Little Orange Dragon

And she stepped out of the shadow of illusion and into the world.

I am here, this is real, and there is still magic.

No fancy equipment, just an iPhone. Somehow something stuck me about viewing the magical eclipse so far above while standing across the street from the 7-11. When I’m 60 during the next supermoon eclipse I’ll always remember this one, being with friends and family and laughing, eating pot roast and pie, talking about grandma Lily my rebel grandma who fought in the 1916 uprising and how the world was changing, as the teenagers departed to their video games and phones. Back in my day…

The magical music filled the air and she sat on the toadstool as tears rolled down her cheeks. Old tears, tears of loneliness, tears of sorrow. So much that she pushed into her soul and held there for her small little one.

And although it was the anger that lead her here, really her body was just full of this old sadness. He had given her a path in and when you’re giving a gift, even a painful one, she knew that you still needed to accept it.

If she was ever going to be whole again, she would need to cradle this pain, honor the anger, and love the joy while not letting fear stop her on this path. So she sent up her thanks and returned to her power of storytelling, to bear the pain of emotion and share it so her heart could stay open.

All the times that I cried
keeping all the things I knew inside
It’s hard, but it’s harder to ignore it
If they were right I’d agree
But it’s them they know, not me
-Cat Stevens

Maybe there’s a God above
But all I’ve ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
-Leonard Cohen

And they came and filled her heart with love.From this love, she was strengthened and she realized she wasn’t along because this was family.

She turned to look up to god and realized he had been there all along, looking down on her, just waiting for her to catch up. And the moon came out of the clouds, shining its light down on her and she laughed and laughed as she realized this joy had been here that whole time and she had caged herself. But now the gate was open and joy came flooding her, all the joy she hadn’t been living.

That night she curled up under the large wise cedar tree, dreaming of hope and family and what would come the next day. Every day new wonders appeared to her, new miracles, new blessings, and those emerged who had been there the whole time.

The world was open to anything and it wanted her to trust that it was full of magic to be discovered.

Because when you betray the people you love, when you make them see the worst parts of you, what you’ve done changes everything. There’s no going back. You’ve shattered the bonds you worked so hard to forge. And the stronger those bonds once were, the more difficult they are to put back together… If they can be repaired at all.
From Once Upon a Time S:4 E:14

And she remembered her power source, so long ago forgotten, and dug it up from where it had been buried. It had broken long ago and she had been afraid to repair it, but she knew it was now time to make it whole again.

Her hands shook as she turned it over to be repaired, but the woman handled it with love and gentleness, even though to the average person it was just a cheap trinket.

She put it on her body and the power coursed through her, radiating out from her chest, and she felt like weeping from graditude and from missing this, missing the feeling of being whole and powerful.

And there was that which had fastened onto her neck long ago, holding the emotion in, preventing her from crying out. With this return to power it could no longer live there and it fought to stay, but in the end it came violently out of her mouth and she choked and sobbed and screamed. And then it was gone.

She now glowed and everywhere she went people commented on the trinket because it radiated that which was deep inside, which was kind and beautiful. And she started to connect with those she passed on the street and whose paths crossed her and a smile easily came with the sharing of love and connection. The world was a kind and friendly place of magic again.

She flew and danced but she was still sad. It seemed as much as she wanted to believe the love she had wasn’t true, that maybe it was. And she felt lonely. She would sometimes dance with other fairies but then she would go home and realize she didn’t have a family anymore. She connected, she healed but she wanted another to dance with, another to gaze into her eyes with love so she could gaze back with love.

She helped those she cared about but in the end there was still hole in her heart and she didn’t know how to heal that or even if she should. She couldn’t love again while here heart was open and bleeding. And somehow she just let it bleed because stopping it felt wrong. She still couldn’t speak of it because something sat on her throat, blocking her speech. She wanted to scream out to the world but no sound came out.

She was fluttering and dancing in the world again. That was good but they had made her give up the boy to do so. It was so hard and it made her so sad to send him away but he had never belonged to her. She had snatched him out of a whirlpool, because he was so broken and so sad, but he wasn’t her child. He belonged to another and although it terrified her to send this hurt little child, she had cradled, back to him, she no choice. It would have killed her to keep him. She only hoped he would care for him and not just keep him locked away in the dark, where he had been when she found him.

A piece of heart felt broken though. He had been the same age as her real child when she meet him, and she loved him like he was her own.

So she began to stumble through the world again. Her feet would sometimes dance and leave but she could not fly yet. Maybe someday again.

And there was still a deep sadness that pulsed through her body, and anger at being trapped for so long and regret that she hadn’t been dancing these years that had passed, that those around her also had not danced. While once she was the little fairy butterfly of happiness, bringing joy to the world, now she had a hard time laughing and smiling and her movements didn’t flow. They were stiff and jerky and she was afraid of those that looked upon her now.

She knew deep inside still lived that joy and that someday she would dance with the world again. But it embarrassed her that she had grown so stiff and brittle and that any great wind coming in threatened to break her heart in two. She wanted to open her heart to the world, to be able to trust again, to be able to laugh and heal and see the past, the future, and the present and let go of fear.