Hair of the Tongue
Hair of the Tongue
How not to be an influencer.
Spring comes late in the mountains. In March we’re still covered in snow. Which is fine, with no gardening and little foraging, I get a lot of reading done. I have time to test out new spells, doom scroll, and then come up with more new spells. It’s never slow on the business end up here, though. People come plodding up my mountain even when the snow is waist deep and frostbite is a real possibility. I have a good tea for the frostbite, but there are days I could do without the assholes.
This is one of those stories. I was knitting, actually, and listening to a podcast about medieval leechcraft when the dogs perked up. They scrabbled to their feet and stretched and went to look out the window, fogging up the glass with their dog breath. I went to stand by them, it was early still and the light was good, but I couldn’t see what they sensed at first. Eventually a small red dot came into view. I went back to my chair, it was going to be a while before whoever that was made it all the way up the hill. The dogs had the same thought and were soon back on their pillows by the fire.
After a few more rows of knitting I started hearing a voice. I’d only seen one person coming up the hill so I stood and went to the window again. A person talking to themselves isn’t always a red flag, but it sure can be. Possessions, dissociations, persistent parasitic twins, I’ve seen all of those in my day. Dissociation is a lot more common now days than possession. There are reasons for that. The point of possession from a demon’s perspective is to get at an exorcist, once the Vatican figured that out, they started allowing fewer exorcisms. Yeah, it led to some people dying, but no god ever turns down a sacrifice, so no big deal. Possession is a war of attrition. A really stupid war of attrition because demons can’t die. Exorcists can, though. So even if an exorcist wins, they don’t win. They just close one door and have to guess which of the eight billion other doors on the planet the demon will open next. It’s a losing game from the Vatican’s POV. So they stopped playing, except for a few extreme circumstance. Now days demons have to find other ways to get at holy men… That is entertaining fare, but out of the scope of this story.
Dissociation though, that’s all in a person’s head. Life gets too rough for the core personality, and it splits, forming alternate personalities to protect the core personality. We’re not always talking full on Sybil or anything, not usually. Just a sort of ephemeral other that sits in your brain and mirrors you throughout the day, sometimes wielding enough influence to change your direction. Sometimes, when things get too tough you slip into that other skin. You’re still you, it’s not a full split, but you’re in your invisible furry suit now and you can just ignore all those traumas happening around you. You happy forest bunny, you. This, I see a lot these days. This is really more of a therapist’s wheelhouse. If you ask me what to do about your despair over the state of the world, I’m going to show you to the nearest crossroads and tell you how to make a deal. Nothing feels as good as letting it all go and slipping into the Dark Lord’s fiery embrace.
But I was telling a story.