A Half-Faerie, Half-Mortal Wildflower

Before I could even attempt an “in depth” blog series for Half Faerie similar to the one I wrote for Isolt’s Enchantment, I had to do a LOT of research. The books were written from a deep place of heart, and their creation was largely intuitive, so much so that it was not uncommon for me to “come up” from a writing session as if from a trance. Often going back to re-read and edit I would have the experience of “Who wrote that?” having no concrete memory of creating (what for me were some of the best!) story events, nuances and subtleties. To revisit those depths in an effort to articulate meaning has proved incredibly daunting and required an entirely new exploration of the latest scientific discoveries and my own understanding of life and experience.

The result: a remarkable paradigm shift within me; a new way of looking at the universe itself and my place within it. Which I will now share with you as we move through the Daughter of Light trilogy, chapter by chapter.

And so it begins …

If Melia — the central protagonist in Daughter of Light — is anything, she’s a wildflower.

Let’s break that down.

Wildflower definition: a wild or uncultivated flowering plant.

Wild: living in a state of nature; not tamed or domesticated.

Uncultivated: not educated; not refined; not cultured.

Flowering:  to produce flowers; blossom; come to full bloom. Also to come out into full development; mature. (Melia shall surely do both, on her own terms … and in her own way!)

Native American Proverb:


May your life be like a wildflower, growing freely in the beauty and joy of each day.

William Blake:



To see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wildflower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.

William Wordsworth:



I am already kindly disposed towards you. My friendship it is not in my power to give: this is a gift which no man can make, it is not in our own power: a sound and healthy friendship is the growth of time and circumstance, it will spring up and thrive like a wildflower when these favour, and when they do not, it is in vain to look for it.

The final quote smacks of destiny and Melia’s journey will require the truest of friends, wildflowers themselves.

I can think of no better opening for the Half Faerie installment of this adventure than Sarah Darling’s cover of Tom Petty’s Wildflowers:

"Wildflowers"

You belong among the wildflowers

You belong in a boat out at sea

Sail away, kill off the hours

You belong somewhere you feel free

Run away, find you a lover

Go away somewhere all bright and new

I have seen no other

Who compares with you

You belong among the wildflowers

You belong in a boat out at sea

You belong with your love on your arm

You belong somewhere you feel free

Run away, go find a lover

Run away, let your heart be your guide

You deserve the deepest of cover

You belong in that home by and by

You belong among the wildflowers

You belong somewhere close to me

Far away from your trouble and worry

You belong somewhere you feel free

You belong somewhere you feel free

As a half-faerie, Melia is an outcast in the enchanted world where she lives with her two sisters and full-blood faerie mother. The girls' father has been exiled to the mortal world for breaking his faerie troth. When a tragic accident destroys what's left of Melia's fractured family, her mother is unforgiving. The punishment she metes out will leave her daughter torn between guilt and ecstasy, challenge the bonds between three sisters, and complicate Melia's relationship with a young priest who’s come to the Realm of Faerie on a mission of his own.

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Isolt's Enchantment: Excerpts, Quantum Musings & Songs

The Novella
Isolt’s Enchantment: Isolt’s Enchantment & Holy Water

The Chapters
The Stargazer:  The Meaning of Celeste is Heavenly
Koldis:  A Slave to Matter
The Idonnai Guard:  Who Do We Owe?
Isolt’s Enchantment:  We Will All Know Joy
Isolt’s Enchantment:  Come Away, O Human Child
The Tale of Hermes Wand:  Interspecies Communication?
The Tale of Haff and Gweff:  His Body Remembers
Josefina and the Magic Basin:  Grief, Black Holes & Particle Accelerators in the Enchanted World
Isolt’s Revenge:  Quantum Resonance in the Realm of Faerie
Umbra:  Do You Really … Want It Darker?

Isolt of the Waters is an ancient water elemental whose betrayal and enchantment has forever changed the Whole. When a young scholar in Idonne discovers her story, along with tales of dwarf magic and the birth of Umbra—a malevolent entity dwelling in the Void—he dreams of a life filled with adventure and heroism.

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Do You Really ... Want It Darker?

Dying. Death. Light snuffed out, but not completely. A grey sheen, its source not visible, infiltrates the vast space I float in. My awareness simmers. I wait. Minutes. Hours. Days. Weeks. Months. Eternity?

A tunnel of warm sticky heat envelops me. Pulls and sucks me deep into its vortex. The timeless nothingness stretches me; thinner, thinner, thinner.

My psyche travels through some cosmic sieve, and I lose … what is it that I have lost? The brighter part of myself—an ember—falls away. It is gone.

Images from my life, memories—the ones I buried—jangle through me. I’m reminded in vivid detail of every evil I ever committed—from the smallest lie to the most deplorable betrayal. The excuses I made for myself—every rationalization—consolidates into a single trail of gluey telltale.

The sticky thread spins and rolls into a compacted ball of cowardice, envy, self doubt, and self pity. The grey light is extinguished. I have arrived in a void of omnipotent blackness as an impotent, seething blotch.

Heat builds around me, my consciousness implodes. Raining down through the ethers, I am mortal ash. — Umbra, Isolt's Enchantment

Quantum Musings: "Quantum Electrodynamics ... does not see [the] universe as static but [as] a dynamic arena where matter and energy are spontaneously created and destroyed and [the] particle anti-particle annihilative dance keeps the stage rocking." — Amir Suhail Wani

Umbra.

