Nano Day 26 - Titled: The Pan Aspect

[joegoda]

For Capi and the Readers. Now it starts to get interesting...


"Healing hands?" Angelina leaned closer to watch. "What are healing hands?"

I explained to her what it meant to have the gift as well as the curse of healing. I reached out a hand to her and asked her to take it. When she did, she nodded.

"Well, it's certainly hot, that's for sure." She let go of my hand. "How does it work?"

"It's a bit like being a plumber and fixing broken pipes by traveling along with them." Seeing her confusion, I went into a bit more detail. "It's like this. The body, regardless of who or what body it belongs to, is simply a machine. It has hoses and pumps and tubes and lubricants, okay?"

She nodded.

"Okay. The body runs on electricity. All bodies do. And the body is also put together in such and such a way, and all the parts and tubes and pumps work in such and such a fashion. It all works together and it produces a living, breathing, healthy body. Okay?"

Again, she nodded.

"When the body gets damaged, through illness or injury..."

"Like getting hit by a van," She interrupted.

"Like getting hit by a van, getting shot, having cancer, whatever, the body bends it's energy out of shape. The energy knots up in strange ways, binding itself so it can't flow correctly. The electricity that the body runs on gets stuck or stopped or short circuited. Still okay?"

Angelina thought about it, then nodded. "Yes, I'm with you so far. It's not so complicated, I just haven't thought about it like that."

"Most people don't. But then, most people don't have to. I've been doing this since before you were born. What I do is find where the kinks are, where the breaks are or where the circuit is shorted, and I fix it. Sometimes I push energy, sometimes I pull energy. Some times I take the problem from the broken body, like an illness, and absorb the illness into myself."

"Wouldn't that mean that you would get ill?" She asked a good question, so I answered with a good answer.

"Yes, it would. And I do." I smiled at her. "But the illness isn't meant for my body. The illness has the vibration that would allow it to only exist in the other body. Since my body is like a foreign country to what ever illness it is, the illness fades and disappears. Illness can't exist outside the body it was designed for."

I bent down to the wounded beast. I figured I better move as quickly, because as much as Angelina and I were talking, the darned thing might wake up any moment. Somehow, I would rate that as a bad thing.

I looked him over. Yes, I had determined it was a him, the same way any other people would. He was bubbling at his side, where the rib had punctured his lung. Fortunately, his leg wasn't a compound fracture. It was just a simple green stick break. I decided to fix the lung first.

Gently, I placed my hand near the wound. I closed my eyes and let my fingers do the walking, and my third eye do the seeing.

I felt the flow of energy under my fingers. It was strong and bestial. It was intoxicating. My Aspect rose up and gripped the energy like a sibling, sucking on it like a chocolate malt.

My fingers felt for the cold spots, the broken connections, the kinks in the flow. Gently, like knitting in the dark, my own energy combined with the wild energy of my Aspect, flowed into the beast, slowly pulling broken and bent parts of bone back into the shape they knew they belonged in, prodding shards to find their true place in the bone, coaxing torn flesh to knit, to heal. Blood vessels and capillaries grew back under gentle influence and the lung was as good as new, no longer leaking air and blood.

I felt the sasquatch start to move, and I backed up, quickly. It's eyes were open and it was no longer snoring like it had. Not a good sign at all.

"Angelina," I called out. "He's awake! Run for the van."

"Did you fix his leg?" She asked.

"Did I fix his leg?" I was almost to the van. "Hell no, I didn't fix his leg, yet. Good thing to. It will make it much harder for him to chase us and kill us!" I opened my door and saw her standing where I left her. "Angelina, come on!"

"Wait just a minute, okay, Chester?" She approached the beast, cooing and clicking her tongue.

"What the hell are you doing, Angelina?" I was stuck deciding to run and pull her away, or just leave the crazy woman there. She wanted to get eaten by a sasquatch, great. No business of mine. She can tell her children how she was eaten by a sasquatch, rather that just being almost eaten by sasquatch. Somehow I don't think she would think that was very cool at all.

Instead, the sasquatch raised up, and started cooing back at her. She nodded to it, then looked over at me. She had a catbird grin on her face.

"You aren't the only one that can do cool stuff, you know." She cooed and purred at the sasquatch, petting his shoulder. "I can talk to bird, remember?"

I walked, very carefully back toward her. "Yeah, okay. But there's a big difference between a bird and a sasquatch."

