#echo*

[theydies-and-gentlethem]

me: hey do you ever get just one particular line of a song stuck in your head and your brain just won’t progress past that One Particular line

my brother, a neurotypica: uhh sometimes i guess

me: cool cool is it ever two words

my brother:

my brother: what

[will-o-the-witch]

Day Four

Thirty Days of Deity Devotion A favorite myth or myths of this deity

I have a lot of favorite myths about Pan but I’ll try to narrow it down!

  I’m strangely fascinated by the relationship between Echo and Pan. As the story goes, Achilles was SO attractive that he ended up in a beauty contest with Aphrodite. Pan was the judge and ruled in his favor, which angered Aphrodite. As a response, she cursed him by putting the love of Echo into his heart, which was pretty much doomed from the start. 

The story of Echo is pretty well known; she was cursed by Hera to repeat everything she hears. It’s really interesting to see a side of Pan, normally very bacchanalian and lustful, to actually be in love with someone. Still, it never came to be, because as the story goes, Echo was only in love with Narcissus and eventually wastes away in a cave, leaving only her voice. This is the most common demise of Echo, but there’s another that I’m still trying to piece together. In the Great Deluge myth (which is a fascinating topic all on its own,) they make it abundantly clear that Echo doesn’t know how to swim. When the flood starts, Pan goes looking for her, but from everything I’ve read so far he doesn’t find her, and it’s very possible she drowned. Confirming that is going to take hunkering down and reading a LOT of old work, so I can’t confidently confirm that yet. But that’s where my research has been leading me, if you’ve ever been curious.

So while she’s gone (as much as any mythological figure can be,) Echo will always be with him, responding whenever he makes a note on his flute and echoing through the mountains he wanders. He has a record of this kind of spurned love, and a lot of myths involve him chasing after and loosing love, or comforting people in the same situation. Seriously, if you ever get dumped and need a deity to talk to, Pan is your guy. I feel like this sad underlayer to normally such an upbeat god gives him a new depth.

This is the super abridged version, obviously, and it’s compiled from a lot of different sources, but it’s a story that’s woven into a lot of original texts that I find to be very sad and very beautiful. 

[rorsry]

something about an echo???

this is still technically a wip but feel free to rb it if u want!

[ghoulluck]

Rene sat in the steps of the compound. His head was bowed and he almost looked as if he were praying had it not been for the gun in his hand. Various men came in and out of the house, but no one bothered him. They were dressed like him, shades of washes out black, layers of Kevlar that made them sweat their wounds and a grim look on their face that mirrored his own.

He had not found Uma.

He touched his face with his shaking hands. Rene’s knuckles were raw from the interrogation or rather the beating he had inflicted to forcefully draw the information he needed from every man that had been found during the raid.

It was too late. Uma was in the wind.

Rene did not believe in god. He believed in his mother and her love for god, but never god himself. The man kept his head bowed as he knit his hands together with the gun clasped tightly between them.

“Keep her safe.”

 The wind carried his words to an old reaping goddess. The prayer tickled her thick veils that shielded her skeletal form from the revealing sun. The men working in the field raised their heads, acknowledging the shift in the in the air as she pointed towards the horizon where the sun was setting with a gilded bejeweled finger.

[And your devotion?]

Rene pinched the gun to his face as he forced himself to stand. Every second, every minute, every day, every week, every month, every year that passed made him lose hope he would ever find her at all.

He brushed these thoughts away. He had promised Vee he would find her. He had never broken a promise before. His stomach turned at the idea of failure.

Rene pushed himself to his feet with his rage burning inside of his gut as he walked towards the fence on the horizon. Beyond the barbwire were the fields of workers harvesting rice from a flooded field with a widow at the head. Beside the weak division, the men were lined up to lay on their stomachs with zip ties around their ankles and arms. 

It didn’t take him a second to pick the automatic from his side instead to fire a round into every single one of them. They were useless pigs and deserved a worse fate then he had just given them.

The Mexican consulate always applauded the gory show of examples. He took the thick knife tucked towards his boot to crudely start cutting the first head from it’s body. It was a nasty work. His stomach calmed in the repetition of it. He posted each head slowly one by one on the posts of the compound. It was a calling card he had developed after the US had fucked him over and he had started selling his skills to the continental and ultimately the Mexican government.

Mictecacihuatl watched from far as her husband manifested like water at her side. The man had provided sixteen different sacrifices and she intended to answer his prayers. Ehecatl blew his wind across the plain, relieving the man of the Mexican heat. Rene could almost hear a voice in the wind. He closed his eyes trying to focus on what language it was speaking in.

Rene felt almost heard. He couldn’t quite explain it. He didn’t care what answered his prayers as long as Uma was found safe. He would have to visit Uma’s sister. He always tried to give the news in person. It was a difficult task although he felt it was almost an insult if he did it over the phone to leave the receiver with the raw new wound he had left them with his message.

[ghoulluck]

She didn't speak the language and when she had become lost in Mexico, her blonde hair had caught the eye of one to many men and she had fallen victim to kidnapping, rape and violence. Uma would become another face tacked up against a phone pole. Another beautiful American girl cheapened by her violence.

