Just This Once Upon a Time…

Ecrits Blogophilia Week 34.15 – Just This Once

Hard Bonus: Include a vintage vase and dried flowers

Easy Bonus: Incorporate an echo
** Quotes from Beowulf’s Voyage to Denmark

In the time beyond before, The Red Queen slept 1000 sleeps, be they days weeks or months no one could be sure. But she slept. Like the Sleepy Queen she was and she hibernated in that world between here and never.

Her eyes opened slowly knowing it was the peak of the Full Snow Moon in Virgo, for that is the precise time she set her internal clock to wake her.
Knowing Pisces Season was the perfect window to fulfill her sleeping dreams and make them a waking reality.

She had gone to Avalon in her last dream and so it was there she woke upon the Terrace of Cerridwen with the moon in her eyes and snow falling like crystalline fey in the distance.

A voice called out before her, a disembodied echo. She recognized it was Viviane heeding her to go slow. “Take your time M’Lady.”

Her surroundings, tho timeless, seemed antiquated somehow. Marble columns and floors encased her like a glorified tomb. And small alcoves with vintage vases of dried flowers encircled her Fairy bower. Upon closer inspection she could see they were filled with Vivian’s Vervain, the Enchanter’s herb. Meant to protect her, as she slept. Vibrant Vermillion Poppies for deep sleep and prophetic dreams and lastly Lady’s Mantle, the alchemy needed to prolong life while she visited the other realms.

And now under the spell of Nepenthe, she could not recollect any of the places she had visited while asleep. Instead she was immersed with all of her senses and cells into this place, this portal of transformation and loss.

What lie ahead, and what would she be called to do here? She knew there would be guidance in good time. She just needed patience and an open mind.

She looked to the Moon with reverence and allowed the glow to fill her to overflowing. Suddenly words came like music. A song, a code, a path. More days, or hours or years peeled past…

** “High over head they hoisted and fixed a gold signum; gave him to the flood, let the seas take him, with sour hearts and mourning moods. Men have not the knowledge to say with any truth – however tall beneath the heavens, however much listened to- who unloaded that boat.” **

The Singer whose song shall long inspire…I believe you Robert.

The Lady of the Lake gave over the Sword of Remembrance to the Red Queen, and the white light of Moon and Snow led the way….

Not THE END…

~The Beginning Again~

Written by Christine Wichman c. February 24, 2024