Three Twisted Knots

From Gwyneth:

I won’t say it’s my favourite time of the year, because that would be playing dice with the seasonal gods and spirits, but I do love high summer. And in as seasonably attuned a Realm as Awenia is, that means the world is teeming with life. And around, and around, and around turns the good earth, we sing. All things must change as the seasons go by. All things must change.

One thing I’ve been trying to change is the portal to the being-rebuilt Book Forest.

I have this lovely piece of art, you see. And I have been working on an enchantment for it for — well, it feels like weeks, but that probably means it’s more like days, given the reality of perceived wait time versus actual wait time. I need for it to be able to duplicate itself, and then I need the door to work as a portal up in to the Great Library of Awenia, so tourists can start their journey into the book forest through the library. The first part went swimmingly, but I cannot seem to do the portal enchantment properly. Last time I tested it, I ended up at the bottom of a body of water that I didn’t think existed any more. It was … trippy.

It is a conundrum, I suppose, and one that I will solve in good time: it just may be that the Book Forest won’t be open as early as I’d hoped. Ah, well. Originally we were hoping for a midsummer opening, but as you can see, that deadline’s flown past us. I’ve never been good with deadlines, although I hear I work well under pressure. Who knows? Let’s just say that I didn’t think I could handle even one more hour of trying to enchant this damn book that evening, so….

‘Bran— give me something else to do; I’m going to lose my mind if I work at this much longer’.

There was silence for only a beat. Bran keeps everything on his iPad these days, so probably he had to quit the game he was playing in order to access my diary. Ooops, too bad, Bran!

‘You haven’t signed off on the Druid Circle yet’, he said. ‘And Clutie wants your input on the Feast Grove as well’.

‘Now that sounds like a lot more fun than sitting up here trying to enchant book portals’, I replied.

So, off we went, through the (working!) portal to Awenia proper, where we said hello to Brin, one of our lovely Cait-Sidhe, before crossing the bridge to the Sacred Meadow. The Meadow itself, I could see, was still in some disarray.

The demifae have done all the signage, though it doesn’t fit with our Awenia style sheet.

‘Bran’!

He scurried over from his gossip session with one of our Centaurs. ‘Ah, yes’. He already knew what I was going to say. ‘The Meadow Demifae are tired that you always say things like “we don’t know who moves all the statues around”, and “we don’t know who keeps the meadow”, so they have formed a collective in order to more accurately represent their presence in the Meadow’.

I blinked. Twice. ‘Well, that’s certainly their right’, I mused. ‘But the signage’…

…’Was chosen by the collective’, Bran replied. ‘They felt the style sheet was too formal for the whimsical image they wished to project’.

‘But we have a style‘, I said.

‘And they don’t feel it matches theirs‘, he replied, matching me cadence for cadence. ‘Your Majesty, it is a small concession. They give so much’.

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. All around me, I could feel the hum of the Meadow, the little connections the demifae are busily making so that everything will run smoothly once it is finished. I reached out and listened to all their impossibly fast heartbeats, and I sent them a wave of love and acceptance. ‘You and they are right, Bran. The signage will stand. I’ll ask them to create a similar one for the Pangurlands as well, since they’re both on this island; do you think that’s a good idea’? I knew already it was, because I heard a little trill of laughter, felt a little rush of joy. You don’t really learn this in folklore school—or at least I didn’t—but there is nothing in the universe, multiverse, or meta verse stronger than demifae magic. They are pure magic. Tapping in to their collective thoughts is electric, and I wouldn’t advise anybody without significant magic themselves even to attempt it.

‘Are you changing the name to Pangurlands‘? he asked.

‘I think I might’, I replied. ‘Feline just sounds so scientific. It doesn’t really go’.

He nodded. ‘I think they approve’, he said.

I answered with a nod; I wasn’t going to go back in there for now; I was almost dizzy as it was. ‘The Circle, then’, I said, and walked down the stepping stone path to the dark stone circle.

‘Oh’, was all I could say when I reached the edge of the Circle. I had to stop to cleanse my face and hands at the small Well they’d placed just outside the stone circle, and that gave me enough time to collect myself, ground, catch my breath, all that stuff. The altar asked to be approached reverently, and so I did.

I couldn’t stop smiling. ‘Oh, look! They’ve given us altars for each Kindred. How beautiful—the offerings are beautiful, of course, and Clutie—you’ve made the Ancestor look a wee bit like my Welsh granny’.

Above me in the tree itself, I felt Clutie yawn. ‘Sleepy now’, her voice whispered in my head, ‘but you’re welcome’.

