writing, visionary, romantic,digital portrait children's stories storyboards illustrator indesign jessica blythe designs character character edits roughs treasure diamonds loss love

SHORT STORY: ROMANCE
3,208 words

FORTUNE: Temptation*: A Romantic Tale of Impossible Love
* inspired by the song of a similar name written by Dale Jones
(of the Brisbane band Night and Day)

My name is Antares,  The blood of the ancient Celts courses through my veins.  I was named after The Watcher  - the red star of the constellation Scorpius, which dominates my homeland’s night sky when my people gather around the fire and drapes are wrapped tight against the windows.

My ancestors were of the class which frequented the Courts of Kings.  They were held in high esteem for their wise counsel to clan leaders, princesses and kings.  They drew their inspiration from the earth mysteries of the rising and setting of the moon, the sun and the stars.  Their wisdom was drawn from hard won knowledge of tree and herb lore which they manipulated for healing and transformation of the spirit.  They knew what the passing of the planets across the sky meant for the affairs of men and women and they spoke truth and wisdom to those who consulted them for their wise counsel.

I am Antares, a Druid priestess.  I draw inspiration for my daily life from my ancestors and from the earthbound natural world.  I am treasured by those who know me as someone who can unlock the mysteries of the universe and the earthways for those with hearts open enough to listen and follow.  The ringlets formed in my hair glisten like spun gold and fall about my shoulders like a waterfall.  My eyes sparkle with the piercing clear blue diamonds of sunlight on tumbling water.  I stand proud and tall with fullsome breast and broad belly and behind.  I carry my grey sorrow gathered loosely around my bones to protect me from falling further into the black pool of past loss.

I have lived, I have loved and I have lost.  But now I have found a treasure.  I am so excited about this treasure that my heart swells in anticipation of its touch and my head aches with the promise of catching a glimpse of rare beauty. 

It is truly the most wonderful fortune you could ever imagine.  It exists as much in the real world as in my soul.  It is the treasure of love.

When the moon is full, at the time of the sun’s resting, I go to the ocean to welcome the moon’s slow rising out of the dark timeless waters.  I sit on the beach and sing ancient songs of my ancestors and wait for the stars to appear in the heavens.  As the sky-bleaching by the sun fades from the warm autumn colours of the clouds, the planets stand out from the sky and shine their reflected sunbeams down onto my face.  The beams have travelled far and I welcome them with a gentle blessing.  There is always a wind which sweeps in from the ocean at the moment that the sun’s shadow-light skims across the face of the earth.  That is when my heart sings and I know I can visit my treasure tonight.

I wait for the moon to rise above the earth’s edge, until the golden path forms between myself and the moon and the moonfire appears in the breakers as they crash relentlessly to the shore.  The lights of life beneath the waves refract in symphony with the light of the moon and reflect deep beneath the waves as moonfire.  I dip down through the ocean waves and dive deep, deep into the inky waters.  There, way below the sky’s edge, lies my treasure, deep within an enormous cavern way, way below the sky.

I cannot breathe there.  I must use the skills of my ancestors to traverse the terrors of the deep, but I know what awaits me and I draw courage from my family’s Celtic imagination and open my heart to the wonders of this night in the deep.

I plunge deeper into the waters below the rocky outcrop and am drawn in further by the currents of my own emotions.  As the sandy bottom emerges from the inky darkness I know I am nearly there.  My fortune awaits.

There, in an enormous cavern lives my love surrounded by more treasures than you can imagine.  Everywhere you look there is one bright sparkle after another, one more richly textured something to dazzle the eye or another circling current of sound or odour which plays subtle pleasure-tricks with your senses.  I have seen my love pull the jewel encrusted Cloak of Compassion around himself as he prepared to leave.  I have seen him take the Sword of Honour and place it on his belt at his side.  It glistened with rubies and intricate silverwork as the moonlight struck it as he turned around. 

That night, the moonbeams glistened in the silver of his hair and the inky depths of the ocean flashed in the shadows of his cloak.  Although my love is of the water, his eyes speak of the grounding energy of the earth as he turns his head toward me. 

“There is something of me in you and something of you in me.  We can see it in each other’s eyes” he says as he wraps an arm around me to place a forbidden kiss.

Tonight he is heading out unaccompanied.  I am in luck as it’s possible to join him.  I head down to the entrance and fall into step beside him as he hurries toward the surface.  We talk and swap stories and smile but never touch. 

We share the path beside each other alone, but both happy to be there together.  As we reach the surface and break out into the air, we are joined by many others of his kind all on their way to find sustenance to take home to their families.  He picks up with one after the other using an easy grace to join them for a moment with a smile, a gesture or a few words before passing them and moving onto his destination.

