Collective Consciousness I Midsummer Festival

Chapter 4 Dahl

In a state of bliss, Dahl stretched her body for a long time, this morning. Her meditation had cleared her senses for a couple of hours. Then, much like pollen on a day that makes you sneeze, the attention of the world would be felt again, heavy and turbulent, until her sunset meditation and her dissolution. The cessation of the day, a swell and release. Dahl looked forward to the sunset of this day with more anticipation than she'd ever felt. She would finally meet Fyodor, her equal in the revolution, her Chaka. Their births significant and timely to make them destined for one another.

A match of their collaboration has not been felt by the people in any recent memory. Five thousand years it has been since a person was born with a gift of divination so strong, an intellect so quick, light, glowing, emanating from her palms. People doubted it had ever happened now, including Dahl. She hated to doubt her High Priestess, she was like a mother to her, but it seemed unlikely that she ever had magic, at this point. Magic was something in which only uneducated woodlands people believed.

According to Resilda, Dahl's gifts faded and seemed to have all but passed, more intense, amazing and impressive than her peers, but just like some toddlers, she had the gift until self-awareness settled. Dahl was still a firecracker of a spirit and certainly the kind of leader who could grow to become High Priestess, herself, but she had no magic. Only compassion, intuition and her intelligence certainly remained.

Her beauty had also remained and flourished. Her loveliness was unsurpassed, most onlookers had commented her entire life. She had a creamy complexion, tinged with pinks during emotion or exertion. Her hair remained a strawberry blonde throughout her life, in ringlets and waves, which she pinned around the crown of her head or left down to her waist. Her eyes changed like opals in the sunlight and were tilted up at the outer lids, a sign of fairy blood, tittered people who had a romantic disposition. Today, she wore almost transparent tunics, layered in ivory wisps around her otherwise unbridled body. She'd put on her rose gold bangles and long string of pearls. She also wore anklet jewelry that wrapped around the toe in soft white lace, embossed with tiny pearls. Temple garb was simple and she was spiritual guide above all else, but today was the day she would know if love was her path, and she dressed with the flame of wanting to be noticed, for the first time in her life.

Her beauty may have been how she lost her abilities. People's enamoration with her physicality was the first self-conscious notion she remembered having. This is why Resilda was holding out hope that meeting her equal would unlock her power, again. A zenanda, and especially a Lilith, might be empowered with an ability or talent, magic aside, when they encounter their promised. A Lilith with the amount of power she displayed at an early age, empowered by a soul mate, the likes of whom Fyodor had been to his people, would definitely be a Goddess's force of wonder.

Dahl was just as preoccupied by the fear that none of those prophecies and expectations would line up. Oddly enough, she was also slightly relieved at the thought. Maybe, Fyodor wouldn't choose her and she could go on to be High Priestess in peace. With her training and favor, her zenanda would move on to be with Fyodor without her and her to the highest temple honor. This is something Resilda had always said, she would be the king's Lilith or equal, her apprentice, when she turned eighteen.

The High Council were the most intimidating, affluent men and women Fyodor ever met, besides his own family, but up-close they were just people in nice robes with real skin and hands, eyes and voices. The shortest Lady had the funniest voice. Her laugh was light and melodic, high pitched by comparison to the rest. The laugh punctuated every other sentence or so. Fyodor was greeting everyone and engaging satisfactorily but he still felt displaced and fuzzy from the effect he was experiencing from the agricoline and all he could hear was that laugh, at times, like a bell.

Fyodor and Xan retired to the dining room with the council. Everyone in the temple was having the after-meditation meal, a brunch of eggs, fruits and cured meats. Fyodor didn't feel much like consuming, but he gnawed on a few things from the plate a devotee brought him faithfully.

This could be the first time that Fyodor would have the chance to spot his intended Lilith, Dahlia. He should have been looking for her so he could make sure to pick her out properly, but he found himself living in a fog of overwhelm this morning. His vision darted around, to the females in temple robes around his age, but he couldn't focus on anyone's face. He instead spoke to the council members, his voice a little too quiet and his answers a bit brief.

