Stormbound...Solstice Interlude

(Happy Yule to one and all.)

We stood there watching the sprites or elementals playing in the eddies and blasts of the wind, when something above caught my eye again. If I had been capable of gasping, I would have. “Was that really a dragon up there?”

Ravyn looked over at me, smiled. “Amazing isn’t it? If we stand and watch long enough with the right kind of eyes, we would see dragons and giants, all kinds of creatures that most humans dismiss as mere children’s fantasies.” She looked back into the almost joyous chaos of the playful smaller spirits and sighed. “It really is too bad that we as a species have largely turned our backs on supernatural world that used to be so important to our existence.”

“How so?”

“Some very smart people think that the ability to see spirits and ‘fantastical’ creatures has always been limited to a rather select minority of the human population. But in my research, I have found just the opposite, that very few people DON’T have the innate ability to interact with the supernatural world in some way. It is however a skill that must be encouraged and developed as we ourselves develop and grow from children into adulthood. That is why most of the stories of faeries and unicorns, dragons and giants, and even magick are seen as children’s stories. Most children can easily glimpse into the magickal world all around us, but they don’t have the software to interpret what they are seeing. When most adults at first humor them with their stories about invisible friends, or at first encourage them to believe in such beings as the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus, those same adults then discount such fantasies and teach their children through their actions and words to see and interact only with ‘reality’.

“So that innate ability that most of us are born with just withers away from disuse and disbelief, and our world is all the poorer for it.”

“So why is it so easy for me to see them now? And why in such numbers?”

Ravyn’s hand clenched at her sides as she began to speak again. “It’s quite simple really-we as a species have done everything we can to push back both the natural and the supernatural worlds as far as possible. Our machines, our cities, our pollution has driven most of these creatures from their own environment, pushing them back further and further. When a major natural disturbance like this storm comes along, the sheer power and majesty of it brings many of them from hiding. Many are probably also taking this chance to return the favor we have done to them by destroying some of our environment.”

I looked over to see her face, now streaked with tears, harden as she continued. “Someday, there will come a breaking point, where we will have pushed things too far and destroyed too much of their world for many of these beings to survive, or there will be a rebellion of such a magnitude that our world may well change forever.”

“Wow, maybe those are some of the things that Alexa may be able to prevent, if she really is as much of a Catalyst as your friend thinks.”

“Let’s hope so, Rusty, let’s hope so.”

With that said, she stepped out into the intersection, in the direction we had been told her house was in. I took a moment to marvel again at the sheer number of playful spirits that were using this strange place to have a game of tag. I did notice how even these creatures though avoided the fiery shield that shrouded Ravyn. They rushed around and past her in amazingly tight circles and loops, but they avoided that shield....which seemed a little more intense than I had remembered it being before our conversation....