Possible trigger warnings. Death, abuse, war.
Once upon a time, there was a spirit who had just finished her earth walk after an illness. Other spirits were around her.
One pointed at a human and said,“Take care of her.”
Then they all left to fight in a war which coincided with the illness which had taken the spirit from her earth walk. She was alone. There had been no time for training.
She wanted to fight alongside the other spirits. In her own mind, she would have been a great Valkyrie. This human she was told to take care of was fat and ugly, so she believed the human was evil. To take care of her was to punish her for her sins. Somehow, this human had all she needed to survive quite a while on her own, so the spirit began her punishments by removing those supplies, one by one. The human got angry, but accepted the changes as part of the illness/war process. When the human tried to replace the removed items, the spirit put a blanket of protection around the human that no part of the war or other spirit could get through.
As things got worse for the human, she cried out for assistance from any source she could access. The blanket of protection made her invisible and silent. She went hungry as the guardian spirit believed she needed to lose weight. Instead, the human ballooned ever larger.
Someone noticed the human’s hunger and opened a path to a place where she could get the food and care she needed. This angered the spirit. Instead of learning from the gentle nudge, she blocked off all supplies. Again, someone noticed and opened a window for the human. Meanwhile, the human took every effort to self start, self protect, and gently remove all negativity. The spirit shut down the window of opportunity, too. Healthy activities led to food, so the spirit made the human ill with various little things- nothing life threatening- just to keep the human under the spirit’s control and thwart self starting activities. These included cleaning and creativity as well as exercize.
The human turned a desperate prayer to someone, anyone, who may want to work with her instead of against her. Only the spirit could hear, so she introduced herself through an oracle deck, calling herself a goddess and allowing her immense power to ripple out through the card drawn. Instead of bowing down to the goddess, the human got angry and stopped doing anything the spirit would have wanted. Since the spirit wanted the human to lose weight, the shut down was perfect. The human played right into the hands of the spirit.
All of a sudden, the human noticed that not drinking enough water had not caused the expected symptoms of dehydration. Somehow, the vampiric energy drain worked both ways: the human could survive off of the spirit’s energy with no physical effects. She didn’t want to do this because she knew what it felt like, but this was a matter of life and death for the human. It seemed like there was no choice. Hopefully, the spirit would experience the effects of the human’s defiance, realize something was wrong, and make amends. The human knew that if the spirit- which she refused to consider a deity- caught on to what the human realized, the backlash would be deadly; so she put her affairs in order and prepared for the final showdown, silently begging her former helpers to step in so this cup would pass from her.
Yet she knew she was strong enough to see it through. After all, no one gets out of life alive. This final human act would either teach the new spirit some respect or destroy her. It would also cause a pall on the human’s reputation; but the intent was not to destroy, only to find dignity and freedom from fangs, or at most to teach. The spirit would be the decider of the final outcome.
The human realized that most other humans do not recognize themselves in the spirit mirror which was her gift and talent in the world. She wrote her experiences as a fairy tale and enumerated her possibilities. If the spirit were freshly deceased, she’d never see it coming, even with all the hints on public display.
Memory of the energy ripples around the oracle card would become the human’s link to empowerment. Since she didn’t really need anything, or didn’t have power over what she did need, she would press thoughtform after thoughtform toward healing the earth, the neighborhood, the elements, people who had helped her in the past, anything she could access through the overly protective blanket.
“I’m getting evil in my old age,” the human said with a sly grin.
She felt shaky, but there were no other signs of energy over use or the lowered access to water. This would be a good thing to do daily as long as strength held out.
