This is a story that poured out from my wild soul back in May 2013. It is about the journey of a wild girl to a woman, woven in with my soul-mate story, courage and truth…
There once was a young woman who lived in a world between half-asleep and dreaming.
She would sing to the stars and cry for the moon, and she spent her time collecting precious dream fragments from the lands she discovered. One day she hoped to weave these fragments into a cloak of magic. In this cloak she could dance, and be wild, and weather the storms, and make love, and all the things women dream and cherish in their heart of hearts.
Some women know from birth what their cloak will look like; the colour, the texture, the cut of the cloth. They may be handed one down from the generations, and wear it with pride, or sometimes heaviness. As little girls they play and dress each other in many different colours, and imagine how their cloak will look, and think about the man they will marry who will see them in their splendour as a woman. The fashions of the day will change and influence the weavings but the cloaks are always spun, and worn, and mark the passage from girl to woman, and this is as it should be in life’s dance.
The dreamy woman of our story was not so interested in this, which other girls found strange when they were young and playing. As a little girl she used to like to dance into the woods, and touch the trees and smell the air. The colourful dolls and fabrics she left at home, forgotten in the box under the bed. The woman-as-girl liked adventure, and when she was small made secret dens of twigs and leaves. One day as she sat in her den, dreaming of life and reading old stories, a fox ran in and looked right at her with no hint of surprise. She reached out a hand and stroked the fox, and the fox was happy and calm. She offered some food and water, and the fox licked it from her hands with a hot tongue.She buried her face in the soft neck fur and inhaled the musty scent, and forest and animal and wildness filled her. Before she knew it the girl and the fox were one, and they ran together in freedom and exuberance and sometimes the natural fear of all animals who value life and know the dangers of it.
As she got older, the fox brought many different animals to meet the girl. Some stayed with her and some gave her lessons from the dream worlds that she held secret in her heart. One night the girl dreamt of being a wolf, and when her mother woke her from the dream and told her to go to school, the girl cried. In her heart she no longer felt like a human at all, and she used to hope that when she died and went to heaven she could be in her true form, a wolf that could run in the wilds and sleep with her pack.
But she was not a Wolf, and so the Girl started getting out the cloths and the colours and the dolls and began making clothes from them, and tried them on and wondered if a man would marry her and what a kiss might feel like.
The adventures of that girl as she became a young woman are long, and exciting and for another time. What is important for our story is that she was not content to choose one colour or another. She wanted not the current fashion or her mother’s cloak. This woman wanted a cloak of magic and truth, one that would bring her from the world that lies between half-asleep and dreaming, one that would let her dance in fullness on the Earth.
The young woman felt this deep in her soul, and she danced a path of courage into worlds that most people feared, and in each place she danced the woman found a fragment to bring into her cloak of truth. There were many colours, and textures, and some material was dusty and rich and old, and some was bright and radiant with youth.
Sometimes she was so caught up in this adventure that she didn’t notice how the wolf still called to her in her heart, calling her back to the wilds and to life.
She sometimes turned into a wolf in her dreams although these times became less, and in her haste and wonder to find the fragments she forgot her own female art of creativity, of how to weave and bring life together.
As other women wove their cloaks, she was still collecting pieces, until one day she tripped over and they all fell on the ground. The young woman sat amongst the pile of scraps and cried. She grabbed at the pieces and tried to cover herself with them in turn, but none were large enough and no matter what she tried parts of her always felt naked and cold. The young woman felt at last the despair and frustration of her journey, for she knew that every colour and fragment held precious truth and she was loathe to choose one over the other.
But what man wanted a woman who sat alone in a mess of cloth and tears, unable to decide what she wanted to be, yet fiercely unwilling to deny any piece of her material? She thought the only answer was to make small dresses, and masks, and gloves from her cloth, and sometimes be completely naked, and sometimes be completely hidden, and move through the world dancing with many men, each of them catching a scintillating glimpse or a flash of her true beauty but never be able behold all of her.
One morning she woke up and was tired of looking for men to see her. She went out dressed nicely just to please herself, and she ignored the dances going on around her and instead focused on her own art again. That was when her true love saw her. He recognised her straight away, although he didn’t quite know it; and she noticed him for seeing not her body or her smile but feeling the resonance and ripples her art was creating in the world.
Their love was that of muses and poets, and the passion of it burnt down the world around them.
