Hooked [Complete]

28. Ostara Part 1 A God's Heart

Author's Note: So we begin the end of Part 1. There are 8 Chapters that narrate Ostara (The Sabit Spring Festival). We switch both POV and tense here, because there is ALOT going on at the Festival and in everyone's heads at this point, and I want you to experience real time along with the narrators. The first chapter belongs to Cernunnos, of course. Here we go!

Song for the Chapter: Cernunnos by OMNIA

Cernunnos' POV

I never take sleep on Ostara.

I usually take whiskey, straight. Liters.

Of all the Sabaats, Ostara is the one I dread the most these days.

The truth is...I've never been very religious. The Eight Sabaats were for the people, a way for them to feel the connections to the seasons, a way for them to keep balance, a way to pray, to allay their fears. I don't need the Sabaats for that. I was engendered from the power of living, growing, greens things. From the breath and beat of running beasts. I don't need to keep the Sabaats to feel the earth power-I am the earth power.

Nope, the Sabaats were just a big hassle for me.

Except for Beltane.

Beltane was the day I made Cerridwen my Goddess, and the Beltanes for the first few thousand years after that were epic. Humanity was still coalescing into organized communities at that time, and still craving our mystic power for their own growth and vitality. Their priestesses petitioned for our blessings. They would set huge bonfires the night of Beltane, hoping the God and the Goddess would bless them with our presence and perform the Divine Act as they danced and drummed around us.

Carrie always made me talk her into it. Sometimes she would even refuse, and flee me, fleet as a red deer, making me chase her over moors, or through forests, laughing as I caught her and carried her, still mock protesting, into whatever human village whose prayers had caught my attention. But once I set her down in front of the Beltane fire, and the priestesses encircled her, worshiping her, offering her wine, disrobing her, bathing her body with milk and honey and bathing her soul in their adoration, she transformed into the Mother. She extended benevolence to her human maiden children who were all begging her to mate with me, to create new life during the Divine Act, to make the magic, so that their bodies would yield to her fertile cycle, and their men could get them with child that same night.

She didn't love humanity as broadly as I did, but she loved her priestesses, her witches. She would always bless them, and let me take her by the balefire as they danced around us. Damn, we put on a great show. She would never admit it, but she loved that shit. The one day of the year she was able to really let her freak flag fly.

Yeah, Beltane was good times. But the rest of the Sabaats mostly sucked. My blood-lettings always started on Litha—the summer solstice, and I was an irritable cut-up mess all through Lammas and Mabon. After Mabon, I was slowly dying, and I got sacrified at Samhain—today's Halloween—and resurrected on Yule—believe me, being brought back to life is no more fun than dying. Then, I was layed up all winter in a sick bed, hardly able to even sit up by Imbolc.

But, Ostara was the worst.

Ostara was the day I was fully restored, and the day Cerridwen wept all day for the price she had paid to restore me. Despite my newly returned power, Ostara was always the day I felt most powerless.

The last Ostara I remember was the day I lost my horns. The day Carrie left me.

I haven't seen a sober Ostara since. That's two thousand two hundred twenty seven lost days.