‘It’s perfect’, I said to Bran. ‘I’ll talk to Clutie tomorrow about flowers; she seems sleepy this evening’.

‘They’ve been at it for most of the last two days, Your Majesty’, Bran said. ‘Clutie would like you to do the feasting grove, please’.

‘That I can do’, I replied, ‘but first, let me just say a few words to the Ancestors’.

With a fingertip, I lit the single candle on the Ancestors’ altar.

I won’t share what we talked about; it’s a little personal for this space. I will share that it was a conversation about gratefulness, about belonging, about accordance, and harmony. It was a good conversation.

I left the candle burning. My ancestors are good at feasts, and I knew they would help me with the work to come next. ‘Ready’, I said to Bran, and we walked the few steps to the Feast Grove. I will show you the fruits (pun intended) of that labour soon enough.

Notes & Credits

• Midsummer Enchantment is open until 10th July, so make sure you get there before the festival ends!
• Items featured at Midsummer Enchantment in this post:
  • The sublime dress. This is from Solas Enchantment of Blue Moon Enterprises (BMe). It’s the Midsummers Dream Gown, and I am crazy about it. The reason it’s taken so long to write this post is I wanted it to be photographed perfectly, and in the right space. To do that, I had to have the Druid Circle ready, and as you know, it took the demifae two whole days to put all this together.
  • The wings are also from BMe; they’re the hunt prize, the Midsummer Dream Wings.
  • The nails are from Eventyra, also available at the event. This is Eventyra’s hunt prize, Enchanting Foils.
  • The makeup (and I hope you can see it well in the close-ups!) is from Edie’s, the Lorna Makeup, also available at Midsummer Enchantment.
• Other Lovely Things:
  • Skin: ND/MD, Cea, still available at the Reborn Event until the 5th of July, after which it will relocate to the ND/MD Main Store. All Alea’s skins are lovely, but I have taken a real fancy to this one; there’s something about the contouring that lends an air of maturity without going over into old, if that makes sense. This will probably stay Gwyneth’s go-to skin for some time to come, except when I’m featuring other ND/MD Skins.
  • Hair: Analog Dog, (natch!), Pandora, new at the Analog Dog Main Store. Someone asked me recently why I always write (natch!) after Analog Dog Hair, since I do not always photograph Gwyneth wearing AD hair. The fact is I’ve been a fan of Queue’s designs and Analog Dog Hair since before there was a Gwyneth, and there was a time where I wore almost nothing else. My original SL avatar, lost now to the mists of history, was in the super-old school Analog Dog fan club where you had to show up and show Queue personally that you had at least <x> Analog Dog hairs before she’d let you in! In fact, Analog Dog Hair was the subject of my first ever proto-SL-blog post, on my very old LiveJournal (remember LiveJournal? Yeah). The post was entitled “Hairgasm”, and I still have them when Queue makes something amazing and new.
  • The Jewellery is from Rise Design, the Tresor Earrings and Necklace, and it’s available at their main store.
  • The Circlet is from Old Treasures, and available at the Old Treasures Main Store. The box says it’s the Meghan Circlet, but the object itself says it’s called Precious Circlet.
  • The Magic Book. This is the rare item from a Since 1975 gacha, and as I’ve recently gone back to their main store and purchased the very reasonably priced copy/mod fatback of this set, it was indeed straightforward to enchant it to duplicate itself! Still working on the teleport script, though….
  • The Meadow Signs. These are from Raindale, and Kiera Rainfall provides textures you can download so you can completely customise this beautiful set of signs. I love them and have used them many times, but I’m not sure I’ve ever photographed them before; they definitely deserve a shout-out! You can get them at the Raindale Main Store.
  • The Stepping Stones are from Lore, very easy to use and place, too. Available at the Lore Main Store.
  • The Circle Stones are from Harshlands, from the set of Ritual Rocks.
  • The Goddess Figure at the Deity Altar is also from Harshlands, the Summer Guardian.
  • The Ancestor Figure on the Ancestor Altar is also from Harshlands, the Guardian Lady Statue. All these figures are available (or soon will be) at the Harshlands Main Store, and also on Marketplace.
  • The Nature Spirit Figure on the Nature Spirit Altar is from Cerridwen’s Cauldron, The Winter King Statue.
    • Note that both the small altar figures are sized down significantly from their original sizes!
  • The Large Altar is from Aisling, the Nature Table.
  • The Smaller Altars are from Ionic, the Lothlorien Table.
  • If you’re curious about anything else on any of the altars, please just IM me in world or ask here in a comment; there are so many things I can’t list them all!