Gate: The New Moon above a Desert Oasis
I stepped through the vision gate and was floating over a field full of living, grasping thorns. Thick vines flowed out of a central growth and snatched at my feet. “Badger!” I cried out as I was pulled down into the plant. “Help me, please!”
A moment later my badger was there, slashing at the vines with his claws and pulling me from the thorns.
“This way,” he said and we raced above the vines, faster than the grasping ivy chains which could not touch us in our flight.
We ran until finally Badger and I stood in a depression in a desert’s sands. From the side of a sand dune nearby, a bathroom sink faucet jutted forth. A glass dish to catch the water sat beneath the faucet, but nothing was flowing from the spout and the dish was nearly dry.
“Badger,” I said, walking over to the dry faucet. “I need your help finding the meaning of this place.”
Badger nodded gravely. “We need to get water through the pipe,” he said. “Call Dream and we’ll go in together and see what’s blocking the flow.”
I raised an empty palm in entreaty. “Dream, please come to us,” I said. “And thanks.”
In response to my words, Dream appeared in his diminutive lizard form, and Badger and I shrank so we too could travel into the faucet. Within the pipe, my friends and I discovered a thick, viscous clay. As we pushed through it, I saw the clay breaking up and falling out of the tunnel behind us, clearing the way. After continuing this way for some time, we came to a complete blockage in the water works.
Dream changed into his human form and poked the living wall before us with his index finger. The wall moved within the confined space and revealed itself to be the bulk of a caterpillar. The insect gyrated until he presented his smiling face to our waiting eyes. “Hello,” he said cheerily, unconcerned with his situation in the pipe. “How nice to have visitors. I certainly wasn’t expecting anyone today.”
“Hello friend, I said. “I’m Heidi and my companions are called Badger and Dream. What is your name?”
“Potential,” he replied and yawned hugely, rolling his bulk once more within the tight space.
“Potential, I’m sorry to inform you that you’re blocking the flow,” I said.
The caterpillar looked affronted. “I am not,” he said. “See how beautiful I am?” He struggled and pushed, flipping himself so that I could see the pattern of a monarch butterfly on his back.
“You need to transform,” I said. “Silly caterpillar, don’t you know Potential is supposed to fly?”
The caterpillar looked confused so I visualized a monarch butterfly in the air between us. “See the wings?” I pointed at the phantom insect. “You’re supposed to look like that.”
The caterpillar’s eyes widened in something like surprise and the pipe began to shake. Within moments, his enormous bulk had shifted and changed into that of a towering orange and black spotted butterfly with gossamer lining.
The new butterfly tried to spread his wings to escape but there wasn’t enough space in the tunnel we found ourselves in to allow it.
“Try that way,” I suggested and pointed towards the exit some distance behind us. “I believe you will find a place where you can fly. We’ve cleared the muck from your passage to allow it.”
“Thank you,” rumbled Potential and he left, revealing further clay deposits within the pipe behind him but still no water.
“Further in and further on,” said Badger. “Maybe the water is just around the next bend.” My animal spirits and I continued moving forward and clearing the tunnel, wiping the mud and grime from our faces and furred snouts as we did so. Finally, after much toil and struggle, we saw light ahead.
We came to the other end of the pipe and found ourselves gazing down upon a fast flowing river. Unfortunately, our pipe was way above the surface of the water’s flow. At one time, it was clear to me that the river fed into where we now stood, but the water level was so much lower in this time and place that the prospect of connecting the two felt ludicrous.
Showing off our not inconsiderable diving skills, Dream, Badger, and I threw ourselves off of the pipe and flipped into the river, more like fish than a snake, badger, and woman.
As we sank beneath the current, I said, “We need to find a way to get this water to our pipe. Any thoughts?”
“We could build an extension,” suggested Dream. “So the water can remain where it is, yet still reach the tunnel.”
“Or,” said Badger. “We could find someone who knows how to make the river rise.”
