Sleep evaded Culleen. She lay on her back watching a star blanket cover the night sky. Eastern constellations – not the familiar ones of the north. Such as Hudane and Zella she and Vesta, her wolf-dog, howled to at the turning of the seasons.
Being humanish in the north where all possessed personal magic, her quest to discover her own brought her here, to vast expanses of undulating sea grass, deep piney forests, rock-shorn cliffs above sand and shale shores washed and wracked by the great easterly sea.
The east, where land held and granted magic. Where she met her pale almost mirror of herself. Ethereal Maaginen made more whole by sea tang and breakers. Elsewhere wraith-like, almost translucent by times. Culleen was solid, raven hair plaited down her back, eyes sea foam green. Maaginen, flaxen locks tumbling, a mane like the ponies she rode wild through the waves, watching the world with her eyes of midnight blue.
Also questing, a desperate one seeking? Culleen, unsure, knew only Maaginen sought answers through understanding a message left by the Ancients. Weathered into standing stones overlooking the ragged cliffs. Being humanish, Culleen could read runes, now burned bright upon her staff of living heartwood freely given. All her knowledge, her strength, and power came from her attunement with nature and the ways of the Ancients, of a time before magic came to her people.
Eastern runes wrote differently, so that Culleen need puzzle out their meaning. Drifting back into the Ancient’s circles, listening for the touchstone word; keynote to unlock all others. Side by each, she teased out the meaning of Maaginen’s quest in their outlines.
That day, she broke the code – all came clear in ways truly beyond her ken. Ancients left last message before passing; of going back into earth, sea and sky. Their parting gift, their farewell gesture to imbue magic, traces of their knowledge and wisdom into wildflower meadows, copses of twisted yews within the sea grass, rivers tumbling towards the sea, waves turning on the tide.
Culleen sensed, then, the cost of such a gift. In their travels, they nary met another soul. As Maaginen did away from the sea, her people were fading. The east was being abandoned like the shattered middle Culleen had crossed. Shadow-time, as foretold cryptically by the last of the runes, was descending here too. When all would turn like tides, like leaves in the fall, like the moon. Magic would consume the people of the east; all fading into ethereal beings without substance.
She knew not how to help Maaginen and her kind with this secret, felt-deep-within vision of the future. As she lay that night, watching the constellations, Kuth, whose raven speak she was granted understanding by possession of Maaginen’s arrow, clacked at her. She noted, yet again, the difference between home and here. That the wood itself gave her personal magic, not the hand of the maker as in the north.
“Well then, Culleen, have you courage to match the knowledge?”
“Well then, Culleen, when will you tell Maaginen you know the message left by the Ancients upon those standing stones?”
“Well then, Culleen, how are your and her quests mirroring now? You have stepped towards that mirror and back.”
“Shush,” she warned. “These are the very questions I am pondering. Leave me be to configure the answers”
Culleen was certain Maaginen hoped the Ancient’s parting words held a different message. The answer to her kind’s fading; the mission of her quest. Perhaps there was a less bitter ending to this tale. Hidden in the play of light and shadows on the sea’s endless water. Streaming like fog up the sea cliffs. Cresting on the waves forever moving. Found in the minutiae of the stars. Culleen quested to find her magic; instead, by chance, had she found a purpose, a calling now revealed?
She and Vesta crept away from the encampment, and finding a suitable place, they howled up to the unfamiliar skyscape. A howl of despair and of hope.
© Lorraine 2017
For mlmm’s menagerie writing prompt 205: “It’s All in the Title.”
This is the 14 installment in Culleen Callawe’en’s quest. Travelling from her home in the north, she and Vesta were joined by Kuth, a raven sent to guide her. Across the abandoned middle, once with flourishing farms and well-trodden roads, now left to fall back into nature. Squeezing through a crack in the eastern wall, constructed to look like an escarpment full-stop against the flat middle, she reached a cave above the great easterly sea. There, on the shale shores, she first encountered Maaginen, who in wraith-like form, followed Culleen up the cliffs. Attacking with bow and arrow, Culleen’s prowess with her staff gained her both. It was this arrow that enabled her to hear Kuth’s clacks as language. And, the bow called her to a dream-imagined meeting with Maaginen. In her travels, at first as if caught in a waking trance, Culleen followed Maaginen from tidal river, then from hidden, magical springs, cross more of the sea grasslands, to the place of the standing stones. Since then, Maaginen, impatient and restless, moved their encampment several times as Cullen struggled to decode the runic message of the Ancients.
