The Cosmic Mushroom

Chapter 1 Temporal Thicket

Merlin awoke on a bed of soft moss. Sitting up he looked around at the enormous trees around him, thousands of years old and still healthy. He marvelled at their immortality and wondered how humans would ever be able to understand a being so old, or learn the wisdom they offer from their green canopy.

Looking directly overhead he expected to catch a glimpse of the sky but could see nothing through the branches. He squinted and saw a strange snake slithering from one tree to another with no apparent concern for gravity.

As he prepared to stand, a beautiful horse came around a nearby tree. Its hair was dark as night on the Black Moon, a long red horn emerging from its forehead and wrapping around itself before coming to an end pointing upward as if looking for the sky. Its antlers were like an elk but blue and much larger and more intricate in design, with some of its branches intertwined around each other as if its skull was embracing itself.

The horse seemed to smile at him, then walked up the trunk of the tree with the spikes that came out of its hooves like eagle talons. It walked slowly around to the other side of the trunk and disappeared.

Thinking very little of how unusual this would have seemed yesterday, Merlin stood up and quietly moved away around a patch of mushrooms that grew past his knees.

He came to a smooth stream that ran quietly through the woods. He found himself wondering where it came from, and where it was going, but was suddenly brought back when he realized how thirsty he was, his throat was parched but when he lifted his hands out of the water it slipped away instantly. He smiled and lowered his lips to drink. He couldn't feel any liquid go down his throat but his thirst went away anyway. Chuckling at the sly craftiness of this elusive stream, he dunked his head in and pulled it out completely dry but better hydrated and revitalized than he'd ever felt in his life.

He looked down at a tall, slender mushroom rising up from the stream bed and reaching up above his head. "What's the issue with the water?" No answer. "Oh well, I'll just be passing through." He walked right through the stream and came out completely dry but clean and fresh.

From the other side everything seemed to take on a deeper green hue. He felt himself being called, summoned from somewhere on the left and he allowed his feet to lead the way

As he walked the bushes got thicker, thorny vines wrapped around the trees. The branches above him got thicker too, the layer that already formed an impenetrable barrier was now concealed behind another layer of leaves. The trees also got wider as he went, they were now so thick that the smallest he could see would have taken 20 men at arms length to wrap around it. He wondered how tall they were but surrendered to the idea that he would never know the answer.

At length he reached a place where the thorns were so thick he couldn't move through them. Having nearly forgotten the feeling he was being called, he was about to head off in a different direction when he thought he heard a voice.

"What do you seek?" it asked from seemingly nowhere.

He didn't know what to say, he wasn't looking for anything in particular. "Nothing, I am merely wandering... Exploring." He was looking around, trying to to determine the source of the voice.

There was silence for a moment and he felt as if he was being searched from within. "Very well," whipsered the disembodied voice, "you may enter."

The thorns spread apart and opened a path into an open clearing. He stepped forward and it closed behind him. Before him stood an oak tree that dwarfed the others he'd seen, with a partially submerged root that was larger than most of the other tree trunks, too large to climb over.

As he walked toward the oak he noticed the black, antlered horse watching him intently. He gently called out a friendly greeting to it, expecting it to be the body the voice belonged to but it remained silent, simply watching him.

When he reached the oak he looked around, expecting the voice to speak again. To his surprise the trunk opened a doorway to a spiral staircase wrapping around the outer layers just within the bark.

Merlin stood still for a very long second, watching the elf sitting silently in the centre of the room before a small blue and violet flame that made no smoke.

"Greetings," said the elf, "I am Fjorðarviðr. Please, come sit by the fire Merlin."

Merlin moved forward, looking around at the herbs hanging from the walls, the vibrant luminous crystals and pots of fragrant mixtures around the edges of the room. As he sat down the elf handed him a round, bland stone and when he took it he found it hollow and light. "What is it?"

Fjorðarviðr waited to see a flash of terror in Merlin's face on recognizing a human skull. "It's you." He reached out his hand and took it back, watching the fear slowly recede into a subdued confusion. "Time as you know it has no hold here. Many cycles ago you returned here to pass away in peace, wishing to rest in sacred ground."

Merlin took a deep breath and allowed the shock to pass. "So my future is your past?"

The gaze of the deep red elven eyes pierces deep into Merlin's mind. "Past and future occur simultaneously. But this is not what you've come to discuss. You wish to understand why your reality confounds the soul and vexes the spirit." He lowered his gaze into the flames, holding a hand over them to absorb their light. "You world is a distortion. A place where the fabric of reality has bent so severely that the laws of existence cannot be experienced directly. The mind is left to fend for itself in a realm of chaos and turmoil, and the soul's reassurance that there is order underlying it does little to assuage the fear that nothing will ever make sense."