My friends and I reached the sandy floor of the dark river and stirred a few grains of sand off of the bottom with our feet and claws. “Hello,” I called into the waiting shadows. “Is there anyone here who can help us raise the waters? We find ourselves in need of assistance.”
“You could ask for rain,” I heard a voice coming from the depths. “But who brings the rain? Who spins the Earth? Who makes the rivers flow?”
“I don’t know the answers to your riddles or who is responsible for those things,” I replied. “But I would like to know. At least I could say thank you then.”
“I am not the Creator of it,” said the voice. “But I help to bring it about.” An enormous gray and dappled octopus came into the light and, atop the fearsome beast’s head, sat a merman. He held a trident in one hand and a crown of coral sat upon his brow. His weedy, green hair flowed around his body. “You may call me Windfall,” he said.
I bowed my head in greeting. “My lord of the river, we have a pipe in need of water but no way to make the water rise,” I said. “Windfall, would you please help us?”
The god prodded his octopus mount and they rose together towards the surface of the river. “I will help with the level of the flow,” he said. “But you need my mother to address the further difficulty of connecting the pipe to its source. Seek Lady Luck in the darkest part of the river and you will find your answers.”
“Thank you, Windfall,” I said. “I owe you a debt of gratitude for your actions this day.” The god waved away my words as if his help was a small matter of little import and rode away from my friends and I, cutting through the water like a knife.
Taking my hands, my friends and I dove deeper into the river’s shadows. We went down through the water until I couldn’t see Dream’s hand when he waved it in front of my face. Suddenly, a golden glow appeared ahead. Badger, my lizard, and I swam towards it, pulled to the light as irresistibly as victims to a siren’s song.
Windfall’s mother hovered in the water above a glass coffin which nestled snugly into the river’s sand. She was entirely made of gold, and sparkling clouds of light came from her hair and fingertips, surrounding her in a shining brilliance.
Within the coffin beneath her feet, my Animus slept peacefully, wrapped in seaweed and shining silver shells. “Dame Luck,” I said and the lady turned her bright eyes upon me. “We come seeking your wisdom as to the best way forward from this situation.”
Fortune smiled at me and my friends. “First,” she said. “We will examine the marks that life has left upon the physical form.” She waved her hands and the glass disappeared from the coffin. Then, Lady Luck waved her hands up and down my Animus’ body.
“There is much shadow here,” the goddess said and gestured towards his head. A cloud shaped like the grasping, pulling vines of ivy from earlier in the vision came out of Animus’ forehead and chest. “Do not fear for him, Heidi,” Luck comforted me when she saw the look of building panic on my face. “It is only disbelief.”
“How do we get it out of him?” I asked in concern. “The ivy is so strong. I know it well.”
“No problem is too complex for me,” the goddess said with another golden grin. Then, the lady moved her fingers in a complex pattern within the river and a gold coin appeared in her palm. “We shall feed the grasping vines a false hope.”
Fortune tossed her coin into an etched glass vase with a slender bottleneck that appeared upon an ivory pillar next to her. The thorny shadow leapt at the coin and when it had completely entered the vase, the goddess stoppered the top with a cork. “We will let him out again,” Luck declared. “However, he must remember to believe in himself first and demonstrate mastery of the same.”
Again, the lady’s hands moved over my Animus’ body. “I see a lick from the tongue of Despair,” Luck said, again gesturing to his head. The gold from her hands highlighted an old scar that crossed his forehead and rose above one of his eyes. “He fell into a deep shadow while pulling himself from the ashes of a lost love. This ancient trial can yet bring him strength if he remembers that you both passed through it with flying colors.”
With those words, Fortune reached down and plucked the scar from his body, like one would remove a cobweb from a window.
Next, Lady Luck’s hands stopped on my Animus’ chest. “Old wounds, old pain,” she said and snapped her fingers. “These hurts are caused simply by living through the days of our lives. I would not fret overmuch about them.” My love’s rib cage popped open like an unfolding card and gray moths flew out from between his bones.
