“Timeline of the Quest”

“When did it start?” she asked, looking over the golden books.

“I called it ‘Book I – Into the Woods’, for it represented my journey of leaving New York city to make my way into the forest. I’d heeded the call to adventure that i’d felt in my heart and left after “The Promise” that I wold return to a friend. An oath that I would track my way into the magical world and bring the map of it’s territories back to the people.

“What is it?” she asked.

“It’s a representation of my journey across the underlands of the Mythica.” he said. “A way of seeing my progression through the mortal world here in the realm of stories.”

“Is it real?”

“Oh yes. Super-real. This is the documentation of the real events which defined my path and which led to the discovery of the Mythica myself. What we’re looking at is a way … looking at that. Of seeing the story from an expanded view.”

“I was younger then” said Fae, his appearance shifting briefly into himself as an apprentice, with a green hood and cloak as he looked down on the model. “I was just coming to understand the nature of the rainbow road. The path had led me to the fields of Valhalla, in what on the mortal plane is called ‘Canada’.”

“All stories happen on our timeline.” he said. “Such is the thread of our mortal existence and the spine of our story. It is on the timeline that we face our trials and gain the treasures of our quest. It is literally the thread of our life in the skein of stories upon which the various scenes and synchronicities of our tale happen. Everyone has a timeline. Their singular thread within the tapestry of the The Great Story”

2011 – Return to the Mother

“The path with Ciardha was challenging” he said, “my incomprehension of the Earth element of things made life an ongoing difficult, and I traveled with him along the Paths of the Dragon. His was a power far distant from my own, one that embodied the disciplines of the world with precision and Fire.”

“He looks strong.” said Calliope.

“He was. This is a shot him from the “Bards of Faerie” chapter of the quest.”

“What was his power?”

“Ciardha was one of the Dragon Djedi. He had gained a mastery over the breath and vitality within the body through a technique that he called syrmninjitsu. He’d occurred for me as an aspect of the element of Air and Fire, and was a triple Fire sign.”

“We had traveled to the fabled Rainbow Gathering, filled with the nomads and dream seekers of the idealistic sixties. There, I had looked once more at my difficulties with the earth element, striving to find a way to connect the earth and sky within myself and land the rainbow bridge.”

“So this was a Quest point for you” said Calliope. “A major event in your kairos?”

“Something like that. It wasn’t particularly dramatic, but it held the codes of consciousness of the rainbow and of the return to the land and I loved that.

“In 2011, that path led me to an expression of that ideal in the form of the “Gathering of the Rainbows”…”

“How does that relate to the Dragon?” she asked.

“What do you mean by the Dragon?” she asked.

“The Dragon …. it depends on how you look at that. For me, the dragon is akin to the kundalini serpent of the planet. She’s the essence of Shakti awakening as she spirals around the world. In many ways, the dragon is the spine of the world herself.”

“In the mythospheric level of consciousness people perceive the aka through their impressions. You remember what I shared with you in the prismatic landscapes”

“Yes.”

“Well, in this context, the dragon is an aka. It’s something that occurs across many mythologies. Something more enduring and less impermanent than the shifting cultures on the surface of the world.

2011 – Bards of Olde, Songs of Now

“What this?” she said, looking at the figure of Peter walking along the path through a group of musicians in the forest.

“It could be many moments.” he said. “The maps of the library speak to the archetypes of things, to the larger pattern beneath the surface of our stories.”

His eyes misted for a moment, looking between the octaves of the worlds. “It connects to many things.” he said. “To the summer of 2011 when I traveled to “The Country Fair”, as well as to my movements through the realms of Faerie, to my connection with the “Bards of Faerie”and the “Heart of Faerie” herself.”

“The timeline is everything in the mortal plane” he said, the energies and colors moving between his fingers as constellations of aka moved overhead. “It’s what defines our journey through the realm.”

“Structurally? In the context of our Path and Land? These are the minutia of things which define our journey along our rainbow road. It’s what creates their prismatic landscapes.

“You see this?” he asked, pointing to the rainbow line which moved through the landscape. “This is your rainbow road. It’s the bridge between the realms of your story as they play out in the underlands of the Mythica.”

“So a bridge is … not a bridge?”

“It is. Yet at the same time it is the essence of travel from one place to another. In the world of stories, it’s not what things look like, it’s what they do. At the energies they embody in an archetypical way. Here at Mythos Academy, we call these aka.”

“The shape of war changed on the surface.” he said. “Yet the archetype of it remained the same. It seemed an endless thing.”