I Don’t Know What It Was I Saw That Night, But It Sure As Hell Was Awesome

When I was eighteen years old, I saw something I still can’t explain.  Actually, I saw and did a lot of things I never quite grokked.

The one I want to talk about right now – the event came to me last night, a sudden flash of recollection while I was working on something else entirely – took place in a graveyard.  It was one of a couple such field trips with those particular friends, possibly even the first – this was almost thirteen years ago, so forgive me if it’s just a little hazy in parts.  The cemetery was hilly and a little old fashioned, with several large stone angels and little mausoleums, winding paved paths and a few rest areas with benches.  On the far side was a field with a great tree to one side, and the property was blocked in by walls of trees that hid the realm of the dead from those yet living.  Those of you who read my novels some day will recognize it … it left quite an impression on me.

As I said, the north east corner of the cemetery was open, and it seemed to us that we could see a huge, shimmering dome of light there under the moon.  One of my friends, the oldest and most experienced of us, said it looked like a portal of some kind.  Of course we went to investigate.  Wouldn’t you?

What happened next I’ll never forget.

As we approached the dome a figure of light, some seven feet tall, stepped out.  My older friend went up to greet it, while the other two of us stood and stared in awe.  We could hear it talking – or, perhaps more accurately, we could feel it talking – but only she could understand it.

Our friend came back to us, another figure stepped out of the dome of light as the first moved back toward it.  They and the dome of light vanished.

It was relayed to us that the portal had been closed because something that wasn’t supposed to come through … well, had.

I don’t know what the dome of light really was.  Portal to another world is semiplausible, all things considered.  I don’t know who or what the figure of light was – we never even speculated on that, honestly.  We had no data.  I don’t know what it actually said to my friend – not that I doubt her, per se, just … well, I couldn’t hear.  When it comes right down to it, I don’t know what happened that night.

I don’t know what happened that night. All I know is what I saw.  But I saw the dome.  I saw the dude-of-light.  I saw dome and dude vanish. And shit like this is why I’m hesitant to dismiss anything out of hand.

Gods and demons?  Sure.  Your last incarnation was a cat?  Okay.  Talking to gods, demons, or cats?  Plausible.  Fairies and dragons?  Well … I’ve sure seen some strange shit that might be best explained that way.  Otherkin?  Who am I to say who you are or aren’t; or who your parents are or aren’t?  Cause, damn, don’t I get some funny looks when I try to tell this story just as it is, even when I don’t even try to provide an explanation for it.

Story Time: the Druid Dragon Lady

Speaking of things I saw when I was a mere fluffy faun and clueless mageling… Speaking of Otherkin and things I just don’t quite understand…  I once knew a lady – we’ll call her Medeia – who claimed that the blood of dragons ran in her veins.

I was sixteen or seventeen when I met her.  She was older than most of the people in our group – of legal drinking age before I had graduated high school, though not the only person in the circle of that age – and we bonded fairly quickly, re-establishing the brother-sister relationship we had had in the last life we’d lived together.  She had been practicing magic for longer than most of us, and claimed to have been initiated into a Druid circle.

I’ve already used it twice, and I’m going to use that word – “claimed” – a few more times as I tell this story.  I’m not saying I don’t believe her (except where I am), only that while I never thought to question her at the time, as I look back I never saw any actual evidence that I can recall.

She was there for so many stories that I can’t even recall them all, much less begin to relate them here.  She was there when I did my first past-life regressions, when I met my first spirit-guides – the one who scared me off and the one I ultimately kept then neglected.  She taught me things about auras and shielding, about manipulating magical energy and talking to spirits that – while many people I know have seen or done something like them – I have never seen in print.

I did a tarot reading for her once that broke the glass table we were sitting at.  I laid out the whole deck once, reshuffled, and laid it out again.  I was high with power.  There was a loud cracking noise.  We couldn’t figure out where it had come from, but when we cleared the cards away the glass table top was split in a jagged line from me to her.

Incredible presences followed her around – forces so huge that I did not encounter anything on the same scale, let alone greater, until I started working with gods.  Some of those vast presences – the ones she claimed were dragons – were accompanied by a particular musky smell.  I have encountered that musk and presences like those only two or three times since she passed out of my life.

We explored our past lives together, found that we had been brother-sister, lovers, and father-daughter at various times.  Sometimes she had been the elder, more dominant – other times it had been me.

I still don’t know how to make sense of her claims. From where I’m at now, literal dragon-blood seems fairly outrageous. But … things got awfully strange around her, sometimes. I don’t really know what experiences she had that were best explained as “I’m something more than human”. Or maybe she was just crazy. I don’t know.

When I was about nineteen or twenty – before I moved out of my parents house – she got pregnant and disappeared.  I’ve never seen or heard from her since, which makes me very sad.