I was the child of one of the Gentryfolk.

I'm not.

I don't think I am, anyway.

Luck or magic ... or power, too, I suppose ... is neither good nor bad; it just is. What matters is how you use it. Granny taught me to use it for good; to help others. To heal disease, defend against the darkness, fight evil.

He taught me only to fear and to hide.

I could feel the luck rising as I left the library. Battering against the walls I had built to control it, threatening to overflow and flood.

When it did ... when, not if ... When it overflowed, it would signal to any who could see exactly where I was hiding.

After he took me.

After Granny died.

He put me in a circle of power and he wrought a working on me to change ... something within me. He changed the way the luck presented itself within me, from a bright cheerful spring in summer, to the raging floods of storm. That was when he told me that I would blaze forth like a beacon in the darkness. And that he would always be able to find me.

There was one place I could go where I might be able to hide the upswelling of luck.

Holy ground.

I didn't have time to get to St. Brigid's. It was too far and not enough people to hide amongst.

Everyone has their own luck, in greater or lesser amounts. The more people around, the harder it is to see who has more and who has less.

I haven't been out in the countryside since I escape him.

I haven't dared.

I went to the Cathedral. It's only a few blocks over from campus. The power of God is the one thing I know that will hide me when I flare. It's the one place where it will be safe to discharge the excess luck.

Churches and holy places are designed to draw the luck from out the faithful. Religions rely on the faithful willinging giving of their Spirit for the good of the whole community. The giving back unto God that which belongs to God. A small piece of the Holy Spirit that moved upon the waters resides within each of us. Ever renewing. No matter how much of us we give from that Spirit, there is always more.

Luck, like love, comes from the Spirit. It springs from the soul.

Sacred ground glows brightly. The more honest and pure the faith, the brighter the glow.

I would need it.

I went in and knelt for a while in prayer. It was still fairly early. Sunset three hours away.

The Cathedral isn't exactly my faith, no more than is St. Brigid's, but God can be found in both places, He and all His angels and all the saints.

I stayed for Evensong and then, as the congregation filed out, I drew shadows around to hide myself until the sexton turned off the main lights ... leaving only a few glowing here and there - safety lights ... and locked the doors behind him.

Church doors are never locked in the Otherplace. Refuge against the creatures that walked in the dark, creatures that could not step foot on holy ground.

Only after I heard the click of the key turning, loud in the silence, did I come out of the shadows. I looked around in the dimly lit darkness. I'd been there many times during my first years of freedom. I hadn't had an attack this bad in years - three or four - but in the early days, before I learned to hide myself completely, they'd struck with a regularity.

A richly patterned runner stretched from main entrance to altar. I couldn't see the pattern in the darkness, but I had had time enough to study it well in the past. Considering that the surging of luck had burned the lines of the circle onto the carpetting in the library, I didn't dare step on it. Let along lie out as I must.

Plain stone was the best conductor of luck anyway.

I turned to the side chapels.

I considered the Lady Chapel, dedicated to the Mother. That was where I usually went. I even took several steps in that direction. But something called me to the other side. To the war memorial, with St. Michael watching over all. In the end, I went to St. Michael.

I lit a candle, went down on my knees, and then further, lying face down on the ground, arms outstretched. Abasing myself.

It isn't prayer, exactly. Abasement, I mean. And it isn't mortification of the flesh or punishment, either. It's more of an opening. A yielding to the Almighty. A contemplation of the vastness of Being. And a surrendering of self. It's a physical expression to the Spirit ... 'Here I am, Lord. Speak, and your servant will hear.'

On the practical side, full-body contact means a greater degree of transfer. I can discharge the excess luck faster and maybe reduce it enough to leave in the morning.

Maybe that's why it happened. The last time I took recourse to the Cathedral during a flare up after a severe panic attack, I wasn't ready. Perhaps this time, I was.

I did not fall asleep.

I did, however, fall into a trance.

I don't know what time it was when I suddenly knew that I was no longer alone in the Cathedral. The doors hadn't opened. No one had entered. The only living souls I had brushed against in my trance-state had been birds nesting in the belfrey and bats flying in and out, but someone was there.

I raised myself up to kneeling, sitting back on my heels.

He was sitting in a pew nearby, watching me. A little bent old man, wearing a long cassock, belted with a rope wearing sandals. Short hair bristling, face unshaven. I couldn't see if he were tonsured nor, if he was, were it a Celtic tonsure or Roman. I don't think it mattered one way or another.

He looked like someone I could trust. Someone I should trust.

I inclined my head toward him. "Sir?"

"So here you are again."

There didn't seem any answer to that.

How long do you plan to let that bastard run your life?" he asked.

That stung. "No one runs my life. Not any more. I'm free."

"Are you now?" he asked. "Then what are you doing here?"

And I was alone.

I sat there, turning the words over and over again in my head.

How long do I plan to let him run my life?

He doesn't run my life. I am making my own decisions. No one tells me what to do.

So what am I doing here?

I'm discharging excess luck. Power that would betray me ... to ... him.

I thought about the last time I had been able to go for a long walk with no one in sight for miles.

I thought about how I had once dreamed of being a healer and helper.

I thought about how afraid I had been making the seuna flò, the bewilderment charm. And the reason I had felt compelled to make the charm. I felt ashamed of myself.

In the Otherplace, when I was a slave, my every act, my every thought, morning and night, had been about him. Don't anger him. Do what he says. Do what he wants. Don't make him wait. Keep him happy.

I hid myself from him, and from everyone else.

How was that different from what I did now, here in the World?

Back then, I had no friends among the other slaves. Any one of them might betray me. Any one of them might be used as a weapon against me - to force me to do his complete bidding.

I have no friends here in the World, either. I am afraid to let anyone get close to me. I make my decisions ... about my life ... my future ... to make myself as different from what I was as possible - because I am afraid he will find me otherwise.

I douse my luck, shedding it in small amounts throughout the day, lest it build enough to be seen.

I .. do ... nothing ... with my luck. Except throw it away like refuse.

I help no one. And no one helps me.

Because I am afraid.

The one thing he taught me was fear. It seems to be a lesson I learned even better than all the teachings Granny gave to me.

These thoughts and others came to me but even as I knew how saddened and disappointed Granny would be in me, I had to wonder ... what could I do?

Here in this the World, they do not believe in magic ... so why do they talk about it so much?

They don't believe in monsters ... and yet, Craig's class was well filled. And he believes.

Craig who was also Dr. Stevenson. Who didn't tell me he was Dr. Stevenson because ... I don't k,now why he didn't tell me, but I don't think it matters. Craig Stevenson is nothing like him. And until he proves that he is, I should grant him the benefit of believing in him.

Craig believes in aliens. And ghosts. And the magic of divination which he calls precognition. He ... and Doctor Monaghan and the woman, Justine McManus - perhaps they can believe in me.

I knelt there for hours, thinking. Letting the luck that was within me remain. The stained glass windows lightened with the sky as morning approached, and still I sat there.

The sun was not yet up when I finally regained my feet. I walked to the doors of the Cathedral and unlocked one with a touch of the luck. I stepped out into the new day ... and the sunrise was glorious.