Post by lavender teagan rose donohue on Jun 12, 2012 13:03:11 GMT -5
Lavender Donohue
full name Lavender Teagan Rose Donohue
nicknames Lav, Lavender tea
type original
gender female
age sixteen
birthday October thirty-first
group rejects
clique goths
grade junior
sexuality straight
occupation Moonshadow Books & Supplies
face claim Felice Fawn
alias dodi
persona
Spiritual, peaceful, hopeful, malleable, careful, loner, creator, reader, baker, caster, lover, knowing, dreaming, pusher, graceful, cautious, easily pleased, adventurous, distrustful
life
I remember my first ritual. Well, actually—I don’t remember my very first, my naming ceremony. But I do remember my first chosen ritual. I remember it so vividly, sometimes I can close my eyes and go back to that moment. I was thirteen years old. It was the summer time. I remember the heat on my bare back, and tickle of the tall grasses against my feet. Claire was the only one with me that day. I remember watching her with such excitement as she unwrapped everything we would need. The materials for my death. They’d all been consecrated, made ready for my reincarnation. I’d never felt so alive in the moment of my death. Every cell of my being becoming reborn and remade, in to something holy. Something natural and beautiful. Something that was worthy of communicating with my precious Goddess. The second I felt the torturous prick of my first tattoo I remember her calling out to me. It was dark by then, the moon washing over my bare skin as I knelt in the grass and that dirt, she spoke to me. My Goddess. Welcome my child. She was so happy, her voice so full of pride at my decision to join the coven. My Moon Goddess. I knew then that I had made the right choice, even as Claire was scrubbing me with those hard rocks of sea salt, and her voice was rough and scratchy from chanting, I could feel through all of that how my Goddess was celebrating my recognition of her. I’ll never forget that day, that moment, that feeling.
No one seems to understand. I try to explain to them that following the Goddess is much like any other religion, but really it’s not. They don’t understand how freeing it is, to do away with all the silly rules and barbaric traditions the society clings to with such ferocity. To simply accept our world and our planet, to truly believe in all the beauty and magic that surrounds us at every moment. How could there be just one god, when the world is so full of opposites. No. The God and the Goddess, always changing. Always loving. Their only command to us “An’ it harm none, do what thou wilt.” I took on that vow, that day in the tall grasses. A vow to never hurt another. Aside from that I am so free, so blissfully free to work with all the spirits of this world and the next. No one understands.
It’s okay though. Most do not accept what I am and what I do. What my family does. Who Claire is. I suppose I should explain. Claire is the head Priestess of our coven. She is also my mother, in both a spiritual and natural sense. My family is large, though they are not all what most people would call my family. I’ll start with the traditional family. There’s Calla, my eldest sister. She’s twenty-three and will probably be the next head priestess when Claire is too weak. Marigold is twenty, and she hates the coven. For some reason she never saw the beauty of the rituals, and she stays away now. I only see her on Christian holidays, when she and her husband bring us presents. Crisanto is eighteen and he graduated last year. He does most of the running of the store now. Finally there is Grenadier. She is only three, and we thought she would kill Claire. Claire is too old to keep having babies but you can’t tell her that. She can’t stop finding fathers. I think Briar is my father—Claire won’t tell me but he’s in the coven and we have the same smile.
People are weak. I know that now. The only strong ones are the God and the Goddess. We have to take power from them otherwise we will fall apart. Even then, we are weak. I used to think that Claire was strong. She leads the coven with such grace and power. But even she is weak. She cannot resist men and she cannot resist the drug. She is weak to her addictions, and it only gets uglier the longer it goes on. I know that I will be only the best of her—I see her mistakes and I lay myself in the hands of the Goddess and pray to her that I will be stronger. Strong enough to resist the sweet whispers of men and the greed of power. Sometimes I have nightmares; I think they might truly be visions. Nightmares where I fall at the feet of others and I am a slave to their whims. I know that it is the Goddess telling me that I must resist the desires of others and learn to be strong, and independent.
It’s hard though. Despite all the warnings from the God and Goddess, I cannot help but want for the company of others. I know the Goddess wants me to be aloof, to be independent and not let others drag me into their lives. She helps me with this—the simple fact that I believe in her draws people away from me. They hate me and fear me and that is supposed to make me stronger. But some slip through the cracks, and I fear that I cannot help but delight in them. I love every minute of fascination, exploration. Understanding and misunderstanding, every connection. I don’t want to end up like Claire though, always needing someone else to feel like herself.
I saw the future once. I was alone, as I prefer solitary spells to rituals with the coven. I was performing the new moon ritual, but halfway through my meditation I suddenly could not keep my mind clear. I was forced to watch this vision, a vision of myself. I was older, a woman with wisdom and command. I was screaming at someone, in the back of the bookshop. A man, we were arguing but I couldn’t hear about what. I thought the vision had only lasted a second, but when I opened my eyes over an hour had passed. I ended up with a wicked cough from sitting out in the cold for that long, but I know something about the vision was important. I need to find that man, although I suppose that these days he’s as young as I am. When I see him I’ll have to be sure to avoid him, because I believe the Goddess was trying to show me how to escape my own misery.
That bookshop is where everything happens. Claire runs it, and technically all the members of the coven own it together. We are blessed that Portland is a big enough city to keep the shop going. A lot of people who don’t really believe come in because they think Wicca is funny or weird, but it’s okay. We need the money and who knows, maybe some of them really do convert. The shop is in the heart of downtown, where Claire moved it to before I was born so that we would get more business. It’s nice that more people come in now but hard because it’s farther away. Sometimes Claire sleeps there in a cot in the back if she’s too tired to drive back home. Most people would move closer to where they work, but Claire says that our house is especially blessed and she cannot leave it, and we would be too far from the coven.
I suppose you’ll want to know who my friends are. I wouldn’t consider myself close with many people, but it’s fairly easy for me to blend in with the Goths. They like my weirdness, even if they don’t understand it. They also like the jewelry that I learned how to make from the coven, and that’s made me a few friends. Even though we aren’t close, the Goths protect me from the others, the ones who hate what they don’t understand. I owe them for that. I don’t like to take anyone with me when I go to do rituals, although some people find it fascinating and want to see what the witch does. You have to be very special to me to be invited to a ritual, and no one outside of the coven has earned that quite yet. The people I know, they think that my world is make-believe, that I am delusional. It doesn’t matter. I love all of them even if I have to keep them at bay. In the end it does not matter what we believe, as long as we vow not to harm others.
Do you know who I am yet? Lavender means “distrust.” I wonder if Claire knew that when she named me. I wonder if she knew that the Goddess would want me to be hesitant of others. So yes, I am Lavender, I am distrustful.
roleplaying sample
heartbeat like a humming bird