Merlin laughed confidently. "Chaos is an illusion. There is only order."

Fjorðarviðr did not share his revelry at the thought. "Chaos and order are shy lovers, nervously exploring each other as they discover themselves. In your world they are far too young to know what they are, or how to dance together in harmony." A silence followed as they both watched the flames play like children. Fjorðarviðr looked up again at last. "Over the aeons you will return here and learn more about your place in the grand design. There will be time for further discourse soon. For now you have a more meaningful task. There is a place where the planet's blood forms a stream so tightly packed it condenses. Ask Pachamama for a piece of her life, it will help you peer into reality beyond the veil of your world."

Merlin had far more questions now than when he arrived but he knew when he was being told to leave and he respected it. He stood quietly and began to walk toward the stairs.

Fjorðarviðr interrupted him. "Never leave the way you came." There was a kind smile on the elf's face, as if he was talking to a child just learning to walk. He pointed to a doorway on the other side of the room.

Merlin could clearly remember there being no door in that position when he entered but he was beyond surprise, everything in this place had such a placid dream-like quality it defied any attempt to expect the rationality his mind would have expected in his world.

Stepping outside, Merlin recognized only one sight: the antlered unicorn watching him curiously. The rest of the scenery had changed entirely, the thorn bushes were a different species, some trees were older while some were younger. For an instant he saw a single beam of pure moonlight shining through the branchy ceiling above him.

Chapter 2 Primordial Moss

Long before the world was as it is now, there was only moss. This was the Primordial Moss, a rich green luminescence spreading its fibres in every direction, further than the eye can see. As it expanded it began to change, other colors began to emerge; pink, orange, red, black, all of them. Fibres emerged radiating every color in the spectrum, and they too began to spread, weaving in and out of each other into a fine and vibrant tapestry of luminance reaching out across the aetherial oceans.

Deep in the heart of the Primordial Moss, a heart had been growing. With each new fiber, each new color, the heart grew stronger and more vibrant, its pulsing vibrations grew into a web of dazzling spectral fungi. After aeons of growth, the heart made itself a seed to encapsulate its thriving beauty. This seed began to grow as well, a long stream of energy rooting outward and when it reached the shores of the aetherial ocean it bloomed into an enormous mushroom, bigger than the Earth itself.

This mushroom began to spray its spores across the aether, reaching far and wide and each spore chose a home of its own to take root in. Some became stars and nebulas to share the beauty of their origin with those who would come afterwards, but who would be unable to see the wondrous spectacle of their creator. Other spores became worlds, for they wished to grow children within and upon their bodies. These worlds fashioned primal elements to perpetuate the cycle of life as the world saw fit.

Chapter 3 Cascading Radiance

Merlin reached a river filled with bioluminescent bubbles formed by the cellular membranes of an extinct species of amphibious moss that traced the flow lines of the stream. He reached out to drink the water but when he touched it, there was no feeling of wetness. The fluid sank into his body and he felt himself being regenerated, nutrition leaking into his bloodstream without having consumed any physical material.

“Follow the river.”

Merlin looked around for the speaker but couldn’t see anyone around. “Will it lead me where I need to go?”

A toad on the other side of the river hopped up to get his attention as it spoke again. “Where else would it lead? It could lead you everywhere, but there’s only one place you need to be, so that’s where you’ll end up.”

Merlin smiled and nodded. “Thank you, I will.”

He began to walk along the riverside but the toad said, “You can’t follow the flow from outside it, you have to be a part of it.” It watched as Merlin looked around for something to ride downstream with, but there were no boats here, and there never would be. After a moment the toad said, “Just walk inside it. You don’t need a shell to make you feel safe, you can be fully immersed and allow it to become part of you. How else can it take you where you want to go?” Merlin was about to step inside but the toad added, “just don’t touch the mushrooms.” Then it disappeared with an innocent, mischievous giggle.

Merlin looked around again but couldn’t see any mushrooms. The riverbed was studded with skeletons and as he stepped in, the one closest to him begin to change shape. As it shifted and waved like a mirage, he could make out the outline of a mushroom, weaving its mycelia to take the form of the bones of departed visitors. When it finally settled on a shape it had taken the visage of a human skull, warning him that he would join the others here if he should come too close.

The glowing bubble swam around his legs as he stepped carefully through the deceptively perilous riverbed. It’s course almost seemed to be changing direction with every step he took, as if space itself was distorting around him in response to his actions. The river had been up to his knees when he entered but now it was past his hips and still climbing.

Ahead there was a large salmon with a dorsal wing protruding from its back like a sail, basking in the waters, just being a part of the stream and waiting for food to appear. Remembering what the toad had said, Merlin thought, shouldn’t I try to be part of the stream, like this fish? He expected it to swim away as he approached but instead it seemed to dissolve and became yet another mushroom, a much larger one that morphed into a gigantic humanoid rib cage, wider than his own.

