FFLINÂ

N.B. - FFLINÂ means ‘sacred coat’ in Proto-Celtic. Please find out more about Proto-Celtic and those that have been working to recover this language here.

She stood at the edge of the clearing, damp earth and glass raindrops filling her lungs. The trees stood tall, dark and silent, impenetrable and waiting. She hung back on the edge for a while, savouring the threshold, drawing out the seconds into eternity. She could feel rather than see the red does that drifted through the mist, cloven hoof barely touching the deep, exquisite forest floor. 

Clothed just in ochre and woad, painted prayers of her sisters, sung and wept and wrapped around her, to carry her sisters with her as she journeyed alone to this place, this edge. She took a deep breath, drawing the heavy dusk inside her, drawing in its expansiveness, feeling the edges of her fray with the dissolving day. She raised her bare left foot and placed it gently on the earth inside the clearing. She shivered with the energy she grazed, and moved into the open space.

She started slowly, delicately, weaving footsteps into the darkness of the night and the darkness of the earth. She listened keenly to the response and wove into that, spinning out and returning in. She started to spin faster and as she did she reached her arms outwards to the trees, beseeching, beckoning. They sighed and shook their branches, weaving leaves into the dance, yellow, red, orange and brown, joy and release of the dying year. As she span low, the painted woman reached to the mist that twined around her ankles and spun it upwards around her, soft cobwebs of cloud, wet and vibrant on her skin, weaving with the leaves and her body. 

Spirit eyes glowed between the tree trunks, bathed in the full night that had fallen. The woman started to leap in her dance, drawing up the midnight black soil, soft and cold like velvet, running over her skin and through her hair, the essence of decay and new life. She leapt higher and higher, drawing down the frozen sharp light of the stars, shattered glass and icicles, and pulled it down, slicing her fingers, drops of blood scattering in her frenzy. Mist, starlight, leaves and earth span around her closer and closer, weaving tighter and tighter, slowing as there was less room to move between them. They lay about her shoulders and brought her to her knees on the ground, wrapping their wild power around her. 

She panted, sweat streaking the prayers of her sisters as she pulled the cloak tightly around her. The waiting does moved forward, clustering in around her, the heady scent of freedom lending the final adornment. Then one by one they disappeared back into the misty darkness between the trees. Trembling and exhausted, the woman stood and whispered into the cloak all the dreams, secrets and prayers she had carried with her. Feeling lighter, she strode back out of the clearing and into the trees, cloaked in the forest itself.

© Elena Tornberg-Lennox 2022

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