When Uma tried to move away from the wind, it would only blow and howl louder until she went in the direction it moved her in. The dessert offered her rain to drink and washed her exhausted body in cool water to wash away the abuse and the poison of the sun. The wind guided her to a small house made of straw, palantain leaves and clay. At the mouth which she assumed was maybe the door, she found a rotting carcass of a chicken. It had no head, no legs and the traces of bones that had been rung from the skin and it's wings broken.

Inside the glow of candles drew her in and the smell of cigarettes, stale tequila, copal, ocean water, flowers and fresh bread hit her in waves. Hunger burned in her gut and thirst burned in her throat. Linging the red clay walls were statues of skeletons in many shapes, sizes and various styles of dress. Uma breathed in softly as she heard the wind whisper as it had in the desert, 'offer the goddess your life and devotion.'

The further she went down the tunnel, the more likeness it bore to a cathedral and the structure became clear, bones embedded into the walls to keep them from collapsing. There were marigolds of various colors, perfuming the air and she saw the food that made her ache from the beginning, but the air warned her not to take. At the end, there was a curtain, red and sheer and she could see the outline of someone against what must have been hundreds of burning candles. The air there was suffocating and Uma drew back the curtain.

At the near center of the aclove created from clay and leaves and bones was a woman. She had dark eyes and long hair that reached the ground in shining waves like the night sky. She bore white marigolds and red and yellow roses in her hair. Around her neck and wrists were gold chains. Some charms had names, some were angels, some were saints, some were of the same skeleton that lined the hallway. She wore a white wedding dress with a corset that was drawn so tight she was sure that the woman could not breathe. In her bloodied and stained hands she held a sickle that dripped honey down to her dirty feet which were surrounded by the feet of chicken.

She was the single most beautiful sight Uma had seen aside from the sunset of the desert sun. She slid down to her knees by the mouth of the private chamber. Where had the wind lead her? She reached out to the woman, unsure if the woman spoke her language, Uma begged anyways as the wind had told her to. "I offer my life and my devotion--" The woman's skin shuttered and she was skeletal like the statues around her adorned in countless precious jewels. Uma's breath shivered as a jeweled hand reached for her. "I offer my life and my devotion--" Their fingers met and the goddess left her weapon among the feet of the chicken as Uma's body began to falter.

The wind howled the goddess' name, 'Mictecacihualt.'

The corpse wrapped her arms around Uma, cradling her violated body against her bosom as the life that was left in the American woman drained away when peace enveloped her. With a dying breath, she touched the goddess' adorned face to lower it for a kiss. The wind bellowed outside of the place of worship mourning the loss of a ray of sunshine that had endured years of pain.

Mictecacihualt lifted the woman, the dying offering and brought it with her to the nest of things she had been given. She used holy water to cleanse and heal Uma's skin. She braided the dirty gold hair with white ribbons. She dressed the american woman in a dress much like her's white with the lace of a bride that had died a virgin waiting for her love to return from a hard day's work. She adorned Uma's nails with red enamel. Mictecacihualt placed the salve of an aloe leaf on the sun burn skin.

The goddess held her now most treasured offering at the heart of her place of worship. It had been too long since she had received a human life. Mictecacihualt once more took up her sickle as the wind made the candles flicker and her red lips smiled as she was kissed by the other god with his breeze.

[ghoulluck]

The goddess knelt on the dirt floor in her white dress. She still wore the popular Spanish style that the natives had adopted as her own. Her bare feet were dirty and echo admired her as she leaned over to prod the sad looking mush of a dog. Roger hadn’t done much except cry for uma since she had disappeared. 

She had heard him crying as she walked the streets with her pendants and herbs and had stopped to try to comfort him. A skinny blonde woman care to the door way to see who had come to the orphanage and recognized michi as a vendor who often came to give the money her wares earned to the children. 

Usually roger was buried in uma’s empty bed trying to soak up whatever was left of his owner, but a year or three had passed and he was slowly learning she would never return. She turned to her husband and made a gesture for him to come to her as she looked to the blonde woman who stood quizzically in the door way. 

“My wife— she says that the dog says your sister is missing?” 

Vee raised an eyebrow only slightly as she nodded and caged herself in a squeeze of her rib cage. Michi gave a grunt as she lifted the dog into her arms and kissed his sad mushy cheek. Echo licked his lips as he pushed his hands into his pocket, “we know where she is is.” They hadn’t told uma that they knew she had a sister, much less that they had actively seeked vee out. 

Michi struggled to stand with the heavy dog, but she did and his heavy head rested sadly on her shoulder as she held out her hand to vee. The blonde woman hesitated and looked back at cole who glanced at Michi and gave a bow of his head, indicating he would take over her duties. They walked for half a mile before they arrived at corner of the edge of the town.

 A truck passed them and echo waved them down and the three piled into the back with the corn and hay. It was nearly an hour before they were dropped off close enough to the shrine that the walk was only a few minutes. Michi put the dog down and he snorted as he sniffed the ground straight to the heart of the home before barking excitedly as he ran to uma.

[ghoulluck]

The tiny bird trilled happily as his head bobbed up and down. Uma wiggled her big toe that his tiny feet had latched to. He had painted her nails and toes, although his task had been tedious and seemingly unimportant, it seemed to give the god great joy. He was a sweet little love bird now, sitting on her feet, nibbling on her toes with his tiny beak and cuddling up to her feet. He was a little strange, but she had grown fond of him, even in his little colorful body. He hopped along her leg then back up to her foot. Uma wiggled her toes for him again.