"No, not really." She shook her head negatively. "You gave me the clue. All bodies, regardless of what the body is connected to, are basically the same, right?"

Well, she had me there. Since we, as normal humans, or as normal as we can get, have yet to decode the language of birds, who are we to say there isn't some common denominator between all languages. In fact, there are commonalities in all human languages. There are words that, even though the pronunciation is different, all mean the same thing. Names for example. Everyone has one. Everyone knows what it is.

"So... you're able to talk to him?" I cautiously stood next to her. The sasquatch was watching us, warily.

"Yes." She nodded. "He's really just like a big pussy cat, except he's not."

Again, she cooed to him. He purred something back. They exchanged an entire dialogue while I watched. It was kind of like listening to a language I don't speak. No, it was exactly like that.

"What's going on?" I asked after about five minutes of listening to coos and purrs and clicks and grunts. It sounded like I was trapped in a pet shop.

"His name is..." She paused. "Well, his name isn't something I can pronounce, at least in English. It's in Sasquatian." Of course. "I told him that we were sorry that we hit him with our van. I had to explain a van to him, and I had to explain that we were inside of it." She looked down at him. "He said he understood. He said he was sorry that he stopped in the middle of the road like he did. He really didn't expect anyone to be there. He said you surprised him. There usually isn't at this time of day, and he was just going down to to the lake go fishing."

"Ah. Well, that's okay then." Whatever. So he was a big pussycat with really big teeth, and a fisherman to boot. "Can I fix his leg now? I mean, I'd like to get back on the road sometime today." I checked my watch. It was about four fifteen.

"Don't you find it interesting that these creatures are really incredibly gentle?" Angelina looked at me with real curiosity in her eyes. "Aren't you interested to hear their history?"

I looked over at her. Yes, it was all very interesting. Yes, I would love to sit and hear how the sasquatch came to be in North America. Blah, blah, blah. Some other time. What I said to her, though, was, "Sure, Angelina. Tell me about it while I fix his leg, okay?"

So, while I knitted bone and blood, Angelina translated to me the story of the Sasquatch in North America. They do have an incredibly rich history. In truth, I really was fascinated by their own myths and legends, some of which paralleled our own Native American stories.

Am I going to tell anyone about them? No. It would just create an open season on them, and they are, as Angelina told me, very gentle and spiritual creatures. Anyone that wants to go Sasquatch hunting can go find them on their own. It won't be easy though. They are really really good at hiding. Really good.

I finished up the leg, while Angelina kept whats his name busy by talking to him. Granted, it doesn't hurt to be healed this way, but it can get very warm and it can itch or tickle. While I was making sure that I hadn't missed anything, I watched how she talked to the sasquatch.

Angelina had a nack, sure enough. She would coo and purr and sometimes hoot and growl. Her face would take odd expressions and her hands would sometimes fly all over the place. The sasquatch would coo and purr and hoot back, and nod sometimes or shake its head.

The discussion got very interesting, even though I couldn't hear a thing. The sasquatch launched into a long speech, which sound very much like a song. The melody when up and down and round and about, and Angelina just sat back and listened, smiling or nodding encouragement.

I started to develop an idea, just a seed of a thought, nothing even concrete about Angelina. Her father and mother may have worked to create a quartet of gods, but I would have bet my big toe they never considered which gods. I would have bet, with Angelina, poor little ignored Angelina, they never considered that they may have gotten the real thing in her.

Like I said, I had nothing concrete to work on, just the niggling of the beginnings of the start of an idea. Not even enough, right then, to bring it up. Even though she handles things like talking to sasquatches and birds and things like my Pan Aspect well enough, I was worried what she would do with my tiny little suspicion. I decided I would just watch her for a while.

"Angelina, are you about done?" I stood up, brushed the dirt from my knees, and flared the negative energy away from my hands. It doesn't do to hold onto negativity. Its just kind of icky.

She held up one finger, asking me to give her a minute. Not a big deal. I've been in conversations where I do the very same thing. I walked to the side of the road, and just stood there, grounding. It was only about five in the evening. There was time. Two hours and she'd be home free. So would I. Maybe. I was starting to build another little suspicion, that had nothing to do with Angelina. Well, not much, anyway.

The suspicion went like this. Dad didn't really care if Angelina came home or not. He was going to toss his war into the air to see who it stuck to. Crones in New York or not, that sort of power was bound to attract people.

