Yeah, yeah, it’s trendy. But more importantly, it helps me give word to the unique ways that the gods manifest in my glorious iron City, a City that is very important to me and to my soul. This is just a brainstorm for now, nothing overly developed or illustrated.
Cernunnos of the Ways: The streets are intertwined like a modern labyrinth, winding and twisting and misdirecting. All you wanted was to find a place with some good Pad Thai, but now you’re beneath an overpass downtown between a boarded-up shop and a church. You don’t find your way home; home finds you.
Cernunnos of the Beggar: On certain street corners there are men and women with signs and cups and bags. In subzero weather they sometimes can’t afford a motel room. You pay them in the change from your grocery run, in restaurant takeout, in crumpled one-dollar bills. One morning they aren’t there anymore, and you’ll never know why.
Cathubodua of Law: The forces are spread thin, underpaid, and underappreciated, but law enforcement in Detroit does its best to keep the people safe from harm. They’re getting too old for this shit? Sure, but maybe they were born too old for this shit. The City is as beautiful as a viper beneath dappled sunlight and just as deadly.
Cathubodua of Alleyways: In a hoodie with bruised knuckles, sporting bandages on her face and her arms, she is a fighter, a criminal, a hood rat. She is a survivor. She knows how to look after herself. She is the knife in the dark. She will never die.
Cathubodua Detroit: And the City itself is a fighter, like a survivor of some terminal illness who beat it back and asked, Do you want some more?! The City grabs what it wants with tooth and nail, seeking updrafts with bedraggled but beautiful black wings. The City knows: Triumph comes.
Sirona of the Strait: The City’s name, “Detroit,” means “of the strait.” The Detroit River is a sharp thing, cutting a path between cities and countries, bridges arching high overhead.
Sirona of the Cold: When the wind drifts over the river it brings flakes of snow and sheets of ice with it. The snow muffles the city like a thick blanket. The night is cold, and clear, and silent save for the distant sirens of the police and the occasional ambulance. There is no driving, not tonight. The stars are cold above you, glittering down like ice.
Sirona Unseen: In the countryside, the constellations are visible and identifiable, the stars illuminating the night even if the moon has excused itself. But here, beneath the haze of air pollution, the lights overhead are faint, obscured perhaps by a floodlight or a helicopter’s flash. Of course she is there. She is always there, watching, looking down. But here, in the City, she wears a cloak of gray, and her voice is a gravelly whisper.
Nehelennia of the Lakes: The sea is vast, but so are the lakes, like miniature seas with mirror-smooth surfaces. Like the sea, the storms roll in across it, the water rising; like the sea, you look across it and can’t help but wonder if there is an other side at all.
Grannus Riverside: The water in the City is filtered, drained, washed away, siphoned, gathered, but most of it comes from the River, from the strait. All the water comes from the River. To the River it always returns.
Gobannos Welding: Detroit is a City built on creation, on design, on industry. We built our City with blocks forged of passion and stone-cold stoicism and welded together a future from laughter and the inner warmth of hope.
Gobannos Graffiti: Artists sculpt the past into the old condemned buildings, now more a canvas than a living space. We all leave our mark. Some marks, like the City itself, are colorful, bright, larger than life, executed with an artless accidental grace.
Epona Motor: Birthplace of the industrial manifestation of the American Dream. Our horses went from hide to shining, sleek steel. Their cries became the thunderous purr of engines. A new Hunt, all rubber and chrome.
Epona of the Highway: Her steeds are a raging, forceful lot, rolling down the pavement like crazed beasts. When you ride in it is to the smell of smokestacks and her sharp smile. You may leave on that same lonely road, long and winding and in the dead of night. And you may leave on another highway, a highway all paved white as bone, leading Onward.
Belenos Anima Detroit: The people of Detroit are a hopeful, determined, proud people, proud of their City, their heritage, their culture. When the people talk about their City it is with light in their eyes and fire in their hearts. We’re going to make our City something beautiful, they say. We’re going to heal our wounds.
Nantosuelta Insulator: In the winter the heaters vibrate and make rattling noises and keep you up at night, and crossing the street you hunch your shoulders, making yourself as small as possible in your quilted coat. She is there, arms around you, breathing warmth into your bones.
Nantosuelta Neighbor: The neighborhood communal garden is a beautiful thing, a tamed wilderness deep inside the urban sprawl. Tomatoes almost overripe, stalks of corn bent under the weight of the harvest, grown with your own hands from nothing but an empty lot.
Taranis Generator: Once the power went out, the transformers whirring and giving out with a great machine sigh, and the apartment was perfectly dark. In the distance the thunder rolled. I have never felt so uniquely alone, yet so much a part of something bigger, vaster, unknown.
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