For Part 1 read here
For Part 2 read here
For Part 3 read here
For Part 4 read here
For Part 5 read here
For Part 6 read here
For Part 7 read here
For Part 8 read here
For Part 9 read here
For Part 10 read here
for Part 11 read here
for Part 12 read here
for Part 13 read here
© Lorraine 2017
June 26, 2017 at 7:34 pm
So Culleen has stepped in and broken free again – glad you were there for it!
I think the two of you are partners, sometimes one or the other unwilling – but mostly working with and through this together – and that’s okay – it’s an interesting way to create – sometimes as a writer, you’re driving, sometimes you’re co-pilot, and other times, it’s a bit of shared work – and then, sometime’s you’re just hanging out the passenger side back seat window, letting the wind rush past …..
interesting how this is all unfolding – definitely interesting – and great “duality” at the end – either or – not necessarily – perhaps both – or a fusion – and so we wait to see …. as do you :)
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June 27, 2017 at 9:02 am
I like being the passenger in the back seat, wind rushing past, doing waves with my hand out the window. I don’t have a license, so being the driver is often a scary experience. I’m a much better passenger/navigator.
As you know I struggled, having a sense, finally, of where she might go, but not hearing her whisper in my ear, or elbow me into writing the next stage.
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June 28, 2017 at 11:04 am
wherever you are comfortable is good – and yup, sometimes, and here I speak only from a creative space-mindset, it’s good to shake it up and step out of the comfort zone too – but then, that’s really a personal “knowing” – so whatever is working, more or less, in this case, is what it is – so, just go with it – only you and her know how best to proceed :)
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June 28, 2017 at 1:08 pm
And, as I don’t have a driver’s license, and am the navigator on trips — no GPS — I would be an okay back seat driver, lol.
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June 29, 2017 at 8:08 pm
well, women tend to navigate by means of landmarks, so it can get weird and tense, but then, sometimes, it’s best to just go with it and see it as an adventure ;)
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June 30, 2017 at 7:08 am
Oh, driving around here is always an adventure — of the scary, close my eyes kind.
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June 30, 2017 at 10:39 am
that doesn’t sound like fun – but then, my idea of “traffic” now consists of a group of white-tailed deer suddenly leaping across the road – or stopping in the middle and just standing about ….
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June 30, 2017 at 3:26 pm
Oh we have deer here too. One jumped onto the hood of our car a few years ago. Did a lot of damage to the car and to itself. Happens all the time. Too many suburban deer — eat everything including a lot of native plants that are suffering as a result.
We met a long horned bull in Wyoming, and drove backwards for a while. On a lonely road. He was “herding” his females, and we got in the way.
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June 30, 2017 at 6:18 pm
LOL@the Wyoming incident and the way you’ve phrased it so seemingly casually …. umm, that must have been quite the site – and probably a good move because I can’t imagine what kind of damage an animal that size might do – probably like meeting moose – which I’m guessing you’ve seen far more often than I have, given you’re a Maritimer!
the deer – oh the deer – yeah, well, as you know where I’m at, they’re everywhere, so it’s more like we’re the disrupting factor, but in the suburbs, I recall just how insane it was getting – deer cross the frozen lakes in the winter and then get trapped and continue to populate and in some Montreal suburbs, you can’t have any kind of yard – and they’re all fenced in anyhow, for privacy – townhouses, or such small lots in those new developments – and it looks like a Monopoly board and there are all these deer leaping 6 foot fences like it was a walk in the park. Made me laugh like hell, although I do understand the destruction end of it.
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July 1, 2017 at 1:37 am
We had seen signs saying “Caution, Open Range” as we drove along, and until we met our bull, didn’t understand just what that meant.
We backed up, he backed off and he and his harem moved along.
We also saw bison/buffalo on that trip, not far from our campsite in the National Grasslands Park in Wyoming. The brochure said, “Don’t antagonize the buffalo.”
As there was a small herd just across the creek, we tried not to do anything we thought a buffalo might find annoying. And, neither of us was going to go over and say “Excuse me, but what do you folks find antagonizing?”
In Yellowstone, it was buffalo/bison that come down to the roadside, not bears. When my husband did a family trip as a child, bears still wandered down to the cars to get fed. Now they are in the back country.
Didn’t realize suburban Montreal had a flourishing deer population!
The white tailed deer, not native to NS, brought a disease which killed many of the moose on the mainland. So, I’ve only seen one or two moose in my part of NS. Once, we passed a car full of hunters, then saw a moose on the side of the road. I hollered at it to hide in the woods!
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July 1, 2017 at 5:55 pm
well done on hollering at the moose! I’m not crazy about hunting season – although it’s a part of the natural population control, and if it’s approached respectfully, I have less trouble with it – but generally, there are far too many idiots engaged in it – sets my hackles on edge.