He goes to share his day with many others of his world.  He will talk with them, go with them, send them on errands, take them to classes, and listen to their woes.  He uses his Cloak and Sword often in his day.  I wish desperately to share the place beside him but many swirls of ocean separates us.  I am sorely tempted to follow him but I must not join him there.  I have not been welcomed.

Later he tells me of his ups and downs, his friend here, his work there as we join each other again for another journey at another time.  He tells tales of bringing stories to life with his endeavours.  He is very comfortable in his life.

I wait patiently for him to return.  If I’m lucky I can join him on his return journey but I often miss him in the crowd and if he’s with someone, I pass on by. 

I have explored his home through my imagination.  It is a warm and comfortable home.  I have felt the rich textiles of the furnishings where he lives and rests and makes love. 

I have turned over the music he listens to and the books he reads and wondered at the richness and mystery of it all.  I have walked the halls looking this way and that in amazement at each new turn of the wall where I find the expression of his creativity and pleasure exposed to my keen senses. 

One day I even touched the silver crown he wears on his head when his friends gather in the evenings.  I had to reach up on tiptoe to grasp it from it’s hanging.  It was light but strong and the blood red rubies embedded into the finely carved silver reminded me of the power of his heart to heal the greatest wounds.

For he has truly healed my greatest wounds.  He lightly laughed them away.  Never underestimating their power, but blowing them away with a puff and a smile as if to say:  “We all have a story to tell and a soft tender place we protect, but don’t let that stop you living a life full of love.”  And then he swam away and disappeared into the crowd with a wave. 

Only for me it felt more like a tidal wave sweeping over me and washing away the anchors in my soul which had held my sorrow firmly against the storms.  Afterwards, I lay devastated on the beach frightened and alone until, picking over the debris, I discovered what was left of myself.  Little bit by little bit, I discovered a pearl of wisdom here, a scrap of intelligence there, my beautiful reflection over by the rock, a jetblack memory sparkling with fire and I pieced them all together.  After I moved some cloudy sand away, I emerged like a hermit crab changing its home for a magical pink crystal one.  I discovered my beauty within, soft and vulnerable yet strong and durable and began a whole new way of living - in the light. 

Of course I fell in love.  Wouldn’t you?  My worst fears and deepest wounds were brought forward into the light of day, explored, examined and then proven to be only a little discomfort and a few scratches instead.  Like magic they disappeared into the firmament and I was left emptying out my baggage so fast it made my head spin.

I worked so fast and the light flooded into me so quickly I was blinded by the sun and my body felt so ‘other-worldly’ that I found I was able to leave my earthbound world to explore his and I did.

For many months now I have journeyed into the waters every now and then to visit my treasure.  He said one day, looking at me, looking at the light in my eye, that he couldn’t believe his fortune.  His fortune is so different to mine.  He can reach out at any time to grasp his fortune.  It is tantalisingly just at the tip of his fingers…..but for me, well…..

I often experience my fortune though and it is indeed wonderful.  It lies in a world which, for me, is akin to a foreign landscape where I don’t know the language and I can’t read the signposts.  I have found my way to his door by trial and error and by following my heart and his gentle encouragement.  It has been an incredibly difficult journey.  I can’t breathe in his world but I think that is just my fear.

I can’t join him in his world, so I watch from a distance instead.  The temptation to reach out and grasp what does not belong to me is enormous.  It brings a huge responsibility.  Now that I have loosened the hold on my sorrow and risked falling helplessly into the black pool of past loss I am stronger and so is the temptation.  For me to move forward I have had to move backward and face my past headon. 

I have had to accept what I could not change and I had to find a way of appreciating that my past loss has been redeemed thrice over and that seeds for my future hopes and dreams which were planted beside the black pool way back then have now grown into a sacred grove of trees and reeds, shrubs and flowers all filled with life, and love and vitality and blossoming now into the light of today, in my heart. 

To honour him means I have to honour myself.  To honour him means I have to honour his life.  The temptation to watch him set up his treasures in my home, to bring his Sword of Honour to work at my side and for him to wrap his Cloak of Compassion around me is to take him away from the beauty that he has in his life now.  The joy is more than I can bear.  The possibility of what heights of majesty would be available to me in my earthbound world fills my heart with wonder and yes, terror.

The power that the responsibility of love manifests is awesome.  Power that, on the one hand seeks to manipulate the environment to my own end and on the other has the potential to utterly destroy the object of my devotion.  The forces which manifest in human relationships have both the light of life affirmation as well as the shadow of death and destruction.

The temptation to use the power of love for my selfishness is awesome.  Yet I know that if I did channel the love force and use it for my own ends that my love would be irretrievably changed and in its’ place would be a human being as fragile as myself.