And didn't Angelina say she had thousands of relatives? Dad and mom went on business trips? Brothers went along as body guard types, right?

Okay. Having lived in my world, which is not necessarily your world, all my life, I'm here to tell you that there are literally thousands, tens of thousands, of people with abilities. These abilities range from being able to guess who is calling on the phone next, to finding lost children, to communicating with those who have passed on.

I do not, by the way, believe in the ability to talk with the dead. Once you're dead, why the heck would you want to hang around here? Just to chat? Check in on your loved ones? I don't think so. You've got more important things to do. The next horizon, as they say, whoever they are.

Now, I do believe that the living leave behind vibrations of themselves. Everything we do, everything we think, every word we speak, creates vibrations of one form or another that is absorbed or reflected by everything else in the universe. This is how trackers and seeking eyes find you. They track the vibrations to the source.

It's possible that those 'speakers to the dearly departed' are doing nothing more that getting prerecorded responses from those vibrations. Like an answering machine message left by the dead. "Sorry, I'm not in right now. I'm dead. However, here are some of the things I was thinking before I died." Like that.

Really, I don't know. But I just don't believe that the dead would hang around. There's no reason to, and there is just too much here that would be... well, boring to someone that had actually made it to the other side and decided to stay.

So, thousands of relatives could be many people in many places, looking to Daddy as a leader, or, in opposition to him. If I'm right, it would be interesting to see what sort of opposition there would be to him, and how he and his boys would deal with them.

And her mother is a puzzle. From Angelina's description, her mother was a gentle soul, easily cowed by James Thomas. What were her mother's trips about? That I suspected, would be a sixty-four thousand dollar question. The answer was probably something simple, though probably very surprising. I think it's something I'll have to ask her.

I came back from my meditation with Angelina standing right there, in front of me and she was staring at me. She had a quiet smile on her face.

"You've become very calm, mister Chester." She turned away, looked over her shoulder, and asked, "Are you coming, or just going to stand there?"

"If you're waiting on me, you're going to slow." I said. I followed behind her, still thinking.

Angelina was, herself, still a mystery on many levels. On one hand, she seemed very unsure of all this magical crap. Almost like it scared her. That could be the influence of her brothers and father, and possibly, her mother. She may have wondered if she would grow up like them, uncaring for anything but herself. Then again, like when she was talking with the sasquatch, she was in a blissful state. Almost little girl like, joyous and free spirited. She alternated between flirting with me, which my Aspect took clear note of, and I ignored, and she was moody and withdrawn or she was just simply friendly and cheerful.

The moody and withdrawn or friendly and cheerful... well, those are just the natural states of a human being. I suppose the flirting is as well, but I don't get that much. Well, okay. To be honest, I do. I get a lot of it. But it is friendly flirting, nothing serious intended. And believe me, that is for the best.

Granted, being raised in a crazy family will make you crazy. I know this very well, by personal experience. My family was just a little crazy. And I grew up a little crazy. What Angelina grew up in was like a normal crazy family, but powered by psychedelic drugs and wrapped in a megalomaniacal straitjacket. So, if she had a few emotional issues, it wouldn't have surprise me at all.

Rule one: don't sleep with anyone crazier than yourself. Not that I as going to sleep with her. I'm just making a point. It doesn't pay to get too close to someone that may look at you wondering what you would look like wrapped in bubble wrap and duct tape.

There was sexual tension, of course. I'm male, I have a naturally horny aspect, and she's an attractive young female. It's how we react to it that is the important thing, right?

But I digress.

We got into the van, and I carefully three-pointed it so it was pointing in the right direction. I was still amazed that there hadn't been any traffic coming down the road. The sasquatch looked over at us, curiously, waved and marched down the hill to the reservoir, as if nothing had happened.

"Would you like to know what he had to say about you?" Angelina asked me.

The day had turned towards twilight, and the sky had started to take on a lovely hue of red. I pulled away from our accident and asked for one of the bottles of Coke. Expending that much energy will drain your body of a lot of things. Coke wasn't the best thing, but I had no Tai tea nearby. The sugar, fake or not, would give me a boost, and keep my senses sharp for the next few hours. Some how I had a feeling that the closer we got, the more I'd need my awareness. All of them.

"Sure," I said to her. She was obviously very please with her interaction and wanted to show off a bit. What the hell. Everybody needs something. "What did Harry tell you about me?"