Merlin stopped and stared, the path was almost completely blocked by the spectral rib cage and it would be too dangerous to squeeze past it. He sighed, watching the bubbles dance around it carefree. I guess if I was part of the stream it would just carry me past, he thought, I could just allow it to move me where I need. It occurred to him that could be exactly the answer, to be part of the stream is to release control and let it move you as it wishes. Just like the bubbles.
The water was almost up to his chin. He inhaled deeply and as he exhaled he relaxed every muscle in his body, trying to open every pore to let the water seep in, to be completely saturated in the river and let the currents determine where he needed to go.

He was suddenly swept up and flew past the mushroom, watching as the forest passed by around him. The stream no longer seemed to change shape, holding the same bends as it went, and he trusted that he’d arrive at the perfect region of this confusing, maze-like forest space, exactly when the rushing waters wanted him there.

After flowing through the woods for what seemed like hours, he came to a place where the stream began to flow upward in a cascade. The cliff face was studded with trees that seems to grow in every direction, some with roots protruding outward as the branches reached through the rock to absorb the light of crystals whose glow could be seen through the stone, as if their light made matter more permeable to their vibrations.

High above him, he could see the waterfall dipping into an enormous whirlpool that drained into the rock face.

By his feet there was a small stone glowing faintly, he picked it up and held it in the palm of his hand, then threw it into the cascade and it floated steadily upward, seemingly undisturbed by the turbulence of the rushing waters. The trees nearby swayed closer to the stone as it passed and roots came out of the cliff face trying to reach it. The higher it rose the more faint its glow became, until to hovered lifeless over the center of the whirlpool.

“Climb.”

Merlin looked around but couldn't locate the source of this voice either. It was a lighthearted feminine voice, almost a laugh. It seemed to have spoken into his ear without being said by anyone. He looked around at the cliff, there were plenty of jagged rock and protruding wooden limbs to climb up. "I can do that, no problem," he said to himself.

He began to step out of the water to dry off before climbing but the voice said with a giggle, "climb the water, silly."
He looked dubiously at the cascade falling upward and wondered what this would feel like. "Is it dangerous?" He waited for an answer but there was none.

After a minute of mental preparation he inhaled deeply and plunged himself into the water. He reached through the rushing torrent and tried to clutch the rocks but they slipped out of his hands as if refusing to assist his ascent. He tried and tried but couldn't get off the ground. Suddenly he realized he'd been holding his breathe too long and needed air. He turned around to go back to the surface but something pushed him back, holding him where he was as if trying to drown him.

He struggled and pushed back as hard as he could but this invisible force refused to let him reach the surface. "Breathe." This voice was deeper, a soft masculine voice. He pushed harder and harder, desperate to heed the advice of his attacker. Finally he couldn't go on anymore and his body forced itself to inhale.

Light. He inhaled light. He could feel it pour into his body, purifying him on every level. He felt himself rise beyond the need for air, he could simply inhale the light offered by the stream. That alone was what his bodies needed, he could feel them absorbing and becoming the radiance offered to him.

The force disappeared and he was free to move again. "Breathe the water, silly," he said to himself and felt that same girly, childlike giggle ripple through him. He felt a desire to remain there forever, breathing and subsisting solely on this feeling. But deep inside he knew that something far better waited above. "Climb the water," he thought, "well if I can breathe light, why not?"

He bid goodbye to the mushrooms waiting to become his corpse and reached out to grab hold of the rising waters. To his surprise, they held him. He pulled himself up and took a foothold, reaching out higher to pull further up. He could feel the rushing streams pushing him up as he moved and as he looked out at the trees swaying in the breeze, an image of a serpent flashed in his mind. He stopped climbing as a man and began to spin and twist, pushing upward with each motion to swim upward as the rushing cascade ushered him forward.

Filled with joyous exuberance, he laughed as he danced his ascension along, playing like a salmon swimming upriver to its mating bed, his heart singing out the beauty of the experience.

When he reached the whirlpool he didn't know whether to continue to dance carefree, still unsure how dangerous all this might be, but his heart would not let its exuberance be spoiled now and he braved the unknown with a fierce determination. He allowed the spirals to revolve around the center with him in it. Every time he tried to swim through the currents to get to the center he ended up getting pushed to the surface, and the closer he got to the center of the vortex, the closer he came to reaching the fresh air he'd been so desperate for a few moments ago.