Wow – didn’t know that about the WT deer spreading a disease to the moose – interesting, not so much for the moose, but huh.
I’m laughing at the causal way you’ve described the encounters, like yeah, wander over – and hmmm….. are we bothering you? Nope, not an idea – but then, people do the strangest things – it always makes headlines when someone does something so far out and yet there’s more than a fair share of people going “what? it’s too cute!” Doh!
I’m sure I’d have thought the same thing “what’s open range mean?” good to bear in mind – not that I’ll ever get out that way – but hey, it’ll make me stop if I happen to see a sign like that posted elsewhere!
Oh yeah, it’s really insane on the island now – and huge problem, because you can’t legally hunt on the island of Montreal – so it makes for a huge issue; eventually the suburbs will have to come up with some form of relocation or something –
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July 3, 2017 at 4:52 pm
Yeah, same problem here with hunting. I saw, let the bow hunters lose. At least many have respect for what they kill, and make the proper ceremony/ritual afterwards. People don’t like the sides of their houses getting peppered with gun shot which happens during the bear hunt.
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July 4, 2017 at 11:49 am
yeah, gun shot …. never a good thing – and well, there are laws about distances etc. but all it takes is one dumb ass and hmm …. and even if you call it in, the cops usually will have one hell of a time trying to find the person – and tell me, would you want to be wandering around looking for an armed and clearly “stupid” person? Not me! Nope, generally hunting season puts me on edge.
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July 4, 2017 at 12:51 pm
Duck hunting was our big scare when we lived above the diked lands near Wolfville. The pheasant hunters (ring neck pheasants released and roamed about) were good. On private land, so they carried their guns properly, etc. I had an orange toque for when I went walking on the dikes. Duck hunters were often drunken assholes.
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July 5, 2017 at 8:11 am
yeah, have to deck yourself out glowing orange – and pray …. here, it’s mostly pretty good – but every now and then, someone does something “stupid” with a firearm of some sorts – makes me nervous –
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July 5, 2017 at 9:09 am
Nervous I understand. Every body it seems here is packing, and when I do stuff like call out someone who nearly ran me over in a cross walk, I wonder if they will pull out a gun and shoot me. It seems to be the way to end arguments, settle gang scores, etc. So many children get shot, playing with guns or in drive bys. Gun laws need to be toughened!
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July 6, 2017 at 8:32 am
it’s such a miserable way of living – sure, guns don’t kill people, -people kill people, but damn it – it’s far too easy to pull a trigger, then say, anything else – arghhhh ….. it’s always a tough call – to decide when to “call out” someone, because you just never know …. but I agree – much stricter gun laws ….
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June 26, 2017 at 2:25 pm
I agree with Michaelthis I’d a great story!
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June 26, 2017 at 4:52 pm
Thanks!
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June 26, 2017 at 5:24 pm
Pleasure 💖
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June 25, 2017 at 11:12 pm
You’ve found a great voice in Culleen haven’t you and I sense you are enjoying the journey she is taking you on. Writing is like that isn’t it, finding a voice that allows us to explore character and quest in your case…excellent writing Lorraine.
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June 26, 2017 at 8:18 am
Thanks, Michael.
She has mostly written the story herself, coming unbidden to nudge me along with a sharp elbow by times.
She has been frustrated of late, knocking on Sue Vincent’s #writephoto images, but never getting her voice to form the words.
She broke free this time, I thought of the first line, and then she flowed again.
I agree, writing is finding a voice, letting a character speak for themselves through the filter of our words. I’m questing for her voice as much as she is questing for her magic. Sometimes our quests intertwine.
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June 26, 2017 at 8:20 am
It’s good to realise when she is talking so you can let her go and the story appears
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June 26, 2017 at 8:35 am
Yes, that is a fascinating aspect of the writing process.
Do Wayne and Greg, Miss Marble, et al “speak” to you first, or do you call them up and ask for a story?
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June 26, 2017 at 8:41 am
Good question usually when I use them it’s because I feel they could best tell the story and so away we go.
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June 26, 2017 at 12:36 pm
Interesting, the story shapes the characters, rather than the characters shaping the story? I mean you know of what you will write, and chose the voice that best suits it. I find my characters drag me along for the roller coaster ride. They pick me, I don’t pick them.
With your incredible cast of characters to choose from, you have infinite possibilities. I like that idea.
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June 26, 2017 at 10:19 pm
Yes and thankfully I find they don’t fight over whose turn it might be…
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June 27, 2017 at 9:04 am
Well that’s good; some of my characters become fractious if left to their own literary devices.
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