The Elementals: Raven's Fire

Chapter 5

As I flashed back to the last time we tried this. It was in a park down the road from Addi's house, we were ten years old and Nina had read about this practice on a website. We walked down to the park at dusk and stood in a circle, Nina sprinkled sage, cinnamon, cardamom, and rosemary on us and the ground in a circle. Then proceeded to tell us to dance barefoot singing Heart of Fire by the Black Veil Brides, our favorite song at the time, and think about the things in our life we wanted to let go of. Sounds stupid right? I thought it was absolutely fucking pointless, but in the middle of us dancing around like a bunch of freaks, hooping and hollering like a group of crazy people the craziest thing happened. There was this loud bang, the earth shook briefly and four black birds fell out of the sky and landed on the ground in front of us, dead. It scared us so badly that we took off screaming and ran home. Later we found out that a branch hit a power line, causing it to spark, which in turn caused the loud bang and the birds died from being electrocuted. A mere coincidence but scary enough that we never tried that again. That is until tonight apparently. 

By the time I was done reminiscing about the past and looking up from my knees, Nina had drawn a circle in the ground, and had placed 4 runes representing fire, wind, water and earth in front of each of us. She sprinkled sage, rosemary, and some essential oils around the circle and then threw a bundle of white sage anointed in peppermint and lavender oil into the fire. She looked around at us and instructed us to remove our shoes, stand inside the circle, close our eyes and meditate on releasing all the anger, the fear, the doubt we held onto and relax. Standing in that circle, my eyes closed, the smell of sage and oils washing over me, I released the anger I had built up, the hatred for my father, the displeasure for myself for not trying harder, the fear I wouldn't amount to anything. I cast that out of me, allowing the love of my friends, and happiness I felt with them around me to flood into my soul. While I stood there arms to the sky, feet in the ground, eyes tightly shut an image came to my head and a heat flooded the center of my chest spreading outward to my fingers and toes. I saw in my mind this bright red light, and the harder I tried to see what it was the brighter it would get. This feeling of power and energy coursing through my veins I reached out in my mind to grasp the object, what was it? Then just as I reached it, I heard Nina say, "Grab my hand Raven! Hold on, I got you!" Without thinking I instinctively reached out for Nina and Addi's hands as soon as our hands interlaced this giant blast of wind and rain came out of nowhere, whipping around us in a giant circle. We started to sway back and forth with the wind and rain, like to an imaginary song that only we heard. 

The feeling of freedom and happiness came crashing down upon us as we fell to the ground. I opened my eyes and looked at the other girls who were shaking their heads looking dirty, wet, disheveled and wind blown. "What the hell was that!" We said in unison as we burst out laughing. After we calmed down, I looked over at Nina and asked her, "Hey Nina? Did you tell me to grab your hand? I heard you yell at me, grab my hand Raven, I got you!" "What? No, I heard Gabi say that to me." she said, shocked. Gabi said she heard Addi and Addi said she heard me say the exact same words. We all sat there for a minute in complete and utter silence. Addi spoke about five minutes later as the rest of us were lost in thought or staring into the fire. "Guys, that was not the same as last time. I feel different. I let go of all my anger and it has been replaced by this strength. This amazing sensation of happiness and power. It is hard to explain." Looking around at the other girls nodding their heads in agreement made me think, did they all see the fiery red image I saw in my head, that I felt deep within my soul. I needed to know if I was the only one. "Guys, when you had your eyes closed did you see anything? Like a fiery red something, that was just out of your reach. And try as you might you couldn't reach it? And the harder you reached for it the more heat and power you felt. I questioned. Nina popped her head up and said, "I did! Except it wasn't red. It was this cool blue color and I tried my damndest to get to it but I couldn't. I never ever got close. And the harder I tried the cooler my body felt, like I was floating. ""Hey, me too." said Gabi. "Except that mine was yellowish brown and same I never got close. But I didn't feel heat or fire? I felt warmth and coolness." she continued. 

We all turn to look at Addison. She raises her head and shakes her head in disbelief. "Mine didn't have any one color, it was more like a prism, glistening off of every surface it touched. I didn't feel heat or cool, I felt this amazing sensation that if I got it my feet would never touch the ground. What does this mean?" She asked, almost frightened. We all looked around at each other in amazement and disbelief. This experience we just experienced was almost the exact same for each of us. How was that possible? Did we really connect spiritually or did we all hallucinate that? he fire was starting to die down so we decided to pack up and head back to my house, but everyone was still questioning what the hell really just happened there. 

Then I saw it. Where did that come from? I looked down at my wrist and on the inside of my left hand was a symbol. It looked like a lowercase n but with one side higher than the other. I stopped and said to the girls, "Um girls, what is this? Do you guys have one? Where did it come from?" I was freaking out a little. I grabbed the girls left hands and brought them close to mine and there they were on the inside of their left wrists. Nina had one that looked like left and right arrows that offset each other. Gabi had one that looked like two lines with an x between them and Addison's looked like a capital M. "What the hell!" All three girls exclaimed. I grabbed Addi's right hand and Nina's left, Nina grabbed Gabi's left and Gabi grabbed Addi's left standing there in the moonlight. We all held hands and said the word Runar. And just like that all the marks were gone. "What is going on?'' I screamed as I broke the circle. "What language was that? And where did the marks go?" I was at this point having a full blown panic attack. We all took off screaming and ran for the car. I have no idea what this meant but I was going to find out. And I knew that the answers lay under the driver's seat of the Tahoe .That book had something to do with this. I just knew it