Witchbeing

In the village between wood, they would part curtains of their own mind to deshroud the forest and enter it. The gradient reached a point for all where it no longer was tenable to pass through, where trimmed-back fields turned to the logging wood and then to the thinner hunting pastures, until it finally descended, into that which only road offered salvation from, a swamp, a mountain range, the empty desert, rocks and caves and water and trees without solace to the hungry and wandering. It was only after this point, where they were forced to begin to see. The din of the village silenced and the sounds began to open up in an orchestral symphony that mellowed with time and comprehension as they would sit alone in contemplation.

To The End, Snake is almost incidental. Ingratiated into the forest, The End asked for Snake to terminate his body, one last duel of the skills The End had been used for, in order to allow his acension to who he was more than prepared to become. Able to spread his senses across the entire living body of the forest, The End engaged his life in self-expansion, in dissolving the coherence of his own “self” into the wider body created by the network consciousness of the forest. Insects crawl over him as his soul flies away in a flock of birds. Trees rustle to his name, the bird is to him as a third limb.

There was in time removed from our own, a boy who failed at every metric of success set out before him by the culture and ways of his people. Unable to make himself a home within what was prescribed for him, he was exiled in failure. The forest shrouded him in deeper shadows as he walked, mud splashing up to his legs, the swamp welcoming him. Spiders crawled into his hair, oil trickled down his arms. Vines were brushed aside, a centipede crawled up his spine, a snake, a crow. He walked through corpses and soil. The Witch met him at the darkest, lowest point of it, a hollow of dark green light, where she saw in him - that black rot he couldn’t escape. She molested him in an exorcism, until he came - black rotten oil, the masculinity never meant to be, washed down to the abyss. He couldn’t return. He saw them again, unrecognizable. His legs were snakes. He breathed moonlight. He made illusions they traveled the sacred paths to see.

Solve et coagula - The snake crawls over cracked brick, moss covered stones, dissolving and crumbling castles past their time. The snake winds its way up the bloodied limb of the victim, dissolving into flesh, becoming a poultice over the injury. Sit outside and watch the sky. Do you truly believe they want you? Will you ever be a part of anything? If you were to be accepted, you would have been already. Don’t go home. Stay here. Walk deeper into the forest. Your foremothers are waiting for you.