The Story Tree - Child of the Mist

Child of the Mist
In the modern world in which we live, with its noise and bustle, where there is never enough time to do what you ‘need’ to do, let alone what you would like to do. Where a minute passes into a week and the season’s pass almost unnoticed save whether you feel cold or hot; it’s a birthday, holiday or Christmas. It wasn’t always like this.  It is the world we have created and we can’t or won’t stop, which is a great pity for all we are missing as we hurtle through our short lives without learning from our past.

'It wasn’t always like this’ and ‘for all we are missing’, are powerful elements of the Seed to the ‘Child of the Mist’. No matter where our own indigenous roots lay, our folklore, myths and legends have many common themes. To the curious observer there are remarkable similarities in the old stories, whether from Europe, Asia Pacific or the Americas they are deep in the human identity. These common beliefs and old tales crossed vast seas and continents; coincidence or evidence of something deeper? They represent an intuitive understanding of a wild world long forgotten in our urbanized, time driven lives? 

Root 1 “Earth”

“In the blind darkness deep in the earth’s cradle,
A child’s delicate pale lips find succor.
Incandescent liquid sparkles, a myriad of stars, life’s blood hanging by a thread.
Hope flickers eternal, cosseted in warmth from rock that guards her fragile form.
Strength and power drawn from fiery rock,
She is at one with water and air.
But only time would tell if the elements are faithful and true”.

Dreams were her only reality. Her vulnerability consumed by darkness, her world and memories fused as one, as indistinct as her small diminutive form buried, lost to the world that had once laughed and cried with an innocent child of ten summers.

The earth had taken her many years before, although years meant little to her now. In her dreams, she could vaguely recall a family; she sensed emotion, a longing to belong and something else, a desperate desire; love? But she no longer understood the meaning? The people were ghost like and out of reach, the voices distant and became even more indistinct if she tried to force clarity, so much so that she had given it up as a fruitless task. The meaning and purpose of her past had long since escaped the reality of her new existence.

The strength of the memories of her previous life was intuitive not explicit, dream memories of a life in a different existence. The dream people had light, bright colours in contrast to the world she had entered. All she knew was that it had been taken, stolen from her. But that wasn’t all? There was also fear, of a power she still felt. It had stalked her and struck without warning tearing away the world she had known but she had survived, somehow.

When the power struck intent on her destruction, there was all consuming pain. But almost immediately out of nowhere as if waiting in anticipation, an unseen equal force interceded. The battle that ensued raged and threatened to crush her, swept her aside as though an inconsequential witness in a war between raging giants. The child of her dreams was plunged into a deep bitter cold embrace that had stunned; numbed her senseless. Battered, she was swept into a spinning vortex of icy roaring water that pummeled her into the depths; a smothering semi luminescent pressure that trapped and hid her from the devastating turmoil above. She had been powerless to resist and felt tired beyond years. Just as her life ebbed away, her captor released its grip and she burst to the surface, washed into an earthly womb deep underground. The child gasped air as a newborn and dragged herself clear of the prowling waters that had guarded her ever since, and fell into an exhausted unconsciousness.

Please see the rest of the 'Child of the Mist' at www.the-story-tree.com It is being written by installments and two other story trees 'Wit and Wing' and Heart of Borghaven' are under development.