Jul 11, 2023 8:42 pm
You've been living the wrong life.
For as long as you can remember, you've believed you were destined for something much greater than your mundane existence. Yet you've found no way to escape the droll repetition of your provincial lives.
Then the dreams began. An alluring woman dressed in blue finery, her face shrouded in shadows, appeared to you. She confirmed what you've believed your whole life -- your true destiny has been snatched away by sinister forces!
"Become my ally," she intoned in a ghostly tapestry of indistinct voices, "and your enemies shall become my enemies, and together we shall take back the life that was promised to you by the stars. Come and find me at the cliff."
As the dreams continued, you became more and more detached from your lives. You started to ignore your work. You had an increasingly difficult time engaging with your old family and friends, seeing each as a jailer in the prison of your life. Finally the dreams become a mandate, and you left home and followed the visions of your dreams, hoping to discover the mysterious cliff your saw the woman standing before.
You traveled dazedly, as if in a fever dream, your path dictated by strange omens and portents. Eventually, these now waking visions lead you to your destination.
You arrive, exhausted and confused, at the cliff overlooking the ocean. Looking around, you see numerous other people showing up at exactly the same time as you. The scene is exactly as it appeared in your dreams, and you are suddenly grateful as this must mean that you are not insane. There at the edge of the cliff is the woman who has haunted your dreams for months, standing behind a long table, incongruously set for a banquet here in this wild place. The woman is nearly seven foot tall, wearing tattered finery of deepest blue, and for the first time you see her face – somehow her head is that of a statue of a woman. Her features are inanimate and and softened, as if rain and wind had eroded the statue head over time. In her left hand she holds two severed human heads by the hair. In her right hand she holds three.
As you approach she holds all five up as if to great you with their dead faces. Then those dead eyes open, and the five heads speak to you in unison, each in their own voice. "Welcome, brave friends. I know you have many questions, but let them wait for now. I know you must be exhausted from your journey. Sit, eat and rest. All of your questions shall be answered this day." You notice that one of the heads, a pale-skinned outlander with bright red hair, speaks in a foreign tongue.
The feast is laid out before you – meat, bread, cheese, vegetables, and wine. Of every ten dishes, eight are fresh and delicious but two are visibly rotted or otherwise despoiled – for example, a plate of mutton crawls with maggots, a bowl of berries is green with fungus.
For as long as you can remember, you've believed you were destined for something much greater than your mundane existence. Yet you've found no way to escape the droll repetition of your provincial lives.
Then the dreams began. An alluring woman dressed in blue finery, her face shrouded in shadows, appeared to you. She confirmed what you've believed your whole life -- your true destiny has been snatched away by sinister forces!
"Become my ally," she intoned in a ghostly tapestry of indistinct voices, "and your enemies shall become my enemies, and together we shall take back the life that was promised to you by the stars. Come and find me at the cliff."
As the dreams continued, you became more and more detached from your lives. You started to ignore your work. You had an increasingly difficult time engaging with your old family and friends, seeing each as a jailer in the prison of your life. Finally the dreams become a mandate, and you left home and followed the visions of your dreams, hoping to discover the mysterious cliff your saw the woman standing before.
You traveled dazedly, as if in a fever dream, your path dictated by strange omens and portents. Eventually, these now waking visions lead you to your destination.
You arrive, exhausted and confused, at the cliff overlooking the ocean. Looking around, you see numerous other people showing up at exactly the same time as you. The scene is exactly as it appeared in your dreams, and you are suddenly grateful as this must mean that you are not insane. There at the edge of the cliff is the woman who has haunted your dreams for months, standing behind a long table, incongruously set for a banquet here in this wild place. The woman is nearly seven foot tall, wearing tattered finery of deepest blue, and for the first time you see her face – somehow her head is that of a statue of a woman. Her features are inanimate and and softened, as if rain and wind had eroded the statue head over time. In her left hand she holds two severed human heads by the hair. In her right hand she holds three.
As you approach she holds all five up as if to great you with their dead faces. Then those dead eyes open, and the five heads speak to you in unison, each in their own voice. "Welcome, brave friends. I know you have many questions, but let them wait for now. I know you must be exhausted from your journey. Sit, eat and rest. All of your questions shall be answered this day." You notice that one of the heads, a pale-skinned outlander with bright red hair, speaks in a foreign tongue.
The feast is laid out before you – meat, bread, cheese, vegetables, and wine. Of every ten dishes, eight are fresh and delicious but two are visibly rotted or otherwise despoiled – for example, a plate of mutton crawls with maggots, a bowl of berries is green with fungus.
