kawaburd: (Default)
The bold one, first to charge forward, and the cautious one, first to plan and direct.

The avid performer and the quiet creator, subtle guide and spirited leader.

The will, the initiative to aim for the stars, and the meticulousness to carry it forward.

The inward focus of the ascetic, and the outward direction of the adventurer.

The mind to invoke knowledge and power from books, and the soul to direct it through the trees, the rivers, the earth.

The protection and love of home and hearth, and the stories of lands and worlds far away.

I wonder if it even had a beginning. I've always considered the possibility I may catch and interact with spirits in passing, and more recently that I can break and reform my own. Nothing in isolation, nothing fixed and everything fluid. Even in high school I took an effeminate aesthetic. I didn't know why, thought it looked cool on an anime character, but moreso it felt right. Called myself a two-spirit as early as 2006, no knowledge of the tribes from which I'd jacked the term, and no other way to define it. Never suppressed it, but swept it under the rug. Vanadis was lurking in my head then too, making cute little marks on the page. I called hir Kapari, unsure whether it was an individual name or a species name. One of my friends called hir "Rain Raver" because of the homeworld and the glowing storms.

I need to provide context. I don't believe in individual souls. I see existence like energy, able to split and merge like the globs in a lava lamp. Whether shi was a force that broke off of the original 'me' and returned with a defined form, or another force I picked up along the way I can't entirely say. Shi insists both are true. Maybe it's a way of breathing life and believability into headvoices. Maybe it's literally giving them life.

Either way, well... I feel like I'm taking pages out of Garnet's book here. Learning how to reclaim the sense of balance I tried for, and to improve on it. True or not, there's some potent implications for self-improvement, and that's a bare minimum.

And yet the rabbit hole goes ever deeper. The earliest memories I have and know for a fact are of water, feeling as a moving force of cheer and laughter within it. I used to believe I was literally having unborn memories. And in my bookish gryphonic fashion, I just goggled when and how babies develop senses. That can't be right. I was literally seeing underwater. Clearly. Vocalizing too, and not in that gargly bubble-blowing way. I think I need to explore this more. Like, *A LOT* more.

What in the nine hells and heavens WAS I? Where? I can't even say for sure quite what I am NOW!

I'll find a way though. I'll find a way. I've got the time to, and for once I've got the patience. Though anymore... I feel like my awakening was symbolically tossing my alarm aside and sleeping just a couple hours longer. I dunno, uh... Good morning, planet Earth! :D

It feels, in MANY ways, like I'm the present becoming the past, and using that to see life through another lens.
kawaburd: (Default)
It's been a good six weeks now. I've had totems come and go, ebb and flow, lead then watch. This is Vanadis's third appearance. The first with which I've seen hir form clearly.

Usually most who have stayed for that long sit back, having guided me on a short lesson. This one... is just a little bit bigger.

I'm prone to dreaming, stepping forward, falling, and giving up. Fast learning that the key to staying afloat means not taking myself or my journey too seriously. We're here to have a good time and express ourselves, are we not?

I'm prone to chickening out half the time when talking to people I admire, or fearing I'll screw up and shutting myself away from a community. Vanadis's repeatedly pointed out that whenever I've gotten past that, it's always been a vital factor in my well-being and a good story to tell, and in fact one of those times became a huge reason shi was discovered or invoked, depending on the story you believe.

I'm a recovering shut-in, sheltered late-bloomer who got stuck in hir own head whenever hitting a low point. Shi shows me all the times I got out of that really weren't by virtue of a cocoon, and that I'm not just alone in a hostile world if I take the time to look.

I'm prone to getting locked into loops, say with games or social media, when I'm feeling discouraged. Shi's pointing it out every time I start now, pointing out everything, really, from faces to plants to weird architecture quirks. It's all part of being mindful and observant, and that so far has done a world of good already.

Shi's also reminding me that I very much identify with otherkin and pagans, foremost by choice, but still left wondering and suspecting at the threads of serindipity. True or not, the visual, the dreams, the possibilities and the stories? That's all potential project fodder right there! This is directly helping me claim and explore ideas as a creative.

Truth is, I'm just a being in the cosmos regardless of form. But the gryphon's the one I build for myself out of literally everything else. The whole. The reason shi's so chimeric. Vanadis is like any other piece of that, difference being shi has a very solid persona rather than an idealized set of vagaries. Not to mention, shi is also an complete extravert, and BY FAR the boldest, most talkative face in my mind's eye.

But shi's also insisting on sticking around, and wants me not only showing, but wearing hir face at BLFC, effectively as a field test, and to help draw me out and balance me around kindred souls and shunt out my own insecurities. It's not permanent, but it's important if I want to spread my own works and my experiences.
kawaburd: (pic#9957102)
In the twilight, you see the little gryphon, mask resting on her face, walking through a little known path in the woods. Though the shift hasn't happened, there's a certain air about her, ever shifting, from bright bursts of energy to quiet contemplation to a certain gentle strength and confidence that, though Vanadis carried it on occasion, never had been seen by anyone in the case of the bird. She comes into a clearing, winds howling in a vortex around it as if a tightly contained hurricane.

