Ramshead

Chaos enveloped the hospital. It was not difficult for the two girls to pass unnoticed through the corridors. They arrived at the front door just when the fire trucks arrived. Neither girl was dressed in ward pajamas; they passed as visitors.

The spruce did not even need to break the locks. The doors were wide open. "Just look confident," advised Klara as they passed the threshold.

They were several kilometers away when they could finally breathe easy. They were on a narrow equestrian road surrounded by tall trees. "This path must lead somewhere," said Klara, hopefully.

---Beginning of Issue 6---

Morrigan and Klara were settled on the banks of an alpine pool, surrounded by a waterfall covered with moss. They had foraged for medicine and sustenance. Their lean-to had retained integrity and their bodies were beginning to heal. The negative ions from the waterfall neutralized the harmful free radicals which were abundant at the hospital. Their blood was pure, their autonomic nervous systems were balanced. The waterfall’s creek flowed towards the sun, rich with purifying properties.

Klara stepped into the water, and a crowd of undine spirits surrounded her like paramedics, caring for and replenishing her body. All she could eat so far was water and the occasional huckleberry... so undines purified and blessed the water with nutrients; knowing Klara was valuable to Morrigan’s mission to tame the fire demon. Morrigan’s magic was becoming far more potent because she was allowed to mingle and flow with the other elements. Her feet were muddy, her skin was tan.

Morrigan joined Klara in the pool. “A bit more therapeutic than psychiatry, wouldn’t you say?” asked Morrigan.

“the earth and the fresh air is the best prescription I could ask for” said Klara.

“I’m going to take a dose of water medicine, see you on the other side...” said Morrigan. She winked, then dove into the cold pool. The frigid water ardently promoted her lymphatic circulation and her blood was rushing to the rhythm of ancient waters. She swam deeper than the pool’s physical limits, towards a bright white light. Her gasp reflex was tugging at her, desperate for air. She entered the light, and called on Barinthus, the ferryman. With him she soared along inter dimensional rivers. The next breath she took was of Otherworldly air. She had physically entered a dimension she only had glimpses of before.

Time stopped making sense. It no longer flowed in a straight line, but rather moved up and down, back and forth, and all around. The three spatial dimensions were matched with three temporal ones. Morrigan could see herself reaching her limits of air at the bottom of the pond, but she was also a hundred years in her future. In a forever-instant, she could feel the extent of her water powers as they flexed and waned over decades. There was not enough memory in her skull to keep her attention on all of it at once.

She flowed along the an interstellar river with Barinthus and his mystical boat. They shot out of the river and out of the atmosphere and past the moon. They danced on transcendental waters in the asteroid belt, and glided past the panoply of stars whose light came from so very long ago.

She could see the sadness of billions of years of star-deaths, and the joy of star-dust begetting new life.

The river took her home, where Morrigan and Barinthus stared up at the firmament, exhausted from an instant of travel. Her mana was revitalized, and she was replete with sanity, magic, and life.

"Where will I go from here?" she asked the god.

“Your soul is free, unborn & deathless... yet you must return the way you came.
If water stays still, stagnation deprives it of magic.”

Barinthus handed her an apple, luminous & radiant with life.

“I gift this healing fruit to you, from the Isle of Avalon, and bid you farewell.”

She took a bite and the next thing she knew she was swimming through frigid alpine water towards the sunlight. When she broke through into the material world, she found Klara bathed in sunlight, practicing pranayama. There was a collection of airborne seeds swirling around her. Astonished, Morrigan moved closer and witnessed prayer sprites among the seeds, finnicky and cat-like.

Morrigan recognized the sprites from her childhood, when her father would pray daily. One morning, she saw a prayer sprite approach him, then dash away.

Thunder boomed in the distance, pulling Klara out of meditation. The prayer sprites scattered and the seeds fell to the earth.

“It’s getting closer,” said Klara

The sunlight did not stay long; the storm was upon them shortly, and they hid in the trees. Closer and closer shrieked the lightning.

There was a loud crack-boom nearby, and a tree burst into flames. As the rain struggled to put the fire out, a deep mist entwined around them.

Klara could feel wild prana flowing throughout her body. Dragonflies danced in the mist flickering into Celtic Fae and back. Morrigan & Klara were swept into the mist, the Fae tugging them up and away. The fragrance of whiskey and crisp mountain air surrounded them, and a distant train whistle sounded.

In a timeless moment the girls were teleported to the Ramshead’s train station, which had been converted to an art gallery in the 90s. On the walls of the gallery they saw living paintings, containing the Celtic Fae. Klara could hear the building whispering to her as she stepped on the creaky wooden floor.
“breathe, darling, breathe”

Then the building flickered into a bustling train station in 1911 and back. The flickering intensified until they were immersed in the scene. There was joy on the faces of the crowd, this was an exciting time. Ramshead had recovered from the great fire of 1908, and the energy was dynamic. They see people leave on the train, only to arrive on the next one, in a perpetual loop.

The heat of the summertime combustion made the air heavy, yet Morrigan felt a bone-chilling cold. She recognized the time period from her visions in solitary confinement. Something about this year keeps pulling her back.

However, the scene remained an apparition. Someone in spoke nearby, but neither girl could make out what was said. Instead, they could hear nothing but the pumping heartbeat of the building. It felt to Morrigan that she was here to remember something that was just out of reach of her understanding.

What about 1911 was so special? That was well over a century ago; even her parents were but a shadow in the future. How could she first know and then forget something that was so long before her birth? The unnatural cold violently told Morrigan that she was meant to do something... but what?

Klara's breathing was synchronized to the building's heartbeat. She was sure that something she had done had brought them here. She tried to think about what she had been doing moments before they found themselves in this year, but it was getting difficult to concentrate. So she focused on the mysterious voice, and just kept breathing.