Finally he felt he wasn't able to stay in the waters any longer. Taking a deep breath of light, he allowed himself to get pushed out, hoping to fall directly inside the vertex. Instead he collided head-on into the stone he'd tossed upstream. It didn't even budge when he fell onto it and despite his desire to return to the water he felt an urge to cling to the stone, holding it in one hand. Why was this stone just hovering here? It seemed to be waiting for something but he didn't know what.

After a moment he knew he wouldn't be able to hold his breathe much longer and he'd need to return to the water soon. He felt a deep need for more light. He asked himself "why won't this stone just move?" It seemed so happy to float along back when it had light. He blew the last of his breathe into it, and it flew straight down into the black void of the vortex, dragging Merlin in with it.

Chapter 4 Aetherial Dragons

As the spores of the Cosmic Mushroom grew into thriving abundance, the life began to evolve beyond its original template. Some beings took spherical shapes and became worlds, playing in circles near each other in familial star systems. These worlds became home to their own children, some with physical bodies and some existing solely in the astral.

Life inevitably returns to a form imitating its creator, the templates they derive from reassert themselves across aeons of growth. As children of each world slowly expanded their own levels of consciousness, they began to recognize themselves as extensions of the same being, aetherial cells in the brain of each world. These collective minds evolved into unity once again and learned to operate as interconnected communities, taking forms resembling the moss from which all life originates.

Ages of the multiverse progressed and soon, the first worlds seeded evolved into unity spanning across galaxies and then entire universes, all distributing light across the primordial void in vast networks of mycelial consciousness.

As this occurred, the Primordial Moss had still continued growing and when it encompassed the worlds first seeded by the Cosmic Mushroom, an increasing pressure compressed the cells of these universes into dense clusters, strung together into compacted quantum strings, too pure a form of consciousness to play host to matter as we know it. They had grown into what we now call the Tree of Life.

Each string in this immense tree became its own distinct consciousness, taking on unique personalities, goals and energies. These beings called themselves dragons and, using the knowledge they’d accumulated over the course of countless aeons, they reached out across the moss to where the Cosmic Mushroom was seeding billions of new children. The dragons smiled down and knew that these children would evolve into unity, into astral moss, just as they had so long ago. But this time, the children of light would not be alone. The dragons would guide them upwards, teach them to find within themselves a trace of their pure, untaintable essence and evolve into their own mycelial consciousness.

Chapter 5 The Heart and the Egg

Merlin flew out of the water and toppled head first over himself. He found himself in a narrow cave with a path leading downward into the darkness. Standing up, he remembered he was still holding the stone orb he’d found in the river. Something inside him wouldn’t let go of it.

After having breathed water for so long it took a moment to get reacquainted with breathing air like he always had but when he was ready he stepped forward, trusting his heart to know where it was going.

He walked down the corridor past moss that cast a glittery rainbow aura as it ate the rock face, mushrooms whose mycelia wove geometric patterns in the cracks of the rock-face and crystals that seemed to shimmer and vibrate slowly like viscous fluid.

After some time walking through the shadows the tunnel got narrower and darker but after stumbling several times he began to come across flowers that danced and lit up like flames, living torches growing in the walls and flickering like fireflies, lighting the path.

In the dim light he realized the walls of the tunnel were made of crystal formations, gemstone more transparent than glass. On the other side of this crystalline window, bat-looking moles swam like fish through solid rock between forests of hair-like threads of bioluminescent mycelia.

Finally he reached the edge of a vast chasm, a cavern that stretched away too far off to see, even the fire-flowers faded from view. Far in the distance a tiny spark of light glowed warmly, seeming somehow as if awaiting his arrival.

He called out to the light, expecting his voice to echo in the chasm but it faded away instantly, smothered by the darkness, and he wondered if his voice could even be heard.

To his surprise the spark responded, sending sparks flying struck by a hammer fresh out of a forge. It swayed slightly then began to grow rapidly, expanding into the shape of a serpent that wrapped and circled around in every direction, slowly making its way closer as it grew.


After what felt like hours or years, Merlin reached the heart of the void. Within moments the spark that had reached out to him seemed an endless trek away but eventually he began to feel the heat emanating from it and when the light grew so intense its pulses blinded him and the heat grew unbearable, the heart before him spoke to the heart within him.

"At long last my child has returned to me. Countless ages of your world I have felt you reaching out for me, but could not reach back. Know that I have longed to hold you, child, but you were not ready to meet my embrace."

Merlin was stunned. Scrambling for words, he stammered and then gave up. At a total loss he managed, "what are you?"
"I am the lifeblood of this world. Long ago I planted the seeds of life on a desolate planet, a river flowed forth from my sanctuary here to feed the children of this world with the lifeforce of the cosmic All.”

“I have tended to these seeds, watched them blossom into the people of your world, the trees and creatures, the moss which spreads nutrients beneath the soil. All is fed by myself and my siblings who have come here from other realms beyond your reach. You grew among them, learning from their mistakes and knowing they would become ready, some day, for the trials that lay ahead of them."