After eating, Xan suggested that Fyodor and he take a rest. There was a bungalow on the temple's grounds where he liked to stay. He showed Fyodor where it was and it already had both of their things and two beds made, inside. It was small but a wood-burning stove stood in the middle so it smelled wonderful and it was next to a little creek, right near the woods and you could hear it as you drifted off to sleep. It smelled and felt comfortably rugged. Fyodor was reminded of his woodland cabin and felt content. He slept easily, pleasantly buzzed from his mineral high, but noticed Xan making little bustling noises nearby, not snoring softly in his usual way.

Dahlia couldn't eat this morning, so she didn't attend the post-meditation morning meal. Instead, she found her sisters who had finished brunching early and took them to the woods to walk and forage while it was still cool under the thick leaves. These were the last few hours they would not be in competition, until Fyodor had chosen. She wanted to spend the time chatting and cooing to each other about the possibilities of becoming Lilith, one more time, a favorite activity they'd had for years together. In a stolen free moment, between training to manage and facilitate temple activities and learning responsibility for becoming a high-born's Zenanda, the girls, all the same age and all destined for great privilege and burden, would simply be their natural selves.

Zenanda was a class of females suited to bear the children of noblemen, in the kingdom of Replendence, where Renata was the capitol. Each high-born boy had at least a small group of girls destined to have as many of his children as would be suitable to manage his land and assets. Men and women's roles tend not to depend as much upon gender as status, here. A high-born female could be destined to more than one partner, but that was their's to find for themselves. Not so much was predicated on fathers of noble offspring as upon a set group of females, to bear high-born children. The vessel must be very specific, also your mother was the one who taught you who you are and every Zenanda was raised by the Priestess of, at lowest, your village. The Priestess was the Goddess's mouthpiece and, therefore, she had the ability to raise pure females. Purity was an old concept, born of magic blood. Magical beings, including humans, had been extinct for thousands of years. All of these traditions had new meanings depending upon where one was from, and if you were spiritual. Most of the meanings have become politicized for a long time.

These girls, raised steeped in these traditions, did not have the ability to decide for themselves what they felt or believed. They must be spiritual and keep themselves pure to feel they had a purpose or to feel they knew anything about reality, as they were raised in the temple.

Dahlia had begun to become increasingly unsure of her faith. The feeling was terrifying for her because she had no way to assure her sisters, the other Zenandas in her order. The disparity between how people treated her and her actual, very minor energetic abilities, had bred doubt in her, towards the entire system. There was a growing part of her that wanted dearly to become Replendence's High Priestess and abolish all the religious and folklore nonsense, lead the people towards logic and scientific findings. She knew she would meet great adversity, if that were her goal.

Xan told Fy that he was tired from the journey, but he'd lied. He was getting the most effect from the argilcoline that he ever had, being here, with Fyodor, and he'd inexplicably felt something shift as soon as his pupil tried to touch the city wall.

To people like Xan, the wall was just a wall. He'd never gotten any "residuals"-or energy charges from the clay. He thought that it was an elaborate marketing scheme that the minerals had any energy "causation", at all. He was willing to believe that a long time ago maybe the world had special powers, he was open to mystery, but, ultimately, he'd always suspected that nothing was magic nor had ever been and people were just apt to believe things they wanted to or lie to control others.

Today, though, he felt unsure of these certainties he'd always had, for the first time. This was unsettling because it had taken him a long time to come to terms with this journey, at all. The morality of the nobles' matchmaking system was brought into question, once every generation, by those who had grown up raised as a zenanda as well as their partners and caregivers. It seemed, however, that most were very happy with the system and those in the majority had a lot of power.

Xan tried not to skew Fyodor's perspective on this monumental moment of his life and Replendence's history. He was a stoic man, slow to words and often found deep in contemplation. He wanted the best for Fyodor to unfold naturally and he did not want to seed disrest. He often discussed his doubts with Resilda, the High Priestess, and she would assure him of the procedure's conductivity to happiness and love. He hated to distrust a confidant, so he let his distaste for the process be quelled.

His head was in too much chaos and Fyodor was breathing so softly, he decided not to disturb him and got up to take a walk.