The voice comes from the mask, ever calm, ever soothing. "Are you sure, love? Are we really doing this?"

She looks around, sighing a bit and shaking the tension out of her wings, the softly painted wood, feathers and other decorations concealing any emotion her face might normally show. She takes slow, hesitant strides, devoid of confidence, until she stands within the middle of it. First, there is dead silence. Then, a mirthful chuckle, and a few more words from the mask.

"We're doing this."

In an instant, the winged humanoid's aura explodes into the air, taking form. This time, hir wing folds and membranes are a pale off-white, contrasting brilliantly with hir dark teal hide, a distinct reddish sheen in the roots beneath the dye, and also within hir eyes. This time sie appears brighter, larger, in fact absolutely monstrous, nearly the size of a small elephant. And within a split second... sie is gone.

----

Next thing sie knows, sie is human of about 6 feet; maybe half a foot taller than the little gryphon, though built almost as lean, mask affixed to that flat face instead. The trees are radiant shades of gold, the sky a nebulous red, and the circle filled with people in similar masks. Sie didn't know, truly, what sie was expecting, but it certainly wasn't this. It reminded hir of a pagan circle, intended for a ritual of unfamiliar consequence. Sie'd been here before, but only seen it alone. And the people, well, none of the other masks immediately looked familiar, but sie began to recognize people. Half were strangers, half were old friends, some still in contact, some long gone by virtue of little more than a gentle fade.

By now sie could recognize a few words. Iluvia didn't know them, but Vanadis had absorbed just a few into hir being, and through the means of a shared body, sie had shared the knowledge too. This was a prayer of some sort, a show of faith, in what sie couldn't quite understand. Two streams of consciousness intertwined in the being's mind. One saw the barest grasp of the worship of a shared being, as if everyone in that circle were to merge through their words. To the other, it may as well have been something in Klingon.

One face after another became clear to hir, and in their words she could feel the emotions they were feeling. Finally, sie stood gazing into the eyes of another person, and though the mask didn't catch hir eyes, the ritual allowed her to see through as if it didn't exist. The person wearing it had hir eyes, hir hair, hir build, hir body, but sie could read the differences in a single blink. This person was far younger, less bold, less headstrong, though still full of future potential. A lost puppy following a loving group like a family. Like Iluvia had been even a few years ago.

Sie looked around and realized no two masks were the same, and for the most part, no two people even came close. Everyone had built their own, found their own. To match that realization, a voice that seemed to resonate with the vortex itself came through hir body double's mask.

"This is what you needed to see. This is why I brought you here."

And sie realized in an instant what that meant. For tonight, sie belonged here. As a visitor, as a friend, as a witness. Not as a part of the ritual.

Sie shared the experience a little while longer, learning their desires, their inclinations, their words, oddly content that within this ritual, sie hirself was an open book, becoming a link in the chain by the incantations of others.

----

Sie found hirself flying home that night, shifting between a full-sized beast and something not quite so intimidating to other species in a bid to better learn to control the shifts.

And in doing so sie thought to hirself about what she'd seen and heard. Sie was never truly a part of that circle, though sie knew their ways and their rituals, and the truth was... that may very well have been a good thing. These were the old ways of an established coven, and little would manifest to change that. Iluvia was a spirit of change, and though she didn't have the strength to manifest it on her own beyond a small scale, that in turn drew the attention of the being within that mask. And now both knew enough of the incantation to create their own. Deliberately.
kawaburd: (pic#9957102)
It's been a month and a day since I put on this mask, pulled out of the void by a particular song played in a moment of raw, trusting vulnerability. That long since setting in a motion a shift in my perspective that led to a natural, 'right' feeling not just in following and befriending dragons but becoming one myself.

I've realized by now, this is not the first time I've seen it and the raw creative power within it, rather the third. Excuse me if my prose is a little frenetic, a little paradoxial, but this is a tale I spin by mere existence, and my life is one of many stories that gives it strength.

In this moment I live speak on wire from a true rainforest, a land of near-constant clouds, and trees as far as the eye can see. The ability to come here in the first place was secured by someone with which I'd shared an abusive relationship for years, only for the tools to escape it to be provided by someone who I've only recently learned was a rapist. From hellfire to hellfire and back out again. I've been scorched, lied to, screamed at, manipulated by the people I cared about the most, while at the same time assisted, consoled and sheltered by them enough to find some identity and flair in my own right. I've gone from coming within a hair of being a father, through blatant lies and misplaced trust, to fast becoming a woman in all senses of the word, through support of a truly caring community and my body gently leading me to what I feel is right.