Merlin looked inside himself and wondered, and spoke aloud, "What am I?"

A gentle laughter met the question before he even uttered it. "You are my egg, child, my vessel. You have been nursed for aeons and now, returning home to me, you are ready to hatch and return to your world a new being, a dragon born of the infinite light of the cosmos. Come closer child, you will not be harmed. I am your home."

Merlin hesitated, the heat would surely sear his flesh if he swam any further. He hadn't taken a breath of air in hours, perhaps days. This place seemed unreal, even time itself bent to the unknowable will that lurked behind all he'd seen.
He stepped forward and was sure he'd boil in the heat but nothing happened, he felt his heart beckoned forward and it yearned to reunite with this being he'd never seen before. As he grew closer the pain grew more intense but he was filled with a burning need to reach the heart, just to touch it one last time. He pushed himself further, swam forward faster, ached and squirmed in the agony but then, suddenly, it stopped and he was home, wrapped in the infinite bliss of his heart at last.

"Welcome, my love, to my embrace."

The orb of this heart expanded within him, around him, he couldn't tell the difference anymore. It took the form of a toroid, a 4-dimensional sphere wrapped in the shell of a 5-dimensional sphere. He could feel the limbs of the Tree of Life expand out from his arms, the roots from his legs, each wrapping around to touch each other at the central plane, a current running each way through his spine, wrapping around in a spiral to turn back and through him once again.

He understood, the currents of this lifeforce, the fibres of the Tree of Life, the lifeforce coursing through his veins from distant stars, from galaxies and universe bubbles he would never see, these were the dragons dispersing life across the cosmos. He could feel it flowing through him, everything, through him the planet itself was sustained, his people partaking of life from the infinite All, everything living in this world and beyond could be felt within his heart.

Deep inside him, something ancient stirred, ready to burst forth and bring his light into the world.

"Release the orb, child."

Merlin instantly remembered the stone that had dragged him into the whirlpool outside, it felt like lifetimes had passed since then and he couldn't believe it was still in his hand, how could it possibly have lasted these centuries since he'd entered this place?

He held it out and released it, it hovered before him and resonated, neither sound nor light but somehow both, it echoed the words and deeds, the love and loss of times long past, it brimmed with the endless cycle of life and death that consumed all, birthing only to again consume. Within this stone, the knowledge of the universe was waiting to be remembered.

In his mind's eye, he could see all that would ever be passing by in flashes of blissful anguish, of love and hatred and war and birth, all was speaking to him, echoing the words of his heart, of the Tree of Life around him and within him.
There were no more questions and no more answers, no beginning and no end. Only the cycle. Only the heart and its egg, whispering secrets long forgotten into the void.


Nothing mattered but his presence here, an instantaneous eternity. This space, this entire time-less world Merlin was wandering through, was an inter-dimensional sanctuary for the heart of this dragon. From here it could experience fractal seeds of its consciousness across time-space through quantum filaments, negotiating fate with the infinite will of the collective universal consciousness to further the progression of evolution into light.

In order to play this game, the dragon had split into two halves, one male and one female to mirror the division of the polarized universe. Thus it maintained balance in a dance of charged waves of electromagnetic potential, dispersing life force through interstellar ion storms and solar winds. It had planted seeds of itself across the universe to form a neural network that would transmit information across the cosmos as its heartbeat raced from the depths of this womb.

“I have awaited this longer than you can imagine.” It was always the plan, that this vessel would be the first to return home to this portal, this gateway into the higher dimensions of consciousness from which he’d been sown. Since the times of the ancients on his world, Merlin had been a guide, a teacher, opening the minds and hearts of his siblings to the flow of cosmic love that would help them remember the way home into light.

Chapter 6 The Blood Moon

The moon was full and as Merlin opened his eyes, the soft silver halo surrounding it in the thin haze of the night sky began to break away. The sky dimmed as the light on the face of the moon grew dark, becoming a deep scarlet hue.

At first, Merlin couldn't understand what was happening. Why did time seem so static, the breeze so dense and opaque?
The stars seemed monochromatic by comparison to the last time he'd seen them, before he entered the cave of his dragon mother. He looked up at the total lunar eclipse above his head, the blood moon hovering huge and red over the treeline, like the moon Goddess bleeding between the legs.

Had he only slept an hour? He'd been preparing for this eclipse when he dozed off suddenly, now only a short time later, having lived what must've encompassed lifetimes in the forest beyond time-space. Now he was back in his treehouse, in what he once called the real world.

He'd hoped to be finishing a potion at the moment the eclipse became visible. He got up and looked at his ingredients, ready to be mixed but he had missed his chance to prepare the potion properly.

