Unwilling Warrior Chapter 2

Loki does not want to move. Every fibre of his being is crying "stay". But staying is fear inducing too. He experiences his fear as nausea. Vast rolling waves in a yellow shit ocean of discomfort. He moves. He always moves. It is less intolerable than staying.

He has no idea where is when he stands. He is not cold. It is actually very hot. The thicket he was in is revealed as bamboo. His scratches are bleeding, but only in a halfhearted sort of way.There is only one course open. There only ever is one. He wrenches a knot of hair from his head and ties it to the tallest bamboo shoot, then starts to walk in a slow outward spiral from his hiding place. He needs to know where he began from, not to avoid getting lost. He is already lost.But to give him a chance of becoming found.

His slow cycling takes him gradually up a hill. At the top the city he had run from is revealed in the valley on the other side. He smells it long before he sees it. Sickly sweet, rotten fruit, human shit. And it looks like that too. He is high enough that the slums he remembers living in are made picturesque. But the smell and the waves of heat he sees shimmering up remind him of the poverty and despair of the majority of the residents.

Of course the palace is so big it is clearly recognisable, and the cathedral and the bishops house. And the asylum where he was "cured". It all becomes clearer, but he fights off the memories. He looks away from the city and is rewarded by the sight of the red cloth he used to mark the hiding spot of his emergency stash. Clothes, soap and water, food, coffee, money. He always did this. He did not always find it so easily.

Unwilling Warrior Chapter 1 1/2. Loki Speaks.

Ah yes, storyteller. You mainly got that right. I wake up alone and frightened. But I know what has happened. The priests do not like my truth. They make me drink the water. The water is the special water from the spa. It "calms" me. It allows my fear to find me. It allows my self hatred in.

When I have drunk enough water. When I hate myself enough, when my fear is a palpable presence in my cell, then they release me.

And I run. Not from them, but from myself. Screaming, naked, bearded. I ruin terror from the one thing I cannot escape. Me.

Ah Goddess. It is hell being me, when you are denied me.

But i continue, in the hope of finding you again, and doing your will.

That is when I am truly alive.

Unwilling Warrior Chapter 1

Loki awakes to scratching and tickling. He is confused. He is wedged into a bush so tightly he  can barely move. And when he does move the branches gouge him and the leaves  tickle him on his bare feet. They are the only  part of him sticking out from the tangled mess that is part human, part hedge.

He is only confused for a moment.Then fear comes rushing to embrace him like a drug addicted mother. Fear, his favoured companion, his untrustworthy lover, his pitiful mother. When everything else has abandoned him, fear returns to comfort him.

And he knows then what has happened. The gift of Our Lady ,the true mother, has left him. His memory of the specific circumstances is unclear. But it has happened so many times that he knows the drift. He has been challenging priests or monks or some other religious group. He has been telling them of the way of Our Lady where all is permitted in the name of love. He has been laughing at their buffoonery, or trying to help some poor sinner in the stocks, or wearing the scold's bridle, or being more brutally tortured. Perhaps all three.

He has lost his sense of watchfulness and has been captured. He is not tortured. He is not paraded in infamy. He is given instead to the inquisitors. They pronounce him mad, not bad. They force him to drink the salty water from the Holy Shrine. He tries not to drink, but they prick his eyes with sticks until he opens his mouth.

This goes on for days until they release him, and he runs naked, roaring like a madman, around the streets. Anyone who has heard his message, who has actually heard him, dismisses him as a madman.
He runs and runs until he finds a way out of whatever city he happens to be in. He runs naked until he finds a place he can hide.

And wakes up some time later,  naked, .alone, scratched, confused. Then his bastard mother, fear, finds him. And he begins to live another day.

Unwilling Warrior.

Prologue

Call me Loki.
It is not my real name, it is not even the name I awoke with in this life. But it will do. A name fit for a naughty son of an angry tyrant god.
Yes I do not love my creator.
I respect and fear him, true enough. But love?
No.
I hate the mother-fucking bastard.
In this life I have been taught  in the temples and churches. I know the theory of it all. I know we are supposed to believe God (with a capital "G") created the world. I know it is supposed to be an act of love.
But have a look how much fear there is in the teachings.
And then look closely at his creation. If you doubt me, look at his chosen people. Thank "God" I am not one of his chosen.
I was not chosen by God for a life of torture, heartbreak and pain.
I have chosen it for myself
Do you  think the bastard who created this world of suffering would give us free will? No he did not, no he would not.
But somehow I have the freedom to choose my life of pain.
It is painful because I oppose him.
And he has all power in this world.
The only reason I can make my choice is because he did not create my spirit.
He does not  understand my spirit.
He does not even know my spirit exists, it is beyond his power to comprehend.
He has no power over it. So he cannot take it away.

Why have I chosen this life?
It is because of Her.
Who is She?
She is a dream, a whisper, a wistfulness.
I do not know if She is real, but my spirit is part of her.
My body, "me", would rather be a willing cog in the mad tyrant's world, would prefer an easier softer way.
But she whispers to me and I take decisions that cost me dearly;  in service of a lady, an idea, who may or may not be real.
But every time I act against the dictates of the mad tyrant, I prove her to be real.
Otherwise where do I get  my will to oppose?

I hear you, wise man. I hear you tell me I am living according to a fantasy.