tables turned, I'm the one who's burning now

There are times the path is very clear. The steps to take are bright, and visible, and easy to navigate. Other times the path is shadowed, hard to make out, half-buried, missing. I must stand in the trees and by the roadsides, listening for clues, searching out the smallest pebbles of the potential path forward.

And then there are the times something blows up the path in front, and my choice is to walk through the shrapnel, and risk getting cut, or wait until it settles, and maybe lose the chance to get close enough to know why it happened.



I'm usually the charge-in-and-patch-later type with most issues, because I'm used to being cut, but some...some still freeze me in place, barely daring to breathe, wondering which direction holds pain, and which holds more pain. Instinctive reaction, still, to fold up the walls and fix them tight again, but...at this point, the box only has five sides. For some, the front panel never employs, and I am left exposed, vulnerable, visible, easily hurt. This is by design. Doesn't mean it hurts any less.



Still trying to figure out the best option, the best way to follow the barest hints of clues, over the field I know is mined. And I know it's mined because I put some of the mines in place. I know it's mine because I recognize the terrain.

And there are signposts along the way, there always are. Some are long since worn away. Some are snapped in half from the last frustrated traveler along the paths. Some are written in languages I can't read. Some are just blank shapes, emotion pouring from them, the drive to do, to be, to change, to have things unsaid entirely. Regret tastes like copper dusted with citric acid.



And it is not lost on me that tonight's wandering, trying to sort for clarity, was done in a skin with markings not my own, painting a map to experiences I'm still struggling to process. And all of this is happening two days before I get to invoke the goddess in a ritual for which I should be calm, and open, and receptive to all light and pleasure....So I have less than two days to restore balance.

Sure. No problem. That's possible.



In the end, on the path or off, what price faith? What price trust? How much is too much, and when do I finally learn these lessons? And how best do I guard my tongue from here, so I am not the one playing revelation roulette at the end of the day?



As many questions as there are missing paving stones I'm needing to reconstruct. And what path there is seems to be leading back to the forest, and the shadows, dotted with ruby-jeweled eyes gleaming in the dark. And the trees are moving.



Is it better to take the step forward, take the risk, take the pain that is inevitable on the shadowed path, or...stand in the sinking sunset glow, and wait, and slowly reconstruct the path by moonlight? Because I could breathe easier outside the forest, away from the doubts in the dark.

But the point this time may not be respiration, it may not even be reconstruction. It may be adaptation and reconfiguration. Rebuilding from the ground up? No, not even close. But enough for scaffolding to support the walls that need to be removed, to make room for new structures. Here we go again.

(Sims visited included the Leafminer Parkway, New London (Adult sim), Chapelle St. Marc, Beinn Dubh, Blyth, London 1940, Scapa Flow, Moonbase Alpha, Tailspinners' Rest, and Spirit of Fire. Not all shots taken were used, though. Written to No Time to Die from Billie Eilish, Safe and Sound from the Civil Wars and Taylor Swift, Feel It Twice from Camila Cabello, Poison from Nicole Scherzinger, Only Time Makes It Human from King Princess, In the End from Snow Patrol, My Dark Disquiet from Poets of the Fall, and Lost on You from LP.)