Preparations

Seventh Passage

Elena was becoming far more attuned to the pagan calendar, so she planned her next, seventh, passage for the summer solstice - Litha. Summer arrived with a ferocity, as it sometimes can, it seemed to challenge the very nature of reality. The moorland landscape appeared to acquire an intensity beyond mere heat. It was almost as if the moorland itself was pulsing, breathing, remembering, waiting with an almost sentient energy. Elena had now become far more than a mere observer. The lines between academic researcher, observer, and participant had long since blurred. Those distinctions had long dissolved like the morning mist in the rising sun. Her relationship with the Mên-An-Tol had long ago become more than a scholarly pursuit, it had become something far more - almost a visceral calling. She had the feeling that this seventh passage was to be a threshold - that something fundamental was going to change.

Elena had chosen the summer solstice because legend decreed that on the longest day the boundaries between the worlds was at its thinnest - this seemed most appropriate for her seventh passage. This early morning the light seemed to come from everywhere, as the sun came over the horizon the light seemed to be everywhere and nowhere. It appeared to fill every crevice of the landscape with a liquid luminescent quality. Practised as she was her preparations were now quite minimal. Then only tools now being her recorder and her notebook filled with what looked like mandala drawings than serious documentation. Symbols. Patterns. Memories of things not yet remembered.

As usual the Mên-An-Tol stood waiting. Patient. Expectant. Hungry. "Seventh passage' the words now more a spell, a promise, a prayer. The passage through the stone was no longer a physical involvement, it was a surrender of the self to whatever experience was awaiting. A total dissolution of the self.  Elena was confronted with a cascade of memories around her - not just her own but of the landscape, the stones, of the generations who had trodden this path before her. There were the whispers of fairy tales. Echoes of ancient rituals. There were fragments of an ancient knowledge that predated human language. She was changing, becoming something else, Not exactly human. Not other. Something in between. Something indefinable, indescribable.

Once more Elena's emergence was to a fundamentally changed landscape, a landscape transformed. The standing stones were no longer guardians, they were sentinels of a reality far more complex than human perception could possibly comprehend. The plant life was a communication network. The air itself seemed alive with an ancient consciousness, Creatures moved at the edge of perception. They were not just watching but communicating, Her recorder captured only silence.
'Seventh passage' she murmured , her voice not entirely her own 'the boundary is an illusion. Web are all connected. We are all passing through.'.

The sea-glass charm around her neck had also transformed. It was no longer a simple object, but had become a key to the bridge between worlds.

Something was coming. Something was waiting.

Seven passages completed. Two more remained.