“The truth is,” Lugh confessed. “We need your help. That is, Fred specifically needs your help here. Didn’t Fred tell you what was at stake here?”
René stood dumbfounded looking at Hugh and Brigit. “Your names? They’re old Celtic names. Why are you using them?”
“Focus, René,” Brighid spoke with a hypnotic tone. “They are our real names, but that is unimportant. What did Fred tell you?”
“Something about needing Angela’s and my help to somehow transform himself into a god of some sort. I was sure that he really was coming for help to regain his psychic balance.”
Lugh put his hand on René’s shoulder. “Did he mention that he started to notice changes in himself going back about two years, René?”
“Yes,” he admitted. “But that fits into what I would call the shift into midlife when a person is being prepared to answer the call of his soul to individuate.”
“Exactly!” beamed Brighid. “It is all about shifting from an old way of being into a new way of being.”
The conversation continued as Angela was drawn into the conversation. René noticed that the sky was becoming even more threatening with the appearance of a finger of cloud beginning to descend, the birth of a possible tornado. In spite of all the words spoken, René was unconvinced of the story he was being told. He had no explanation for what he was hearing, but it went against all he knew of a rational world, even when looked at from a Jungian perspective. It was as if mythology and fairy tales had found its way into the modern world in the guise of what appeared to be normal humans.
As Brighid was taking to Angela, René decided that he would go along with the proposed ritual, if nothing else than to help Fred who looked as if he was buying the claims of Lugh and Brighid. If noting happened as René expected, Fred would likely turn to him for help, private help. René noted that Jacques had disappeared.
Giving a shake of his head, René spoke aloud, “Okay, we’ll do this for Fred. Right Angela?”
She looked at René with a question unasked showing in her eyes. Trusting him, she answered,” Right, René.”
”
Now,” began Lugh, “I want the four of us to form a circle with Fred standing in the centre. Ideally, there should be a few more in the circle, but the others are not available.”
As the four stood holding hands, René sensed a rush of energy flood into him. Looking at Angela, he was certain that she felt it as well. Lugh became surrounded by a golden light and Brighid glowed with an almost purer light, pure white. Even Angela began to glow taking on a hue the seemed to be a blend of both gold and silver. Looking at his hands, René noticed that they were glowing with the same light as had enveloped Angela.
Lugh began to speak in a tongue that was ancient with responses coming from Brighid that echoed the same tongue. René had heard Gaelic before, but this was a much older language. In the centre, Fred began to glow with a faint reddish light, perhaps more copper than red. Fred’s shoulders were pulled back as he appeared to be standing taller, almost on his toes, appearing to be held up by his upper chest, a position that made René think of the images he had seen of a Sun Dance Lodge with warriors suspended by cords attached to bones that pierced their chests. As his eyes were drawn to the centre, he felt a pulsing wave of energy swirl around him before reaching into the centre of the circle to swirl around Fred. Without advance notice, Fred began to chant in the ancient tongue spoken by Brighid and Lugh. And then, a blinding flash of light left René and Angela blind and unconscious.
Moments later, the both returned to awareness. Fred was the first to speak:
“Thanks, René and Angela. With your help I was finally able to make it back home, home into my right mind. In case you are wondering, I now know my real name. I’m Angus, Angus Og.”
René stared at his best friend who had noticeably changed. He was a man in the prime of life without the haggard look that had haunted him for the past number of months. And, he glowed. “Who are you? What are you? What happened to Fred?”
“You already know who I am, and who I have always been even though I wasn’t aware of my true identity until now,” explained Fred-Angus. “I am Angus Og, of the Tuatha de Danaan. Yet somehow, I am still Fred as well,” he added. “I’ve been called to rejoin the others of our clan. We are preparing for the next war against darkness and we have joined with those who are left from the Nordic clan.”
Lugh and Brighid smiled at Angus then at René and Angela. “It is done. Now, we must leave to make ready for the next stage of our preparations. We will see you again, Angela and René,” Brighid promised before the three appeared to vanish into thin air.
Even though they took their light with them, the darkness of the storm had lifted leaving the sun shining brightly. The storm had passed.
A fascinating idea, Robert, to find that the story you’re telling is ultimately a story of individuation. And interesting that being naked is understood as a dimension of that psychic process, though no mention is made of nakedness in this segment of the story.
Is this the first draft of what will become a longer short story that both does and does not make more of an individual’s nakedness as that individual goes through the individuation process?
I am allowing the story to sit still for a while to see if there is something else that will emerge. The intention was for this to be a stand alone simply for this Naturist Fiction site. That said, the idea of a storm and a mixture of Celtic deities and ordinary humans will likely find its way into a full novel at some point. Thanks, Allen.