They clung to each other through the flames, and held to truth and courage even when all else was lost. Their love was an alchemy that touched souls and inspired others around them. Their love was destruction and left nothing that was not allowing of fullness and truth. He saw every part of her precious fragments, and loved them each in turn, and acknowledged their worth, even in the ones that everyone else was afraid of or misunderstood. He held them gently or firmly, some he touched with his eyes closed, others he took into the sunlight and held them up so their true colour appeared. Others that looked dark and bleak he took into caves and discovered the luminescene that they contained and they laughed together. She still didn’t know what her cloak should look like, or where to start. But she liked sharing all her colours and textures and no longer felt a need to seek out more. She kept them in a pile and as her and her loved danced she would laugh and pull out one at a time, or they would hold different ones together and play. She felt like art and she felt enjoyed, and this made something in her soul feel real.
One day after they had made love and filled themselves with nature, she reached into her pile of cloth and noticed something furry and warm. Out she pulled a pelt, that looked something like a fox, and something like a wolf, and something like magic. She put it over her head and felt warth and courage fill her heart. “My love!” She exclaimed, “Look, look at me now! This is something of who I really am and I love it. I had forgotten this pelt, but it will go in the centre of my magic cloak, it is the core of my body and truth.” Her love regarded her and saw something between a woman-wolf and a wolf-woman, and his soul gave a lurch and he recognised his Mate. She saw his eyes transform into the golden depths of a wolf’s eyes, and very carefully she put her pelt over his body, and began to stroke the fur. As she did so his body began to change, and his own wolf-nature was expressed. Her heart overflowed and they curled up as wolves together, and never had they been so content. If she could she would have stayed like that forever, two wolves in their den, like in her dreams of heaven.
But she was not a Wolf, she was a Woman, and a woman growing more into her fullness through love, and truth and courage.
Every day her Man and Mate saw her true beauty grow, and every day he wanted to paint and capture it before it changed, he could have looked and painted her like this everyday forever. But a Man’s life is not all about art and loving his woman. A day came and they noticed the destruction of worlds around them, and they felt the endings that would come. She became very afraid and wanted to cling to him and hide in their love and touch and be wolves. Still the sound of death and war approached, and the challenge of Life to rise into stronger, larger, fuller beings, not always though love and coaxing, sometimes through pain, and risk and fight. The emerging-woman knew in her heart that he would need a fierce mate that would claim him as much as he had her. So she called on her soul and life and drew on the precious aspects of truth she had found to serve her. She began to take the scraps of cloth and weave them, to weave them together around the wolf pelt, to start to grow something that could keep her warm in the colder times to come.
And sure enough, one day the Man with tears in his eyes and fierceness in his heart had to leave her land and go far away to fight as a Warrior of life must, to destroy and create for her and to trust and risk and determine their destiny though his will alone. She gave him all she could, her love and laughter and longing and trust. And she stepped into her fullness and drew on her secret magic, and painted his body with her own blood in preparation for battle. This gave him strength and fueled his fierce desire for life and sex and fight. She gave him her ecstasy and agony and they embraced it all, and she watched her Man depart from her and dared to keep her heart open for him.
The woman waits for him, with him, even as he is far away from her. The battle he faces now is one where nothing less that full courage and truth will do. She believes in her Man and her Mate to fight for her and for Life with all his fullness, and she knows that whilst death may take him from her, he will die in honour as a full man who dared to claim ALL of life and accept nothing less. Stories of him will be held in her heart and shared with her Tribe for lifetimes and more. She waits, and in her waiting she feels the ripples of love for every woman in time who has seen her man leave for battle, who still holds their man in their hearts, not knowing, but always hoping, always feeling and always loving.
As she waits, she keeps weaving together her precious fragments, creating her magical wolf-cloak of truth. She weaves and draws them together and as she does so she finds that whilst each piece is too small for a woman-cloak alone, taken together she has an abundance. Enough for more than a cloak, she realises.
She has enough for a robe, a robe that is warm and full and flows out behind her, magnificent in the colours and textures of Life.
This is the robe of a Queen, not a woman, and her heart and soul feel the depth of that, and determination rises within her and her sexuality burns deep and dark. She knows what she wishes to be now. Not just a woman, but a Queen, a queen of Life who is in her power and abundance, who protects all that is sacred in her for her warrior. She feels her longing for his return, when she offers to him the body of a Queen who is also a Wolf, and Woman, and a Girl. She will offer him Life and welcome him into her, his body broken and wounded and fierce and strong. She will offer him her fullness and in their reuniting a new world will be born.
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