Three Twisted Knots

From Friðrós:

Well, Her Majesty will want to know about this. So I should document it, I guess. I have a little camera, and Viska’s along with me, so she can help me take some photographs: Huldufólk, much as I wish it weren’t so, aren’t great with technology unless we’re in a Realm that’s bound to something technological. So strangely, I was happier with a mobile phone back home in Iceland than I am here in Faerie, even though Queen Gwyneth is pretty good with technology and even Nathaniel has managed to get the hang of a spreadsheet (or so he says).

Now, of course Faerie is replete with odd little places and things you’d never expect to find: it’s Faerie. And now that I’m beginning my third year here, I guess the truth is I’ve been concentrating more on myself than on the place itself. Her Majesty says I need to recognise that even the Fae grow and change, that if we don’t, we’re going to be as stagnant as the Fae Courts of old, and we will find ourselves existing only in story, until the growers and changers forget or have no more use for the stories. Then, she says, we face our ultimate disappearance. She gave me this lecture last year, as well, talking about how she’d seen a vision of reality unravelling before her eyes and that she’d seen herself in that vision. I mean, she’s a Fae Queen, so frankly you have to take everything she says með smá salti. With a grain of salt. Idioms sound better in the old tongue.

Anyway, I was just taking a walk, and I had some writing to do, so I had a notebook with me, thinking about what the purpose of my little life should be, and I thought I was heading straight into the Pangurlands so I could pet the new kittens, but… yeah, I don’t know what happened. I ended up in what looked like the ruins of a temple or some such, not a place I’d ever seen before. In fact it looked way too broken-down for anything Her Majesty would want in Her Faerie. I figured it was worth exploring. And it didn’t look all that big. Viska was sure it would be safe.

The whole place had a springy, summery vibe, which makes sense given the time of year and Gwyneth’s devotions to the seasons themselves and the cycle of the Earth. I’ll grumble another time about how since technically we’re not on Earth we shouldn’t have to mirror Earth, but whatever. There were flower vines everywhere wrapping round the robust trees. It was easy to imagine this as a place Nature Herself had recaptured from some ancient human or human-like hands, but then I came to a series of strange boulders marked with symbols both familiar and foreign. This one… I thought I heard a voice behind me just as I found it… this one reminded me of the Awen from which Awenia takes its name, the symbol of bardic inspiration in Her Majesty’s pre-alchemic-cosmology Druidry. See, there are three rays coming down and you could imagine the semicircle there as a sun sign. Maybe these were things the Queen herself had built and forgotten?

I couldn’t resist stopping for a few minutes and spending time with what to me was if not an Awen, quite Awen-like, if you will. Or even if you won’t. It’s my report, so I’ll make it how I wish. I think there’s always more going on in the creating mind of someone like Her Majesty than one can see straight-up; her creations are real and have echoes, repercussions, rippling ever-outwards. It makes one wonder if this isn’t why she confines herself to little universes: she doesn’t want to affect a planet’s worth of people, places, other nouns. Whether or not she remembers this place, I’m sure she’ll want to know about it anyway, especially if there were more of the strangely-marked stones elsewhere in the… dare I call it a grove? Was it a grove, a temple, a shrine? So many words for similar things.

Further in, more arcane symbols awaited me. This one, I could not interpret, so after I got Viska to shoot this photograph, I also sketched the symbol in the notebook, just to make sure I had the details in my head. It’s not as if Her Majesty really takes special note of anything I’m doing these days; she’s barely spoken to me since the turning of the year. But stranger things have happened: maybe this will be the one time she quizzes me, and of course I want to be ready. It’s worth noting that the landscape beyond the … wherever I was … had this odd quality of being both inviting and somehow forbidding, as if it was somehow designed to seduce the unwary. There was something about the quality of green and gold light that made me cautious. I guess I have learned a little bit in the last couple of years.

A shiver ran through me as the light began to fade. How long had I been here, anyway?

As I turned and looked for the way I’d entered this magical copse, I spotted a third glowing stone, this one in the shape of an archway. It seemed to mark the entrance to a sunlit pool, beyond which was another archway, perhaps made of trees. I didn’t dare go in that direction, but I did take a few minutes to consider the roughly rendered moon phases on the top of the arch. The moon here is in her first quarter; I wonder what would happen if I returned (assuming I could ever find this place again!) when the moon was full or nearly so. I imagined as I sat there that perhaps the while scene, the whole surrounding landscape, might change and morph into something different, though I didn’t dwell on what that landscape might be. I yawned. The shadows were definitely growing longer.

From somewhere behind me, Viska buzzed irritably. ‘We’d better go, Rós. It’s gonna get dark’. Those were pretty much the first words she spoke to me the whole time: she’d been flitting about doing whatever it is demifae do when they’re flitting about. They’re not big on explanations, and why should they be?

‘Well’, I said, ‘if you can find the way out, lead the way’.

She sniffed, tickled my ear with a wing. ‘You big folk. Couldn’t find your way out of a flour sack’.

I shrugged. I wasn’t about to engage her; I wouldn’t want to give her an excuse to leave me for whatever lurked here when the light left. ‘I’m glad you’re here with me’, I replied. ‘Who knows what would become of me if I were alone’?

That seemed to satisfy her sense of propriety without invoking any bargain, promise, deal, or whatever else you call those troubles humans get themselves into with the most accomplished glamourists in all the Realms, the demifae. She flitted ahead of me and started to glow so that I wouldn’t lose her as we made our way out of the … OK, I’m going to call it a temple grove. If I’d felt more comfortable with her I’d have made a firefly joke, or maybe just suggested that her bum might be on fire, but, yeah. Once again, I wasn’t tempting fate in that moment.

She had us back in the forest bordering the Pangurlands in no time, but I was too tired to visit the new kittens. I know, I know. There should always be time to visit new kittens, but it’s true: I was completely exhausted. Felt like I’d walked miles, uphill. And, as you probably already guessed, when I looked back into the forest there was no sign of any grove, no slanting gold and green light, no hint of glowing stones.

It turns out Awenia has more secrets than I knew.

Items Featured at Enchantment:

Environment:

• The Magical Grove, or Temple, or Copse: Synnergy Tavis, Forgotten Temple Backdrop. This is a 360° backdrop with great details throughout.
• The Mysterious Glowing Stones: Harshlands, Sorcerer’s Rocks.

Friðrós

• Friðrós’ walking outfit: Jangka, Ciriel. Includes outfit, armour, armbands, & boots.

Other Fancy Stuff:

• Friðrós’ stunning skin: ND/MD: ANI. This beautiful skin is at the Risky Business Event until NOON SLT today (that’s 26 February, 2023). If you’re an ND/MD VIP group member, wear your group tag and get 33% off; after that it goes home to the ND/MD Main Store, where it’ll be full price.
• Friðrós’ loverly strawberry blonde hair: Exile, Bree. Available at the Exile Main Store.
• Friðrós’ jewellery: EarthStones, Sun Moon Stars necklace, earrings, bracelet. Available at the EarthStones Main Store.
• Friðrós’ enchanting light hazel eyes: Shimm, CLXXIII, Set II. These are at the Abstrakt Event until 5 March, after which they’ll return to the Shimm Main Store.
• Friðrós wears a Maitreya body with the Petite add-on. Her new look is styled on a Lelutka EvoX Avalon head.