"Harry?" Angelina was confused. Another sign of our age difference.

"An old movie," I explained. "Harry and the Hendersons. About a family that finds and adopts a sasquatch after their dad hits him with the family station wagon."

"Ah." She said, not quite as confused, but not fully understanding, either. "He... Harry, said that he recognized you. Remember I told you that you surprised him?"

"Me?" My turn to be a bit confused. "I swear, Angelina, I've never seen him before."

"That's not what surprised him," she continued. "He said that he recognize your... um... Pan part. He recognized your Pan as what he called the tricky one. The sneaky one. The Goat. When I asked him which one it was, he said that Pan was called all three names, depending on what he did." Angelina sipped her Coke.

"Well, that makes sense," I said. "Pan was called Loki in the North, by the Norse. He got around quite a bit, and sometimes caused quite a bit of mischief."

She continued, "He said it was the tricky one that brought the sasquatch here from across the big lake."

"Huh." Just another one. I was building up a lot of my Huh statements on this trip. "Did Harry say why?"

"Not really." She shook her head. "He just said that the Goat lead part of the Sasquatch nation to this land, which was free of man and free of being hunted." She was quiet for a second, and then said, "Maybe Pan decided that man was evil and killing sasquatch was bad."

"I don't think so, Angel." I started to find the traffic as we neared a town called Bly. I waited until the yellow lines broke so I could pass a bus.

"Pan likes man, he likes the varieties and the sins and the indulgences." I paused, wondering if I should edit that. There are some people that would find liking the sins of man a bit... abhorrent. Still, might as well leave it as it is. If it needed more explanation, she could ask.

"What he doesn't like is the inhumanity of man," I went on. "He doesn't like the killing, the lack of joy and happiness. He doesn't like when people hurt. When anything hurts, actually. And, more importantly, he loves nature and the nature of things. The Sasquatch is just a part of the nature that Pan is in love with. He probably figured, and rightly so, that man, for all of mankind's good, would wipe out the species pretty quick. So, he showed the Sasquatch a new home. Here."

I passed a gray truck. We were traveling along a ridge on the mountain, carved by a flowing river. I think it was the Nimrod River. We zipped through Bly, just a small dot of a town, and were heading toward Beatty.

"The Sasquatch and his kind have been reported all over the country, you know," I told her. All the way from Alaska to the swamps of Florida. It's possible that his 'Sasquatch Nation' was here centuries before white man even stepped on this continent." I let that sink in a bit and then continued, "In fact, there have been more reports of sasquatch and swamp monsters than there have been of Yeti, who quite likely is the Sasquatch's relatives across the 'Big lake'".

I shrugged. "But who know? I'm just guessing."

Angelina nodded. "I bet that Pan knows."

"Yeah, probably," I agreed. "But he ain't talkin'."

"Why not?" She asked. "Don't you and he talk?"

"Pan?" I shook my head. "No. Pan isn't a he, dear. Pan is an aspect, just a part of me. It's like I embody the concept of Pan, that I carry his spirit. We don't really talk.

This was a difficult thing to explain, basically because I've never had to. It was a good question though, and besides, I wanted to figure it out myself, once she had asked it. It was one of those things I had never thought of. How much of me is me, and how much of the Aspect is Pan. I didn't know then, and I don't know now. Like I said, he ain't talkin'

"It's like your Countess," I attempted to explain. "When you become the Countess, do you actually become the Countess?"

"No," she said. "I just pretend to."

"Are you sure?" I pressed the point. "Do you only just pretend to? What do you feel like when you're the Countess? Do you think differently? Do you act differently? Even though you are NOT the Countess, I would bet that you become the Countess."

"No, I..." Her mind started to play with it. "Maybe." She got quiet and thought, while I drove.

We had just traveled passed the city limits of Beatty. I was feeling a choice coming. Do I drive through Klamath Falls, a nice safe town, a route that would keep us on a highway, or do I turn North on Sprague River Road, and cut about forty minutes off the trip? Map I had showed that the Sprague River road was just about five miles ahead, give or take.

I was tempted to take 140 to Klamath Falls, and then North on 95. I was tempted, but I didn't like it. There was something about it that just didn't feel right. Ever since the Chevron station blew up, I'd been expecting something else to happen. I knew it would. I mean, I knew it would. And somehow I felt it would happen on the road to Klamath Falls.