"I suppose it's to be expected," he whispered to himself, hesitant to break the silence of the night, “this potion’s effects would never have compared to what I just breathed into my soul.” Surely Cerridwen would forgive him.

The fire of his mother still burned in his heart, he could feel it reaching out to purify everything around him of hatred, despair, any pain or other misaligned energies that would interfere with the operation of this vessel, this dragon egg.
He breathed deep, his soul drinking the light of the blood moon and relishing the sacred disruption it heralded.

The time of an eclipse is a potent time for planting the seeds of change, an energy of destruction to all paradigms fills the atmosphere and rapid transformation yearns to be realized. An excellent time for magick, if the mage is fierce enough to brave the storms of the raw fury of nature.

Such is the way of the universe, the womb of life is most fertile when elemental forces tear asunder what was in the name of all that will be.

Looking over his ingredients, thinking about the spell he was planning to cast, it all seemed so insignificant now. What would be the purpose of casting a spell when he could simply reach out and shift reality with his will alone?

He could feel the plants wanting to be returned to the soil, to become a part of the forest once more.

His home was built into the thick branches of a mighty old oak tree, which he’d always imagined resembled the ancient tree of life whose acorns fed the cosmic salmon, back when he believed in such stories.

Only earlier today, now that seemed like a past life and he could clearly see the metaphor in the old stories and the way it related to the truth of the origins of this world but were still mere fables compared to the unspeakable reality.

He gathered his materials in the sack he’d brought them home in and climbed down the tree to the forest floor, hoping no bears were around but still too dazed from his dream to be afraid of such a distant threat.

He looked up at the sky in time to watch the last black arc of the eclipse disappear, leaving the radiance of the full moon smiling down at him once again. At that moment, the fiery streak of a falling star slashed across the face, getting larger as it descended to the Earth.

None of this could be a coincidence, he wasn’t sure he could believe in coincidence anymore after what he’d just been through. He knew in his heart that he had to follow this falling star to where it landed.

He didn’t know why but the fire in his heart was glowing brighter than the moon, hotter than the needle of flame left in the wake of the star, and it pulsed with every step as he walked to the forest in the direction of the meteor.
He could tell it was the middle of night because the star Sirius was at its highest.

As he entered the woods he could smell the trees. Taking in a long scent he felt energetic roots leaving his feet to intermingle with those of the trees, the moss kissed the soles of his feet.

Walking along a river he could feel the flow of life force streaming along with him. He dipped his fingers into the water and heard a giggle from the trees.

A tiny faery was sitting on a mushroom, watching him. He’d never seen one with his eyes like this. “Hello there,” he said, “how are you so clearly visible?”

She giggled again, then turned around and disappeared into the woods.

He jumped across the river, stumbling on a loose rock and falling halfway into the water. Without breaking a stride he kept running, intent on reaching his new faery friend.

As he ran through the dark he tripped on a fallen branch and when he hit the ground, a vision flashed in his mind, a woman with dark hair and darker eyes. He laughter rang out over the words, “we’re getting so close.”

He pushed himself up, frenzied now to reach the giggles he could still hear just ahead.

Suddenly he stopped in his tracks. He’d walked right into a faery ring, he could see the circle of mushrooms glowing faint gold in the dark. Other voices joined the giggles, a chorus of laughter around him. “Find the fallen star.”

A unicorn appeared in front of him, antlers like the oldest elk he’d ever seen with a horn the size of a sword radiating a silver light that illuminated the giggling faeries around him.

He’d heard tales that it was forbidden to walk into a faery ring, and he expected the unicorn was this circle’s protector.
It approached and sniffed him cautiously, then rubbed the side of its head against his, gently bumping the antler on Merlin’s head. Another voice in his head said, “Seek the circle in the square.”

The golden mushrooms began to grow, reaching above the trees as their light became so bright he had to close his eyes, the laughter echoed so loudly it became deafening.

That same woman flashed in his mind again. “The blood moon marks the end.”

Then everything was silent and dark. He was alone again in the woods, not sure where he was. Above him the sky was beginning to grow brighter as dawn approached. How had that much time passed already? It was midnight only a few moments ago.

He stepped out of the faery ring and slowly traced his footsteps back through the forest.

Several hours passed before he reached the river. He couldn’t understand how he’d run that far. The moon was behind the horizon now and he couldn’t remember what he’d gone out for.

Feeling through his robes he found his satchel of potion ingredients. Now confident he no longer wanted them, unsure even what he’d gotten them for to begin with, he placed them reverently on the ground where the first faery had been sitting.

Green lights flowed out from the plant clippings into the toadstool he’d placed them next to, life force returning to nature, and as he watched he could see it flow through the mycelia into the roots network underground, dissipating to amplify the whole.

