Crystal & Caveman

*Cult of the Sun

There was a stretch of woods behind the high school that led into a shallow ravine. A tiny trickle of a stream ran through it, a tributary of a tributary of the creek that fed into Lake Purity. No one went down there very often: there wasn't much to see, and it was mostly blocked off by a chain link fence that was difficult to get around. Crystal had gone down there a few times when she was a freshman to hang out with some older kids but she hadn't liked it much. She remembered the ground being kind of wet and the air full of bugs. Not a bad spot, fairly secluded, but a little uncomfortable. Those older kids had graduated a couple of years ago, and no one else had taken to it as a hangout spot since then. She hadn't been back in a while, but now she was willing to put up with the minor unpleasantness of that place for the privacy it would provide.

Maybe it was because she was there with a different purpose now, but things seemed different. The air was fresh and cool down there thanks to the shade of the trees. The ground was dry because it hadn't rained in awhile. Crystal felt like a pretty different person than she had been those couple years ago, too. A lot smarter, a bit more savvy.

Or maybe it was just one of the few places in Fortune that felt like undisturbed nature. It wasn't some beautiful, perfectly preserved piece of wilderness but it felt clean, secluded, and forgotten by humans. It held an unusually strong appeal for her. It had been a while since she had liked just being in a place so much.

Online she read that many Wiccans practiced rituals in the woods. She loved the idea. Hidden away from ignorant, judgmental idiots, surrounded by the grace of the natural world, it seemed like the perfect place to conduct a form of worship so private and sacred.

She found a section of ground flat enough to work on and cleared away the dead leaves that covered it with the edge of her foot, a cigarette dangling out of the corner of her mouth. She didn't have anything at home she could have used as an altar, so she scanned the area for something suitable. There was a wide, flat rock embedded in the bank of the stream that looked like it could be adequate. It was heavy, but she put her back into it and pulled it out of the viscous mud. She staggered over to the flat area she had cleared and dropped it there unceremoniously. Her hands were dirty, but it felt good to be working outside. She put out her cigarette on the bottom of her shoe, stored the butt in her wallet, and went to retrieve her backpack which she had left at the edge of the ravine's slope a few feet away.

Rhiannon had advised Crystal to pick a sort of "patron" god or goddess from mythology, as a good way of focusing her witchcraft as she learned. Based on some questions she asked Crystal about her goals, she recommended Diana the huntress, Athena, the goddess of wisdom, or Cernunnos, the goat-headed god of fertility and death. Immediately Crystal ruled out all the gods, believing that only a female deity could represent her effectively. There were a lot of Goddesses that appealed to her. She considered Sekhmet, the Egyptian hunter, warrior, and lion. She admired her power, and in a way her bloodthirst, but also her dedication to protecting her people and pharaohs. But as much as she liked Sekhmet she had reservations about making her or any goddess "her" deity. She couldn't get around the fact that she didn't really believe in gods and goddesses. She was a little self-conscious about it, about not being able to give herself over fully to the idea of Wicca - it made her feel fake, like a poser. Of course magic was real, she obviously saw that. And maybe the old deities were in some way based on this real magic. But she still doubted they were anything more than stories ancient civilizations told themselves to explain things they couldn't understand and/or make them believe their society was favored by higher powers above others. To pray to a specific goddess from antiquity would be a waste of time and an insult and handicap to her very real and personal powers. She was enthralled by most of the traditions and the ideology of Wicca but she just couldn't take this particular facet seriously, as a real magic user.