The darkest part of the shadow. A quantum manifestation of all unresolved human suffering.

OMG!

There couldn't be a better theme song for Umbra than "You Want It Darker" chillingly performed and superbly written by genius songwriter Leonard Cohen.

"You Want It Darker" Lyrics

If you are the dealer, I'm out of the game
If you are the healer, it means I'm broken and lame
If thine is the glory then mine must be the shame
You want it darker
We kill the flame
Magnified, sanctified, be thy holy name
Vilified, crucified, in the human frame
A million candles burning for the help that never came
You want it darker
Hineni, hineni
I'm ready, my lord
There's a lover in the story
But the story's still the same
There's a lullaby for suffering
And a paradox to blame
But it's written in the scriptures
And it's not some idle claim
You want it darker
We kill the flame
They're lining up the prisoners
And the guards are taking aim
I struggled with some demons
They were middle class and tame
I didn't know I had permission to murder and to maim
You want it darker
Hineni, hineni
I'm ready, my lord
Magnified, sanctified, be thy holy name
Vilified, crucified, in the human frame
A million candles burning for the love that never came
You want it darker
We kill the flame
If you are the dealer, let me out of the game
If you are the healer, I'm broken and lame
If thine is the glory, mine must be the shame
You want it darker
Hineni, hineni
Hineni, hineni
I'm ready, my lord
Hineni
Hineni, hineni
Hineni

Isolt of the Waters is an ancient water elemental whose betrayal and enchantment has forever changed the Whole. When a young scholar in Idonne discovers her story, along with tales of dwarf magic and the birth of Umbra—a malevolent entity dwelling in the Void—he dreams of a life filled with adventure and heroism.

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Quantum Resonance in the Realm of Faerie

“It was a silver saucer with pretty colored stones decorating its rim. But it was the bones that alerted me: The bowl’s value is greater than its beauty.”

A sense of doom slithered across the back of Quasimi’s neck. Thinking it might be an insect, he tried to brush it away. “The bones?”

“Bones on the ground, fancy metalwork close by, death in the air.” She widened her hands in a display of wonder. "I said to myself, ‘You’ve stumbled upon some dwarf relic infused with magic’. Do you want to see it?” she asked.

Quasimi ran his palm across his damp forehead. He undid the top buttons of his shirt. Used to his free-flowing garments, the fitted clothes stifled him.

Flora dragged a bulky item across the floor and settled it in the middle of the cottage. “It’s like an eye.”

A silver basin shined in the cottage’s dim light, beguiling the mage. He rose from the small table to inch toward it. “Flora, it’s magnificent. Someone would pay you a pretty piece for this.”

“I don’t want to sell it.”

He winced. The desire to possess it consumed him.

“When you fill the basin with water from the Great White Sea, you can see things.”

“What can you see?” he asked.

A troubled expression flitted across Flora’s wrinkled face. She filled the basin. “Look for yourself.”

The mage kneeled on the floor. The basin compelled his gaze. Quasimi balanced on his toes before rising to his full height in the center of the room. Once he leveled the water, a cloud-colored mist rose from the water’s placid surface.

When Isolt’s face formed in the water, her eyes black as coal, the mage tried to release the bowl.

But it held him. The water in the basin boiled and hissed. — Isolt's Revenge, Isolt's Enchantment

Quatum Musings: When: Elendah’s challenge to Quasimi—to travel to the Veiled Tavern and spend a night there; his “chance” encounter with Flora and her dark curiosity; the mage’s prior actions at the behest of his friend, the God Vulcan; and Isolt’s quest for vengeance “resonate together in a reinforcing manner due [to] their overall similarity [then a] collective experiential solidity of the apparently independent material world [unexpectedly] emerges”. Is it quantum karma? Maybe.

“Karma is the non-local interconnection within consciousness which is the basis for all manifestation.” — G.P. Smetham

Thus in Daughter of Light cosmology, the consciousness of Elendah, Quasimi, Vulcan, Flora, Isolt of the Waters and—even Haff and Gweff through their created work, the magical basin Ormrun—converge in the Parallel of Shadows to breakthrough to the material plane of the Realm of Faerie in a climatic event.

Delta Rae's song "Fire" exquisitely captures Isolt's anguish:

"Fire" Lyrics:

I, I got my eye on you, I heard what you been saying
These rumors you spread ’round, they burn me down like flames and
We used to be friends, but that ain’t true now
You ain’t got my back, you’ve shown me that so many times

When I need help
Can’t call for help
’Cause no one comes

So I’m calling FIRE

It won’t be pretty, I ain’t no girl cried wolf, I’ll bring this whole damn city
They’ll come from miles around just to see how you cut me down
We used to be friends, but that ain’t true now
You poisoned the well, now I can’t tell who’s on my side

When I need help
Can’t call for help
’Cause no one comes

So I’m calling FIRE

Isolt of the Waters is an ancient water elemental whose betrayal and enchantment has forever changed the Whole. When a young scholar in Idonne discovers her story, along with tales of dwarf magic and the birth of Umbra—a malevolent entity dwelling in the Void—he dreams of a life filled with adventure and heroism.

Ebook

Amazon | Amazon (Australia) | Amazon (Canada) | Amazon (UK)

Apple | Barnes & Noble | Google Play | kobo

Paperback

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