He felt a rumbling beneath his feet and turned.

The woman from his visions was watching him from across the river, right where he’d stood when he heard the first giggling. She smiled. He smiled back.

“Greetings Merlin,” she said gently, “My name is Morgana.”

Chapter 7 Flowing Death

As life force flowing from the Tree of Life passed into our reality it became compressed so tightly it condensed into water.
In the process it became a mirror. Unwilling to let go of the true reality beyond, in the primal forest, it chose to hold an open window into the primordial source. Thus it became a reflection of each reality, a window through which each could see the other in itself.

As it descended through the various layers of divine consciousness into the physical world it retained this reflective property, allowing every aspect of duality it touched to witness itself within the mirror it provided.

When the water touched the physical world it encountered the duality of life of death. It had never experienced such a notion before, this belief that life cannot exist eternally.

The life of this world held the belief of its own mortality so tightly that its existence in the physical was only temporary. Soon it would relinquish what it thought of as its reality, and fade away into the spirit world to remember its immortality.

The consciousness of the primal waters was so fascinated by this concept that it became an embodiment of this duality, and thus mirrored it all the way back up through the higher realms until it reached a point from which even time could not be contained and all reality is one eternal Now.

The Now witnessed this death, this impermanence of life in the physical and was amused, and so it descended through the waters to take closer inspection.

It watched as life force accumulated within a physical vessel, only to disperse once the vessel became obsolete by its own reckoning. The life force returned into the forests, flowing like the waters through death and back into life, only to fall away again.

What the physical life did not see was that, just as it fed on itself to expand, so too did the life force amplify itself through this eternally echoing dissipation.

By embodying this energy, the water had taken on the same quality. When in the physical, water was a reflection of eternal flow through life into death and back again, amplifying its reality. It became a bridge between the physical and spiritual worlds, a window through which each could see itself within the other.

Thus the faery world was linked eternally to the physical, able to see and feel it without touching, able to reach through as the spirits saw fit to touch the physical. Only the physical could not see this, it was so obsessed with its belief in mortality that it forgot all else and fell away from its own true nature, unable to see the spirit world.

When the life of the physical touched the waters it could feel this eternal flow, this life and thus it chose to believe that the water was a symbol of pure and eternal life, because it was, and forgot to look for traces of mortality within itself because it saw death only in physicality to which it believed itself confined.

The dragons could not bear witness to this duality without the enticing prospect of taking part in the charade. The descended through the Now and into the physical, into the sacred waters, into the vast oceans of life force in the forests.

Forever they have chosen, and forevermore will choose, to reach out across the waters and touch the face of impermanence with love, to change the destinies of those within and remind them of the eternal Now.

Chapter 8 Morgana the Fae

Dawn broke and as the first ray of light traced across the sky, it heralded the morning before the lunar eclipse.

A crow perched upon the tallest rowan in the region, cawing as she watched a distant falcon depart from the land. The clear-minded predator was leaving this land for the time being, and the wily scavenger was now Queen until the falcon returned.

As a trickster from the Otherworld, the crow was able to witness the unity of the physical and spiritual world. She was a sacred being from the faery world, capable of moving between it and the mortal world that viewed her as a harbinger of death.

She watched as a dryad dwelling inside the rowan fed its fruits to the underbrush, rejoicing as the animals fed on them to leave open space for the survivors to take root.

She prowled the woods, seeking something shiny to delight her eye and pass the time as she awaited nightfall.

As she travelled there were many curious fae who laughed as they watched her circling, waving hello with a friendly smile.

The woodland critters ignored her as they sought food, she watched them wondering if one would soon be dead and willing to leave the body for her lunch.

Occasionally she witnessed a peculiar wizard gathering herbs and mushrooms in the forest. She watched intently as he scoured the region for a particular seasoning. She knew what he wanted, and what he would find instead.

When she saw the wizard she cawed at him, and sometimes he would look up to smile back, never daring to guess who was watching. She wondered if he had heard tales of her exploits in the far off island where the people of Danu settled.

The wizard may not have looked like Lugh in the physical world but in the Otherworld he was every bit as radiant as the man who was once hailed as a son of the Sun. This body went by the name of Merlin but she knew him by many names and she looked eagerly forward to meeting him yet again by this one.

When dusk finally came, the crow settled in a hawthorn thicket and by the time light faded from the sky, a raven-haired woman emerged naked from the thorny perth.

Stepping gently to avoid hurting her bare feet, she prowled through the forest with perfect vision, lack of sunlight would never stop her from attaining her goals, no more than death could claim her from the mortal side of the veil.

She approached the edge of a clearing as waited until the wizard walked across into his home in the branches of a tall oak. When he disappeared from sight she sprinted silently across the grass.