Then, when those hurts were gone, stinging wasps came from his body, more than I imagined was possible for one man to bear. Badger and Dream moved close to me, protecting my face and hands from the biting and vicious bugs. A nest came out as well as the insects continued to cloud the clear waters of Windfall’s river.
“Well, that was unexpected,” said Fortune, batting a single wasp from her eye like a minnow within the stream. “We will require Love’s touch here, to heal this old wound.” A moment later, Venus stepped out of my heart.
Together, Love and Fortune put their hands on the wasp’s nest and it detached from my Animus’ heart. The moment it lost its connection to his body, the insects ceased emerging from the nest to torment my friends and I further. The golden light from Luck and the blinding brilliance of Love filled his heart and chest cavity, and the two ladies sealed his body back together with a single flourish from each of their hands.
The goddesses were not yet through with my love for they moved their hands lower still over his sleeping form. They came to rest over the Animus’ abdomen.
“Heidi, you must see this,” said Fortune and I found myself growing small. I stood next to the wall of the Animus’ intestines and beheld a creature crawling upon them. The beast was shaped like an ugly troll and ran up and down the abdominal cavity, scratching and chewing on the intestines while laughing in glee.
“Go away!” I yelled, angered by the sight, and the creature screeched at me, while tearing on the guts of my Animus. Fortune appeared with her perfect timing and waved her golden light over the thing. It disappeared in a puff of smoke.
“Doubt,” she said apologetically. “That’s all that was, darling. Simple Doubt.” Lady Luck and I went to view the destruction that disbelief had caused in the body’s system. Shadows mottled the Animus’ intestine like moss on a wall.
Venus again emerged from within me and the combined light of Fortune and Love dispelled the shadows left behind. I blinked and stood beside my Animus’ coffin on the riverbed once more. After the goddesses’ ministrations, my love glowed with an inner brilliance that was all his own.
“Fortune,” I said. “Will he be alright?”
She smiled for a lucky third time. “He must remember who he is and banish all doubt,” the goddess said. “You nor I can do that for him.”
“But how does one do that?” I asked. “Remember oneself?”
“Go with the flow,” Lady Luck whispered and blew me a kiss. When her golden light hit my cheek, the Animus’ coffin freed itself from the riverbed and began to rise like a cork in the water. Badger, Dream, and I hung on to its edges as we were rapidly ejected from the river.
By this time, Windfall had raised the water as he had promised and we shot across the river’s surface into the pipe. With the river god’s help, water was within the pipe, but it wasn’t flowing. We sat in stagnant potential upon the Animus’ coffin.
Badger and Dream looked at the still water and then at me. “This isn’t going to work,” Dream said unhelpfully.
“I think we need to add pressure to this pipe,” Badger suggested.
Then, I heard Fortune’s voice whispering on the wind. “Give Potential his wings by banishing all doubt,” she murmured in my ear. “Go with the flow of the river.” There was a rumble and water exploded through the pipe, flushing Badger, Dream, the coffin, and I through the tunnel, returning us to the desert.
Water began to stream through the faucet at an unprecedented rate, but suddenly, the earth shifted and the river itself changed course and burst over me and my friends. It filled the desert and flowed onwards, back towards the grasping, thorned vine that had caused us so much trouble before. The water completely covered the vine so that its thrashing, pushing movements caused not even a ripple on the surface of the new oasis.
The coffin that contained my Animus burst apart beneath my fingertips and his glowing body began to sink towards the ivy. I went to grab him to try to keep him safe, but Badger held me back. “Trust the process,” he said and took my hand encouragingly.
My Animus reached the vines and they floated towards him, then changed from plants into a throne of river mist and drifting shadows. His relaxed body drifted and placed itself naturally upon the chair, which featured armrests shaped like the heads of foxes. His sleeping eyes opened and he gazed upon a new desert oasis filled with clear, potable water.
And my vision ended.
The Light Congress 