15 years years ago today Oisin gave me a gift.
I had already been working with him for a while. He was my teacher and my friend. He teased me about my “lack of wildness.” I had always been a nerd and never really had a rebellious phase as a kid. I never dated or pushed boundaries, or anything like that, and he would tease me for it. But I loved the wilderness, so I would tease him back as much as I could, and I got better at that as my skills -particularly in the Otherworlds- developed. As he taught me his expressions of affection got more physical- still platonic at first: hand on the shoulder, or in the small of the back. Then the touches started to linger and get a little more flirty. That’s sort of when I was starting to let myself wonder about possibilities.
Then he told me he had a present for me. He took me to a part of his domain in the Otherworlds, and said it was mine. He was giving me control of it. He wanted me to have a place that was just my own and that I felt safe and in control of, a place that I could prevent him from entering if I wanted to. He wanted me to have a place where I could get away from him if I needed time away, or if we had a fight, so he made sure I had it and could keep him out. He knew there was a power imbalance and knew how to navigate it. He made sure I knew how to seal the borders sufficiently to keep him out, then he asked if he could court me.
He was very old-fashioned about our courtship. There were lots of long walks, picnics, rides through the Wildwood, sometimes we would go to other places in the Otherworlds. But mostly we just kept doing our work together, the training he was putting me through. That tutelary relationship is what convinced me that the romantic relationship was something real. It was clear that he saw potential in me and wanted to help me achieve it, but he never tried to define or dictate what that potential was for. He pushed me to strive, and test my limits, and grow, but he never forced me towards a goal, even though it was clear that he has something in mind that he wanted me to help him with. And he trusted me, and relied on me, this god who had been around forever and had loyal spirit servants trusted and relied on me. I had never felt better about myself. And then after months of courtship he killed me, ripped me apart, and forced me to reassemble myself.
15 years ago today Oisin gave me a gift, he gave me his heart, and in giving me his heart he gave me life and my calling.