Watching him through an open window she whispered a lullaby under her breath.

Wait and see little child, wait and hear little child
The night will drown you soon
And when the dream world comes for you
The gods will grant your boon

As she whispered she saw him grow weary after the long day’s effort, and the more she repeated her favourite nursery rhyme the heavier his eyes grew.

Soon he was fast asleep and she crept inside. First she took one of his robes to cover her nakedness in the cold air.

She dipped a nail in the pestle he’d ground his first ingredients in, laughing at the pile he hadn’t gotten to and wondering just what delightful fungi would feast on them when he returned them to the woods.

With a small sample of the mixture under her nail, she gently scraped his throat above the artery, just enough to break the skin and allow the herbs to work into his bloodstream.

“Seek the dragon’s hearth, dear brother,” she whispered into his ear, and he murmured something in response but only she could ever recognize the words.

She looked around at his home, quite shabby compared to the palaces they’d once shared in Avalon but they suited his needs and she respected his humility. She grabbed his sickle and disappeared into the night.

The moon rose above the tree line, rising big and bright into the sky. In a few hours it would be black as night but for now it was shining for all the world to appreciate, just loving its own glorious, gentle purity.

She stopped to appreciate it for a moment. So insightful, how it shows its light and its darkness, and beckons us to do the same.

She breathed in the light of the moon, feeling its brokenness as it approached the eclipse portal.

Disruption in long-standing patterns. Sudden destruction of a full and beautiful face, only to be reborn just as suddenly. That was what she was all about. Rapid transformation.

Death and rebirth.

That was what an eclipse heralded, and as a Goddess of Death in her region of fame, she remembered all too well the delight in a time such as this. It was her life’s work to embody it.

And what comes next? Even the fates cannot say with certainty.

Morrigan sighed her deep exhalation with a sense of impatience and futility, there was no need in rushing things forward and yet so little to do while waiting.

She moved on into the woods and, once in the darkness again, she remembered the joy to be found in the process of preparing for such a wonderful disruption. Would the moon enjoy her fullness without the work of moving from emptiness?

The faery portal connecting an ash to a willow, bound together with blackthorn, opened to receive her terrible countenance with a contented smile and a feeling that all would be right soon enough.

The world of the Fae is an ever-shifting realm that evolves and grows, solely for the sake of doing so. It thrives on balance and disruption, chaos and order, life and death, light and darkness. It loves all aspects of life on Earth, because it recognizes their innate sanctity.

Even when welcoming in a harbinger of death, the only unwelcome disruption was the iron sickle she brought with her.

A product of the contaminated physical world, it had been torn from the loving bosom of Mother Earth and corrupted with rust, thus corrupting its energy on the other side of the veil between worlds.

It would require purification in her temple before she could use it for something as sacred as a sacrifice to the eternal.

She had a world of pain in store for her beloved brother.

Chapter 9 The Veil

The crow has long been associated with death, not only because of its joy in feasting on carrion but also because of its intense spiritual vision.

Able to move freely in both worlds, it shifts between one and the other at will. In the Otherworld there are many things easily seen, which cannot be touched in the physical. Thus, the crow and the raven have always been able to know things beyond the sight of mortals.

Both a knight and a ferryman, the raven cackles as it watches us attempt to wrap our minds around that which boggles it. It will guide us there when it is our time, but until then it has the gift of being able to enjoy the humour in our attempt to unravel the plainest mysteries.

The veil which separates ours from the Otherworld is the mist which lifts in the moment of death, to reveal the reality that we lost sight of so long ago. This is the blanket in which a corvid finds so much comfort and ease.

There is after the end a new beginning, each cycle feeding another. The cycles of time reach around to devour their own tail, never certain where they began or where to seek to go, only certain of the now in which they currently reside.

These transits are the lifeblood of our existence, the ebb and flow of the tides which govern our emotions, our beliefs, our way of life, rise and fall just out of sight yet ever within grasp of our eternal and temporarily amnesic souls.

At the moment of unveiling, these tides will seem like a familiar friend, like a scent half-remembered from a distant childhood. And yet they will seem so very unfamiliar, having shifted and changed from the moment of our last witness borne.

It is the trickster spirit of the corvid, the ebb and flow of the veil itself, which beckons us closer to the elusive mystery of the unknowable.

As it knows, and we do not, it seeks to enlighten us by fogging our vision with the mist from which they watch. From such clarity, it seems impossible to be confounded by the fog and yet we find ourselves clutching at the uncertainty of our state as if it would be dangerous to realize we do not fathom our own nature.

Because Death awaits our joyous reunion with the truth, mocking us lightheartedly as it welcomes us to the unknown depths of reality within ourselves.