I flipped the coin. We would take the Sprague River Road.

"The Countess and I," Angelina spoke suddenly. "We are very different."

I nodded. "Go on."

"But at the same time, we're very much alike. Not a whole lot a like, but a little." She hesitated. "This is hard to explain."

"Tell me about it," I said, grinning. "But you're doing fine. Go on."

"She and me..." She started, then faded off. "We ... we aren't even a we, Chester," she said. "It's really just me... the Countess is... a part of me that comes out and yes, it makes me feel different, more special, more... powerful, somehow."

"That's called confidence, Angelina."

"All right." She thought a bit more. "When I'm the Countess, I can do things and say things that I wouldn't normally say. I feel older, I feel... special." She shook her head.

"Can you talk to her?" I asked.

"Can I?" She looked at me. "Well... I never tried. I guess it would be like talking to myself."

"Exactly!" I clapped my hands, startling Angelina. I put my hands back on the steering wheel and said, "You see? Pan isn't separate from me. He's like your Countess. If I talked to him, it would be just me, talking to myself. Any answer I came up with, and conversation I had, would just be my brain, my knowledge, talking back to me. Pan is an Aspect, a... a spirit that I picked up. It would be pretty easy to say that I made him up." I looked over at her, grinning, and said, "But I didn't. It's more like he's always been there."

"That's the same thing with the Countess," she agreed. "I didn't make her up, or if I did, I don't remember making her up. It's like... one day she was just there."

"Yep. One day my Pan Aspect was just there, too." I nodded, and took the turn North, onto Sprague River Road. "Of course, as we both know, when that aspect comes out, it takes a bit to keep him under control."

Nodding, Angelina agreed. "He's definitely a pretty strong aspect, that Pan." She raised the last of her Coke up and finished it. "I wonder how strong the Countess is."

Angelina asked good questions. I didn't have any answer for her, back then. I'm not sure I do now.

"The important thing, Angelina," I told her, "is that I can control it. The aspect is just that. It's an aspect of Pan. It's not like I become Pan, or that Pan is a separate entity living inside of my body." I stopped, scratched my head, then went on. "Granted, there are times when I feel like I'm possessed by the old demi-god himself, but really. That's just kinda nuts, don't you think?"

"Harry didn't seem to think so," she reminded me. "He recognized you as Pan."

Yeah, but he's a sasquatch," I argued. "Are you sure you didn't lose something in translation?"

She started to say something, but it was lost because I suddenly couldn't hear a thing. My head felt like it was on fire and my sight suddenly got very blurry and dim.

"Angelina," I said, "I hate to interrupt, but I think you're going to have to learn how to drive."

Comments

[ladyegreen.livejournal.com]

I like your writing, I don't tell you often enough or near enough but I do. You're quite talented Story Teller.

[joegoda.livejournal.com]

Dadburn it, Ladye! I just put this thing up less than three minutes ago! I think you scared me. Are you looking over my shoulder?

More importantly, are YOU all right?

And I like your writing as well, Darling Peddler. Your commentaries and your rants and your views, I have yet to find one that didn't at the very least entertain, and at the very most cause me to pause and think.

Have you ever thought about becoming a columnist?

Oh! And thank you, ma'am. You're opinion means a lot to me. It truly does.

[ladyegreen.livejournal.com]

I was staring over your shoulder reading every word as you typed!

And I am fine and was then. My new meds slow my brain down and weird things come out. Not any less true but still a bit more languid. (And the cramp finally went away.)

And I like your writing as well, Darling Peddler. Your commentaries and your rants and your views, I have yet to find one that didn't at the very least entertain, and at the very most cause me to pause and think.

I'm honored and thank you, my friend.

Have you ever thought about becoming a columnist?

Not seriously but who knows.

[capi.livejournal.com]

*applause*

More! More!!

Oh dangit! It's the WEEK! Harder for you to write, but the end of the month is looming, and the end of the drive, as well!!

CLIFFHANGER!!!!!!

[joegoda.livejournal.com]

What good is a serial without a cliffhanger?

[shackrlu.livejournal.com]

I'm with Capi!! MORE!! :-) YaY for Harry reference! I'm a muse!;-)

[joegoda.livejournal.com]

Yes. Yes, you are! But you knew that, didn't you? Of course there's more. I have to get them safely over to the road, and then figure out what the heck is going on. Just a few more words to go...