The entrance to his home is guarded by a tall, beautiful creature with the strength and grace of Athena, Princess Warrior.  She is attended by her two small companions.  I would not dare engage this woman.  I am not of the Warrior race and would not stand a chance.  Besides she is younger, stronger, more beautiful and of course, more at home in this place. 

She breathes the same as my love and draws her strength from the connections they share with the waterbound community in which they live.  I do not know of such matters.

When I am courageous in my thinking, I imagine I am engaging her.  I wrap verbal parry around our exchange linking my words to the dark side of my nature and invoking the Celtic goddess to entice Athena to slip and fall into Ceriadwin’s Cauldron.  There she will be subdued, brewed and revitalised. 

Athena would face the terrors of my deep within the bowels of the Cauldron but if her heart is pure, as I believe it is, she will face the demons of her own creation with valour and re-emerge in full understanding that the love I feel is not intended to crush her.  She would have to confront her own intentions and with the light of new awareness from Ceriadwin’s Cauldron she would open her heart and let my love fly free.

But as she stands before the entrance she is more than Guardian, she holds a mirror up to my sight.  Whereas I am familiar with my soul and have learned to cherish it, I am no Warrior, secure in my physical presence.  I have lost faith in my physical abilities as I’ve never learned to build the sinew’s solid strength as she has. 

My labours sought to strengthen my mind and my work with Druid lore exposed me to the elements as a passive participant seeking to share and honour the natural presences and shape things to my will only if we were in accord.  I am not trained to battle with physical essences pitting muscle and tendon against flesh and fibre. 

I am in awe of her ability to focus her will on battle where the unknown outcome is dependent upon her wits, her strength and her training.  Her one-pointed attention pays little heed to the soft flowing subtleties of the energy fields she disturbs as she slices the air with her Sword, intent on her own rewards.

I have spent many an hour following trails of energy eddies such as these, crouching over countless lonely fires invoking the energies of the universe above and the earthways below to come into harmony and be at peace once more….

”Please!” I have begged.

I have wept over lands where frightened spirits are captured in tainted soil and as my tears splashed on their unmarked graves their forgotten souls became free to fly away home.

So I will not consciously set out to engage this Warrior.  For I have chosen the path of my ancestors to restore energies to peace, not to activate them.  ‘Tho I admit I wanted more, I no longer contemplate engaging with Athena.  I must let her Fates tempt her as they will.  My concern is for me and if it means letting go of my love, then be it so.

At other times I imagine instead that I could kidnap Athena’s two companions and lure them away with promises of a better life in my world.  Sometimes I believe this is possible and may even be a great learning adventure for them until I remember they can’t breathe in my world and leave that idea alone. 

In the evening sometimes I watch my love draw his Cloak of Compassion around these two little ones and they melt into his arms in joy.  Sometimes they sit with him and pull his crown off his head and marvel one to the other at the glistening rubies which stand out from the band of silver.  At other times, he draws pictures in the sand and tells stories to them about what happened to the prince when he fell in love with the princess. 

Once, he even let them touch the handle of the Sword of Honour as he passed onto them his cultural values and the stories of his ancestors who held Honour in high regard.  Their little eyes grew large before his words wrapped them into wonder and lulled them lovingly to sleep for the evening.

I marvel at my fortune.  It holds its’ mystery for me on a number of levels.  It awakens in me a desire to engender something of his treasure in my own earthbound world.  I feel deeply touched by the sincerity and warmth of his world and wish I could find it somewhere in my own.  I have been sorely tempted to enfold it, shape it and gather it together for my own but as I seek it in my own life, I come down here seeking my fortune again and again so that I can recognise it when I return to my earth bound world and discover it there anew.

My fortune lies in my ancestral imagination and it is so different to his tangible treasures.  It is truly his gift to me that I now have knowledge of this fortune, but he didn’t really give it to me.  I found it myself and I found it dwelling within my own heart patiently waiting its’ time for release to the sun.

I now have work to do building that fortune into a treasure house in my own world.  I will conjure up my own Cloak of Compassion and fashion my own Sword of Honour and I will take the utmost care to make them the most beautiful treasures my world has ever known. 

I will engrave my own Crown with his words of love and embed pearls into it to remind me of the sea and the moon.  I will accompany the pearls with diamonds to remind me of the stars when the sunlight is bleached from the sky and their radiance kisses my eyes.  I will wear these clothes openly when the moon and the planets reflect the sun’s rays down onto my wind-blessed face at the Rising of the Full Moon on the beach at sun’s rest. 

And maybe, one day, my real fortune will be an earth bound treasure walking toward me with love in his heart and a smile on his face so we can share our abundance together.

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