I once felt like I've wasted a large chunk of my life feeling trapped in the run down casino town where I was born and raised, shifting from having wanted to become a park ranger to hearing stories of my roommate's family's shenanigans in the very places I'd intended to guide tourists through, with year after year in between wasted wheeling books around in a little warehouse only a couple miles and a short hike away from where I'd found the mask in the first place.

I watched the furry community in Reno grow from next to nothing to staffing, helping set up, and experience the first iteration of the fastest-growing, hype-heavy con in the whole damn fandom, only to leave and later realize there were literally only two other people I could've sustained any real connection with had I tried harder, one of which had all but vanished for most of my time there, to watching the remnants of my presence fade to tiny threads and nothing more, not even a year after I left.

And these days? I live with a kind-hearted man who plays classic bollywood hits in the living room, plays on and rebuilds computers from before even the Commodore days, and love an equally kind-hearted chemist who likes classic 40s movies and Jeff Rosenstock. I've found family, love, and support here, in a way I've heard another of us literally call "draconic values", though the real meaning is never set in stone. I'm on a monogamous edge of a four-way relationship, friends drawn close, the sensual dances to me simply another form of communication, sharing, and all of us in full agreement doing our own takes on the side. And since finding a life this nice, I feel drawn to sharing it as best I can and helping others find their own, however I can.

There is so much more I could tell you, but if nothing else, I have several things up my sleeve that you won't find in many people, and a combination of strange circumstances that you won't find with anyone else, period. It's the experiences and the stories. The ones I write, the ones I live, and the ones I see and read that give Vanadis hir true power, and through that, myself as well. I'm a storyteller, a creator, a performer.

I'm here to perform, here to share, and even if it's, at it's most basic level, an act, there's a little more to it. You're gonna see me liken wearing a dragon to being a dragon. Sie's a role, a facet, but within those threads... sie is me. This is how I see my identity.

I'm not sure what's to become of the little gryphon girl. She's well liked by people in her own right, and she is just as much me, in a subtler, perhaps less artificial, contrived way. She's not going to be consumed by the mask, but rather the host that carries, wears and nurtures it. As to what that entails, that remains to me seen.
kawaburd: (Default)
Vanadis? I realized exactly who sie is and what sie means to me.

That dragon, that silly, jovial, headstrong goofball... is everything I want to be.

What do you call it? Positive envy? Ambition? Inspiration? It took actually wearing hir and being hir for awhile to figure it out, but this is what happens when I watch people, get wowed by them, watch them do amazing things... and later learn they're just conducting human potential like anyone else, but doing it with strength and consistency. That fear of imitation or imposter syndrome? Well, it's a little like thinking people are gonna accuse you of stealing an entire style and not being original, which... lets face it, that's NEVER been an issue for me.

It's still exhilarating and terrifying when I wear hir, though. Because, human, mortal, mundane or not, I still feel that power flowing through me like fire, and oh my deuces is it intense! And knowing that... when I do wear hir, I feel compelled to actually take action, build myself and make my dreams happen instead of just drifting.
kawaburd: (Default)
Sorry to start this whole thing with something heavy, but I don't think I'd be using a site like this otherwise.

For most of the past month I've been dwelling on what some things mean to me. Magic and otherkin at the forefront, ambitions, emotions and the circle I've sailed into surrounding that. I've been playing this game literally for 14 years now, nearly half my life, but I've had some old spirits, so to speak, crop up with an intensity that almost scares me.

I feel like my higher self is trying to tell me something. Either a lesson or a quest, maybe both. For most of the past month it's hijacked my bodily perception. Since Christmas I've been a dragon. That cute little featherfluff in my icon? Hardly seen hide nor hair of her since.

I'm not really sure why, but there's something in that I feel a potent fear in facing. Hands shake and typing becomes a challenge. I need to explain, I view dragons as creatures with truly immense creative power. In my eyes they, we, ARE creative power. Kawa's still in here, waiting for me to finish whatever it is I need to do, but she's stepped back and bowed down. I've been trying to make sense of this awhile now. Why is sie watching me, waiting, trying to console me? Why am I watching, waiting, trying to console myself?

It feels almost like... I'm starting to acknowledge how much power there truly is in my words, my pens, my paintbrushes. And the idea of using it in any truly focus, deliberate way scares me. But it's not just drawing, it's performance.

It's a familiar thing in LaVeyan Satanism. Those faithful believe in neither gods nor devils but perform the ritual anyway for the emotional effect. For the theatrics. They see the power in it. So do I.

Sie playfully, calmly, encourages me to wear hir like a coat. To take up the scales and the horns willingly, bring them to a con, and make people smile, becoming both performer and performance. I want to. I really do, so then what's trying to hold me back... Vanadis? What's really going on here? And why does it feel like impostor syndrome?

...I'm going to find out. I have to. But . . . how?

And how comfortable am I, truly, with people actually calling me Vanadis, even temporarily?

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